July, 2008

Last year, a girl was caught pretending to be a student at Stanford.  You can read the story here.  What was really interesting about the story was that this young lady was able to play the role of a Stanford student so convincingly that she was able to get away with it, whilst living in the dorms and pretending to take midterms, for eight months!  Imagine what it would take to construct an entire identity around something that was not true.  You would first have to somehow, justify in your mind that it is ok to lie.  Next you would have to actually begin to believe that you are the person you are pretending to be.  Finally, you would have to figure out the system and keep track of your lies in order to hold the whole act together.  This is just too much work!  Underneath it all, if we were to do the cost benefit analysis, this young lady ended up desiring so much to be something that she was not that she was willing to pay the steep price.  This just reflects how deeply her desire went.  Without speculating too much on the causes for her behavior, I wonder if there was a deep fear attached to her longing.  Perhaps she was so fearful to be exactly who she was and who she thought others would perceive her to be as a ”Stanford reject”, that she was willing to go the distance in constructing her fake identity.

We all suffer some kind of duplicity in our own lives.  I know I do!  It takes a lot of energy to maintain an image.  This goes back to my own fears related to acceptance and safety.  In the end however, I think the price for maintaining a self-constructed identity as opposed to being who God created you to be in His image, is too steep a price to pay.

I’m reminded of the story in “The Dawn Treader”, the fifth book of the Narnia series, where Eustace Scrubb becomes a dragon due to some foolish choices that he makes.  Later, he is unable to scrape his dragon scales off by himself because the scales have become such a part of his body.  Only Aslan is able to scrape off the scales and restore Eustace back into his original state.  It is only when we allow our Creator to clear off whatever “dragon scales” we have accumulated in our lives, that we are able to become who He intended us to be.  It is a painful process as is described by C.S. Lewis, that requires us to allow the sharpness of God’s Truth to cut away the lies and duplicity.  This is a story of redemption and restoration.

The recent sermon series - Renovations has been very good for me on a personal level.  It has caused me to reflect a bit on my own life and consider what areas of my mind, heart or will have yet to be attended to.  I especially appreciated the rooms metaphor as it helped me understand how we need to invite Christ into all rooms in our lives, even the ones we tend to neglect.  This became strikingly true for me this month as I am switching rooms with my roommate.  In moving a few feet I realized that I have a LOT of organizing to do.  Right now, my room is made up of four different piles.  The paperwork pile, where a mountain of old letters, documents and even a random frisbee has made it way onto my desk.  Then there’s the clothes pile where I’ve effectively been able to hide away in my closet hoping that it will just go away by itself.  Next is the school pile where all my books, school work and other items that I accumulated in the past two years are scattered on my floor.  Finally, is the misc pile that’s made up of everything else that I cannot seem to classify into the other piles.  Needless to say, the room is a mess!

This made me realize a couple of things about myself.  One, I hate hate hate to organize!  I can live with a mess for quite a long time before I feel the need to begin the process of tidying.  Two, the mess won’t go away by itself (as I keep hoping it will) if I simply ignore it.  Three, when I think about the work that it entails, I don’t want to even get started!  Four, I can’t really invite anyone to come visit me in my room until it is presentable.  Finally, I’m not going to get the most use of my room if I don’t effectively clean it up.  I’m the same way when it comes to my spiritual life.  I tend to focus on externals and not my heart condition believing that since no one can see it, there’s no need to attend to it.  In the end however, if I don’t deal with what’s going on inside then the outside is merely a facade and simply a set of behaviors without much power.

As I begin the process of fixing up my room, I am praying that I will also begin to let God attend to the different areas of my life whether it be my heart, my mind or my will.