IDENTITY AMNESIA

When we, as sinners, get concerned about our standing before God, we usually think first about our sins. We’ve broken laws, transgressed commandments, trespassed forbidden boundaries, omitted obligations and in many ways “missed the mark” (the literal meaning of sin in the Bible, from how poorly aimed arrows miss targets). This initial concern is natural for humans, and God may use it to get our attention. In John 8:24, Jesus told those who doubted that He was God’s Son, “if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” But earlier, in the same chapter, His words to a woman caught in adultery clearly expressed His Father’s attitude: “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”

Because God is gracious to repentant sinners, He forgave sins and transgressions in the Old Testament, long before Jesus became the sacrificial Lamb of God. But, while guilt for sins was one problem the Cross addressed, God’s major target was the sin nature: our disposition to sin. Because God created us with an intrinsically united body-spirit nature—the human body created to be spiritual and the human spirit created to be incarnate—Adam and Eve could not help but genetically pass on to all their descendants this bent toward sinning. We all inherit it, and receiving pardon for sins doesn’t eliminate it. Genesis 3:1-7 tells how Satan strategically worked to get this functional source of sins inside of us as a race. But 1 John 3:8 proclaims that the Son of God showed up on earth to destroy “the works of the devil.” This was His pragmatic purpose, but not His motivating goal.

The motive of His heart was revealed when Jesus said in Luke 19:10, “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” We lost much in the Fall of our first parents, but the most crucial loss was in the memory of our created identity. Personal sins, whether in thought, word or deed, do not cause this spiritual amnesia. Sinning is a developed habit, bred and fed by deeming ourselves independent from our Creator. Yet this way of thinking seems to come naturally to us. We are born with no memory of our absolute and total dependence on God. Complaining that this ignorant situation isn’t our fault will change nothing. The effects of this missed mark on the human condition are universally persistent. The personal multiplication of sins, in acts or attitudes, continues to confirm this race-wide matrix of sin, which functions in this absence of an authentic, dependent relationship with our Maker.

Mark 1:4 states that “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (plural).” But when John the Baptist saw Jesus coming to him, he said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin (singular) of the world!” (John 1:29). Oswald Chambers explained this theological difference between sins and sin extremely well:

The Bible does not say that God punished the human race for one man’s sin; but that the disposition of sin . . . entered into the human race by one man, and that another Man took on Him the sin of the human race and put it away (Hebrews 9.26)—an infinitely profounder revelation. The disposition of sin is not immorality and wrong-doing, but the disposition of self-realization—I am my own god. This disposition may work out in decorous morality or in indecorous immorality, but it has the one basis, my claim to my right to myself. (My Utmost of His Highest, October 5th)

By a preoccupation with sins instead of a focus on sin, many have misconstrued what happened in the beginning. We know from Genesis 1:31 that after completing creation, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” This divine evaluation included “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:9), even though its early misuse derailed its “good” purpose from being revealed. God merely told Adam to take care of it, to guard it, but not to eat from it, warning that, if he did, it would kill him. When Adam and Eve ignored this warning and ate that tree’s forbidden fruit, they immediately died spiritually, and afterwards, physically. What they took into themselves had the deadly effect of making them morally independent from God. Once ingested, it gave them their very own “knowledge of good and evil”—an ability to determine right and wrong for themselves. This laid the groundwork for humans to develop a myriad of conflicting personal and cultural moralities down through history, each relying on a knowledge not directly received from God.

When a father warns his child, “Don’t play with the gun . . . it can kill you,” and the child disobeys and dies, the disobedience may have led to the death, but a bullet killed the child. Similarly, when Satan duped Adam and Eve into ignoring God the Father’s warning, they disobediently consumed something that had the power to separate them spiritually from Him and from the divine life He wanted for them. The ultimate effect of imbibing moral independence from God was to kill themselves and us, their descendants. Incorporating this spiritually lethal fruit into their lives and into the human race was the precise point where “sin entered the world, and death through sin,” as described by Romans 5:12-19. But in that same passage, God’s gracious solution to the sin problem is also explained.

Any possibility of having restored human bodies, souls and spirits with clear memories of our original role in servant-leadership required a new humanity. This hope materialized when God’s Son became a body-spirit human being. Christ’s unique conception (Matthew 1:20) from one of Mary’s ova and from the Holy Spirit’s overshadowing (Luke 1:35) combined both the necessary genes of the sin nature, which Mary inherited from Adam, and the essential “seed” of a new human race, which the Holy Spirit’s breath freshly created from earthly matter (as God had first done in Genesis 2:7).

God’s Son becoming a human being is the greatest of all cosmic and celestial miracles. This marvelous Incarnation initiated a new human genome, one with an intrinsically divine nature. But the genetic presence of the sin nature in Jesus, and its utter defeat throughout His earthly life, allowed Him to take this disposition for sinning to the Cross. Paul describes this incredible fact in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” It’s the theological ground for his insistence that “our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin,” (Romans 6:6). This amazing facet of the Incarnation enables both Paul and us to say, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me,” (Galatians 2:20).

Because it’s our self-life of sin that produces sins, God’s goal in salvation was not just forgiveness but renewal. The DNA of the old Adam was nullified by Christ’s bodily death. But the new human genome, the immortal DNA in His resurrected body, made Jesus “the firstborn from among the dead” (Colossians 1:18), with many others to follow. Resurrection introduced a new order of human life, a new humanity destined to reign forever over “a new heaven and a new earth” (Revelation 21:1), led by Christ the Savior and King.

Our upbringing in a world alienated from God’s will and ways confirms and nurtures our sin-bent false self in sinning. God’s plan for us is that we stop being sinners and remember our true selves. Christ’s saving gift of new birth begins a new creation in us that reinstates our lost memory. By indwelling us through the Holy Spirit, He facilitates our growth in remembering and living out our true identity as servant-leaders, created “in the image of God,” the Supreme Servant-Leader (Genesis 1:26-27).

If you’re not a Christian, you’re still suffering from spiritual amnesia. God wants to remedy that, but He will not override your personal will in order to do so. You must freely choose to surrender yourself to Him, the Lord of heaven and earth Who came to restore your spiritual memory loss. Heed Christ’s warning in Mark 8:36, “For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” Nothing is more eternally precious than the true self God intended you to manifest in creation. He calls you to forget your false identity of a self-directed self-sufficiency, so you can discover your forgotten identity as a uniquely designed servant who depends on divine guidance. Your success in that holy remembering is enabled by the special grace that accompanies your choice to obey Christ’s familiar invitation, “Follow Me.”

If you’re already a Christian, but have been so preoccupied by worldly concerns or distractions that you have forgotten “your first love” (Revelation 2:4), then you also must surrender. Choose to remember who you really are. Don’t let the world define your identity. Only your Maker and Lord can tell you who you are. If you wake up each day with your Christian memory foggy or fading, then realize your need for forming new habits. Start spending more time talking to God in prayer, more time reading His Word, more time focusing your mind on Christ and listening for His voice in your daily activities. Memorizing Scripture is one of the best habits to develop, and modern technology has brought modern help in that area (Google “the Verse-Locker app”). There’s really no such thing as a once-for-all surrender. The NKJV of Luke 9:23 records Jesus instructing each disciple to “take up his cross daily, and follow Me.”

The following verses offer a concluding summary and poetic reinforcement of these finals exhortations.

SURRENDER

Never wait until disaster
wraps your body in a ball,
or your limbs get set in plaster
after feeble flight and fall:
cease today to flee the Master,
slowing down to heed His call.

Boast no sinful self-reliance
to disparage Heaven’s Throne;
wave no scepter of defiance,
proudly claiming, “I’m my own!”
or you’ll drown in dark compliance
to a demon’s rule alone.

Inner conscience is observant,
when away from God we swim:
our Creator is a Servant,
calling us to image Him
with devotion full and fervent,
waylaid not by wish or whim.

God won’t confiscate decision . . .
we must relegate our will
to His radical excision
of the sin that made us ill.
Dream no shallow, quick revision:
we’ve a void He longs to fill

When a sinner’s heart is willing
to become a saintly soul,
Christ indwells by Spirit filling,
making broken places whole.
Even angels find it thrilling,
watching Jesus meet His goal.

— David L. Hatton, 10/17/2020

FINDING AND BECOMING OUR TRUE SELVES

In 1637, René Descartes wrote, “I think, therefore I am.” On hearing it in high school, I argued, “No one can think without first existing!” But now, seeing how his idea damaged modern culture, I reject it even more vigorously.

By placing the subjective realm above objective reality, Descartes echoed ancient Gnosticism, which exalted the spiritual soul while devaluing the material world, including the physical body. This error ignored the Creator’s “very good” evaluation of creation (Gen 1:31). Later, building on Descartes’ dictum, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) drove a philosophical wedge even further between soul and body. The results have been socially and morally disastrous.

A Christian adoption of this conceptual divide is exemplified in religious porno-prudery (a term I use to warn pastors that “a prudish view of the body is a pornographic one”[1]). That view leads us down a moral rabbit trail. By sexually objectifying human anatomy and treating the body as the stimulus of lust, porno-prudery shifts blame from where Jesus puts it: on the adulterous heart (Mat5:28). While God created our “being” as an integrated unity of both the material and the spiritual (Gen 2:7), this error affirms a Gnostic split in our body-soul nature. Beyond assuring pornography’s success, this false view has opened many doors of departure from healthy Biblical morality and from a human-friendly treatment of the body.[2]

While this divided self-understanding confuses the search for our true identity, Scripture comes to our rescue. In Exod 3:14, God told Moses His name: “I AM WHO I AM.” Earlier, in Gen 1: 26, God had said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” Since my Creator, I AM WHO I AM, made me in His “likeness,” I can confidently say, “I am who I am, too!” A human sense of being comes directly from God. If Descartes had acknowledged this Biblical fact, he might have more correctly written, “I am, therefore I think.” But even that expression falls short of describing how humans reflect the nature of the Great I AM. God is not just a thinking Mind but a Person Who acts.

Because “God is light” (1 John 1:5), the focus of His thought is truth. He thinks clearly, accurately, and perfectly about objective reality. Simultaneously, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Primarily, this describes God’s relational nature as a Trinity of Persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—eternally in loving union. But this loving quality also extends to His personal interaction with creation, especially with us.

In the scroll at the side, someone parodied three ideas of being. Sinatra’s punchline is on target only if we reverse Descartes’ phrase, as previously suggested (“to be is to think”), and balance it with Camus’ existentialism (“to be is to do”). But without God’s “light” guiding thought and His “love” shaping action, any perceived balance will miss its true fulfillment. An integrated human sense of being requires authentically living in connection with I AM, our Maker. Activities of enlightened thinking and loving interactions with things and people must flow from a central, personal union with God. His indwelling presence enables us to sing the divine balance of “do, be, do, be, do.”

God’s plan for us to be reflections of His unity of “light” and “love” defines our true selves. But, if honest, we must confess that a unifying both-and relationship in our body-spirit nature has been disrupted by an either-or alienation. This disunity began in Eden, when humanity fell away from God’s presence by choosing moral independence. Today, personal disobedience to God affirms that original choice and confirms its ongoing disruption in our lives.

From cradle to grave, we live in a fallen world where this disobedience hurts us inside and out. Turning outward for relief can lead to a fruitless search for significance in materialism or in conformity to popular trends or attractive people. Turning inward for comfort can become a dead-end of meaningless fantasies or endless self-introspection. Bending our soul toward these internal and external distractions is a dysfunctional and damaging form of idolatry. It perpetuates disconnection from the God of truth and love. In such a world of false gods, people keep hurting themselves and others.

Inward and outward searching fails to retrieve a lost sense of being and provides no sense of well-being. In this disconnected state, we can miss authentic self-discovery by mistakenly listening to our inner disruption, as if its voice was our true self. It is not. We were created to listen to our Maker. Finding and becoming our true selves happens only by reuniting with God. He has graciously provided for that reunion through His Son. That’s the “Good News” of the New Testament.

By becoming human and dying in our place, Jesus invites us to receive forgiveness for our personal disobedience to God. But by His resurrection, He calls us to bury our old lives in His death and rise with Him to “walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). This “walk” is a progressive, step-by-step surrender of all remnants of moral independence from God. A new birth occurs in us by our initial decision of faith to turn “to God from idols to serve the living and true God,” (1 Thes 1:9). But experiencing our new and true selves involves a journey of growth, with Jesus Himself as both our divine Pattern and our daily Pathway. That journey, if seriously pursued, will uncover all lingering idols that we must also abandon and replace with the “true God.”

Recently, in preparation to attended a MPC[3] retreat, I began reviewing The Healing Presence by the late Leanne Payne,[4] whose scholarly insights from the works of C. S. Lewis were a major influence in her inner healing ministry. One morning I awoke with the words of a poem coming to me which I knew was meant to capture some of the major principles in her book. I immediately got up and spent the rest of the morning writing it:

BENEATH THE SURFACE

Deep in the inner sanctum, where grace alone can bless,
roots of a tangled present from lower layers press,
pushing injury’s pressure—infected, tender, keen—
up to the naked surface where well-hid hurts are seen.

Down in neglected infants, fear’s toddling girls and boys,
childhood’s deprived upbringings, lost adolescent joys,
fester the wounds surviving within a buried past,
remembered but misshapen by passing pains that last.

Lovely tip of the iceberg, sculpted by wind and rain!
Dangerous, what lies under the tearful years of strain—
hurtful to nearby strangers, poison to wedded love,
fatal to life’s full meaning, if kept from God above.

Only His healing Presence governs the twin release:
giving and getting pardon that offers inner peace.
Letting go of the rancor, where memory is marred,
forgiveness starts the mending of what the trauma scarred.

Childlikeness echoes Heaven, but childish ways must go.
Our bitter, vengeful tantrums resist God’s healing flow.
From faith’s baptismal waters, where old life finds a grave,
We rise to live our true selves, whom Jesus came to save.

New birth refills our being with God’s love through His Son.
Our war beneath the surface, the Lord’s already won.
But we dispel the damage that entered us through sin
by coming home to wholeness from Christ Who dwells within.

— David L. Hatton, 3/23/2019

When we turn from our old life and invite Jesus into our heart, He takes up residence at the center of our being. This marks the beginning of our journey “in Christ” as “a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17). It is by living out of this central union with Christ that our true self will be manifested in daily life. Oswald Chambers wrote, “after the moral decision to be identified with Jesus in His death has been made, the resurrection life of Jesus invades every bit of my human nature.”[5] Our healing and self-discovery both need an invasion of Christ’s life into every facet of our conscious experience. The more aware we are of His presence, the more aware we will be of our new identity in Him.

In concluding these thoughts on finding and becoming our true selves, I want to suggest a helpful daily devotional, Jesus Calling, written some years ago by Sarah Young.[6] Her personalizing of Bible verses and Scriptural teachings by putting them into Christ’s voice has an edifying appeal. We all need daily reminders to listen to His life-changing truth with our rational minds and to enjoy His loving presence with our relational hearts. So, give Jesus Calling a try, to see if it helps you with a disciplined practice of listening to and obeying the Lord on your healing journey with Him.

---------------
ENDNOTES:
1. See my articles, “Adopting God’s View of Bare Anatomy” and “Pornography in the Pulpit.”
2. Love Thy Body - Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality, by evangelical apologist Nancy Pearcey, astutely examines the social and moral fallout from this philosophical divide between subjective mind and objective reality. Her book is a must-read for understanding how postmodernism’s morally confused thinking on abortion, euthanasia, sexual immorality, homosexuality and transgenderism has taken over both secular and religious culture.
3. Ministries of Pastoral Care (MPC) holds a limited number of week-long conferences, carrying on a similar ministry as that of the late Leanne Payne’s Pastoral Care Ministry schools.
4. Amazon has a list of Leanne Payne’s books.
5. Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, April 11 reading.
6. Used copies of Jesus Calling can often be found in thrift stores, for yourself or to give to others.

CREATIVITY AND BEING

Several things in life can launch a search for ultimate meaning. Two facets of that search are the quest for identity (“Who am I?”) and the discovery of purpose (“Why am I here?”). Our human tendency to create is an excellent doorway for entering that search and exploring the answers to those two questions.

The fact that toddlers naturally become amateur creators, before ever pondering questions of identity or purpose, partially answers both questions. If human creativity is inborn, it points toward an answer to who or what humanity is. This relationship of creativity and being is best illustrated in a two-step process experienced by very young humans.

In the first step, when infants start recognizing that their hands belong to them and can function under their control, they start moving and manipulating other objects in the world, things that they learn are not a part of them. If babies could articulate this profound lesson philosophically, they might say, “I and the world around me are not synonymous. I can do things I want to it, and it can do things to me I don’t want. Ouch! That steel pole is hard!” This is why only adults who forget childhood wisdom pretend to lose their personal identities in pantheism: “I and the metal pole am ONE. The lump on my head from running into it while meditating must be maya, just an illusion....”

The lesson children learn naturally is profound, because it verifies their existence, their being. Descartes was close, when he said, “I think, therefore I am.” But his idea needed the help of later existentialist philosophers who said, “I do, therefore I exist.” A positive response to the question of individual being, “Do I exist?” is easily demonstrated by a small child: “See that toy block. Watch! I’m putting it on top of another one. There, see? Who did that? I did! I exist! I am!" Such young logic lays the “am” groundwork in the question “Who am I?” But the “who” of individual identity needs further definition. This leads to the second step.

Manipulating the world, through moving toy building blocks around, is rudimentary creativity. As humans grow, they become more skillful at it, utilizing other media. Architects stick with blocks, but get more sophisticated at stacking them. Painters keep improving in how they push wet pigment around; sculptors, in how they shape clay or stone; writers, in how they shuffle words into poetry, plays, prose, and political speeches. Thoughtful observation of this creativity in almost every example of human work makes it obvious that no one arranges building blocks in exactly the same way. We may imitate other creators, but there’s always some personal uniqueness, even in how we copy them.

While the search for identity may last from the cradle to the grave, the effects of it outlives us, as we touch others with our personal uniqueness and individual creativity. The truth crystallized in John Donne’s “no man is an island” means that, as individuals, we are making history now and will remain a part of history afterwards. Our creativity is important; it counts. But counts for what? Why is it important? What’s the purpose? “Why am I here?”

Perpetual “Why” questions on youngsters’ lips can drive parents crazy. In this world where “no man is an island,” they see myriads of creative works by other individuals. “How” questions may gain answers about the way things were made or their manner of operation, but kids go on to ask, “What’s it for? Why was it made?” These questions seek the goal, the purpose, the objective. Human works of creativity—sometimes alone but more often in a concerted effort—are meant to accomplish or provide something. Creative work says, “I’m not just unique as a person, but my individuality makes an important contribution.”

This two-step process in simple, youthful logic offers one possible explanation for Jesus saying, “Let the little children come to Me... for of such is the kingdom of heaven,” (Mat 19:14, NKJV). Their little feet are on the right track. If our individual, purposeful creativity points to ultimate meaning, then there must be a Creator with personal individuality Who has an important purpose for all of His massive creativity in this gigantic universe.

The One whom the Bible calls “Maker of heaven and earth” has personally identified Himself by the name “I AM.” Our human identity crisis ends when we allow the great “I AM” to answer our question, “Who am I?” Basically His answer is: “You are an image of Me. You are My image-bearer.” Our significance as individual creators finds ultimate meaning by trusting that our Creator,  the Maker of all things, individually designed each one of us exactly as He did. “Why are we here?” Our unique, purposeful creativity is a result of His. And when our discovery of His unique, purposeful creativity ends our search for ultimate meaning, it will open us up to an eternal exploration of that meaning. Then we’ll answer Descartes and the other philosophers. “I am, therefore I think! I am, therefore I do!”

I want to conclude with a poem. It’s a favorite of mine, and never seems old or boring to me. You see, everything I’ve said above is not hypothetically contrived but authentically realized. God made me on purpose, and within that purpose was poetic creativity. More than that, He has let me know numerous times that I’m writing for Him and for others, and not just for myself. As far as I'm concerned, that immortalizes my creative effort. So I never tire of it myself or tire of sharing it with others. See if it speaks to you:

CREATOR

Someday you’ll compose a song or sing one very well,
Feel a thrill of satisfaction in a tale you tell,
Draw a picture, paint a portrait, shape a lump of clay,
Plan and build a dream-house, act a part within a play,
Plant a lovely flower garden, set a gem in gold,
Cut and piece and sew an outfit new and sharp and bold,
Tinker to invent a gadget saving people time,
Write an essay or a story set in prose or rhyme,
And, while feeling fresh fulfillment where you have achieved
In the goal of each ambition by your mind conceived,
You will pause when all about you birds are singing, too,
Wind is whistling, stars are shining, everything you view
Whispers softly hints behind them of a happy Mind,
As if all that is around you stands both sealed and signed
By a Person, Great Designer, One you imitate
When you follow yearnings to be skillful and create.

— David L. Hatton, 2/22/1992
(from Poems Between Darkness and Light ©1994, 2014)