Who Am I?

I often do not understand who I am or what I do.

Calvin said that it is impossible to know myself without coming to know God—and impossible to know God without coming to know myself.

Yet I find in some ways the older I grow, the more a mystery I am.

I talked with a man recently who has attended our church for a long time, someone I respect and admire. He said that sometimes he got the feeling that I cared more about trying to get people outside our church to start attending than I care about the people who are actually here. And I found this pricked something tender inside me in ways that other criticisms might not.

Am I a visionary, an innovator, a leader boldly calling people on an adventure of change and mission? Or am I selfishly ambitious? Do I want to be pastor of a large church so I can feel successful and significant? Or am I both? And if I am—what are the percentages?

Paul said once, "I do not understand what I do." Many of Paul's teachings elude me, but not that one.

I find myself a tale of three persons, kind of an anti-Trinity.

There's the public me. I prepare talks, and lead meetings, and say words that I want others to hear. This public me isn't deliberately false. But I am always aware, when I am in the presence of other people, of how they will hear what I say. This awareness is a kind of filter that I cannot put away. This public me will always be gauging other peoples' responses and adjusting accordingly. I often do not like this dynamic. But I cannot flip it off as if it were a switch.

There is the private me. This is the me who watches and listens and feels. I sometimes avoid this me, especially in seasons of great busyness. When I slow down, and bring the private me before God, I often become aware of my inadequacies or sense of lack. I sometimes can slow down to a level of deep peace, or of awareness of my longing for God. This private me often seems surprisingly conflicted—moved some times by genuine desires to serve and grow, and other times by reflexive habits of greed or resentment.

There is the real me. This is true person who inhabits my life; the mixture of what is admirable and what is squalid and what is small. This me must exist, and must be fully known if justice is to prevail.

But I do not know this real me. I often do not know what my real motives are. In some ways, the other people in my life see the real me better than I do.

The formation of real souls is the one process going on in the universe that really matters. The sanctification of my own soul is the primary task with which I am charged by God.

One of the ironies of church ministry is it can cause me to neglect what matters most, in the name of doing what matters most.

I have just finished reading Eric Metaxas' biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer; one of the most challenging books I have read in a long time. I found myself asking myself questions repeatedly as I read it. Am I becoming someone like Bonhoeffer? Would I make the thousands of small and large choices he made that led to his martyrdom at Hitler's hands? Or would I be like the many pastors who could smoothly rationalize their collaboration with evil rather than risk failure, disgrace and death?

Is our church producing people like Bonhoeffer? Really? Or are we just aiming to have more and more people come to more and more events?

Shortly before he was martyred, Bonhoeffer wrote a poem that has haunted people ever since. It gives voice to the struggle of a sensitive soul grappling with the tension between the public and the private and the real self. It is a gift to all of us who aspire to follow in the steps of the One who went before us.

Who am I? They often tell me I would step from my cell's confinement calmly, cheerfully, firmly, like a squire from his country-house.

Who am I? They often tell me I would talk to my warden freely and friendly and clearly, as though it were mine to command.

Who am I? They also tell me I would bear the days of misfortune equably, smilingly, proudly, like one accustomed to win.

Am I then really all that which other men tell of, or am I only what I know of myself, restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage, struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat, yearning for colors, for flowers, for the voices of birds, thirsting for words of kindness, for neighborliness, trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation, tossing in expectation of great events, powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance, weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making, faint and ready to say farewell to it all.

Who am I? This or the other? Am I one person today, and tomorrow another? Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others, and before myself a contemptibly woebegone weakling? Or is something within me still like a beaten army, fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?

Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine.