Sobriety
Let me tell you about High School. I was not sober. Ever.
Neither was I drunk. Ever. The word "sober" is used many times in the New Testament. It is always a commended virtue. It does not always mean "not intoxicated"; nor does it always mean "humorless". It simply means "sane". Sanity and intoxication are, of course, mutually exclusive for the otherwise sane person. Sane people do laugh, however. The sober person is one who laughs when something is funny, and who does not laugh when something is not. We may then say that sobriety is accurate judgment. The adjective "sober" can modify many different nouns. Within the scope of this essay, I would like to apply it to a concept that seems most difficult to achieve: a sober self image. My proposition is best stated in this text: Romans 12:3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith. On the other hand, some of Paul’s comments to Timothy indicate that he may have underestimated his abilities. This is not sober either.
My 5 year high school class reunion was an epiphany. Of all people, they asked me to be the emcee. I wasn’t planning on attending and thought that I would not be missed. Now you must understand that I had the most nonsober self image of anyone in my whole class. There were only around 30 of us. This class contained virtually the same people from 1st grade through high school. I said "virtually". I was an exception. We moved to that school district when I was in the 6th grade. I was the "new kid in school". No big deal. Lots of people change schools. The insanity was that I viewed myself as the "new kid in school" for the next seven years.
I did find one kindred soul who truly was a kindred soul. He and I seemed cut from the same cloth. I fear that I monopolized his social "circle". Mercifully for the sake of my own conscience, he is a successful and well adjusted person in his own right, and doesn’t seem to have been damaged much by our association.
What made my 5 year reunion so epiphanous was that my classmates weren’t at all how I remembered them. I was treated like an old friend. They couldn’t have changed that much in 5 years! Not that I was mistreated by them. I just didn’t think that I was a factor at all in their collective self identity.
I got the emcee invitation a few months before the event. My first reaction was; "This can’t be right." I wasn’t close friends with anyone except the afore mentioned. I didn’t participate in extra curriculum. I have the shortest "bio" under my picture in my senior annual. For all practical intents and purposes, I was invisible! Then it dawned on me that they knew I had become a preacher, and they probably asked me because I was used to public speaking. O.K. That made sense. I still thought it a bit bizarre, but I decided to do it.
The night came and they were almost all there. It seemed they had done well quickly. New, shiny cars and expensive clothing. Had it not been for the stunning wife on my arm; she whom I had gotten from a far country (Ohio); I may have turned around in the parking lot and headed out. I figured people would think, "Well, he must have something going to have wound up with her."
May I digress for a moment. The preceding is a personal illustration, but in counseling with people all these years, I have seen that it is far from unique. Our self image is determined largely by what we think that other people think of us. We tend to use them as our mirror. We could begin by realizing that we probably occupy less than a percent of others' thoughts; even those close to us. Everyone has their own world with it's concerns. I overcame my fear of public speaking when I realized that people remember less than 10% of what you say, and less than 1% of it 24 hrs. later! Can you give me an outline of the last sermon you heard? Quick! Can you even tell me the main point? Probably not because the cares of your own struggle have swept it to the periphery of your mind. It's there. It has registered in the mix of your thoughts and hopefully altered those thoughts slightly, but it's far from the center. Since our self image is generated from what we think others think of us, let us lose it by realizing that they don't think about us much at all. I could be pious and say that we should view ourselves only through the Lord’s lenses; but thankfully, even He chooses to view me through the "rose colored glasses" of the atonement. That is a positive image, but still fortuitously slanted. If our view of what others think of us is skewed, so will our self image be.
I was in a nursing home visiting an elderly lady. Neither of us knew the other very well. I concluded my visit by asking if I might pray for her. I took her hand and she sat straight up in bed. "Oh, Violet" she said to her roommate. "Listen." I thought nothing strange about wanting someone else to listen to a prayer. I prayed. "Oh". she said. "I thought you asked if you might propose to me." We misinterpret the intentions of others toward us easily. She was auditorily challenged. Not only is our reception imperfect; the transmission is garbled too. We’re working with humans, after all.
Back to the reunion. I entered the banquet hall and it was surreal. It was full of friends. Friends I had never gotten to know. I sat and enjoyed conversation with people I had never spoken to before. Then the truth hit me like a cannon ball. These people had always accepted me. It was ME who had decided that I was unacceptable! If "sane" or "insane" can be used as opposites, then my self image through high school was insane! I was not being "poor in spirit", humble, meek or anything virtuous. These require sobriety and are not of the flesh. They require conscious, willful decision and effort. My problem was born of fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of obligations I may be burdened with as a result of relationships. I chose to be a loner.
I am not a fatalist. We are not the Lord’s pawn and He didn’t want us to be. He gave us will. It is our decision to hold ‘em or fold ‘em. To wit, we say we wouldn’t have changed because we think we couldn’t have. I don’t believe that. God has always known the decisions we will make and has determined His responses according to His promises, and in this way He has predetermined history; but He does not make individual decisions for us. I have second guessed some major decisions in my life and am pretty sure they were mistakes. If I could go back, I would change them. The way I behaved in High School was the result of a nonsober self image.
Someone may say, "Now Kenny, you know things turned out just the way God wanted them to." I may ask, "Why sayest thou?" They may say, "How do you know you wouldn’t have fallen into the wrong crowd and been led you astray?" I will beg to submit an alternative possibility; "How do you know that I wouldn’t have rendered much greater for the Lord if I had opted to interact socially in high school?" I may have influenced many of my classmates in the Lord's direction. It is highly unlikely that I would have strayed. I had a Daddy and Mommy who wore their knees out praying for me, and I was inextricably woven through the fabric of a good church. It would have given me a head start in college. As it was, it took two or three years of college just to coax me out of my shell enough to accept an invitation to substitute preach for a classmate who was ill. Until that time, I figured the military would be my future; and if I made it through that, I was going to find an abandoned house in the sticks, live off of the land and be a recluse; perhaps the subject of scary stories around a campfire. Really.
I preached and people did not walk out on me. God bless the people in those congregations around the Bible college! They put up with a lot of amateurish preaching, knowing that they were helping us "cut our teeth". I fancied a young lady who wanted to marry a preacher. That was my call into the ministry.
That night at the reunion rocked me back on my heels. Though I wasn’t outgoing, I knew I was acknowledged in college. We were all aliens in a foreign world and saw ourselves as equals. Now I know that I was acknowledged in High School too, but I never saw it. Now what do I do with my self image?
The football player can undergo tremendous pain during a game. Not until the next morning does he realize how bad he hurts. His mind was somewhere other than his pain during the game. Would a similar tactic work with a painful self image? How about being so externalized that we have no self image at all?!? I realize that a psychologist would scoff at that notion and he would be correct. Trying to view one’s self apart from one’s self is an impossible conundrum. Were it not that I had seen my face in a reflective substance, I would not recognize an objective image of me, such as a photograph. We don't know what our voice sounds like until we hear a recording of it. In fact, this very essay is polluted with subjectivism. It is engorged with personal pronouns and handicapped attempts at self analysis. Living in a body demands egoism to some degree. Even Jesus conceded to hunger, thirst, sleep, pain, and other needs of the fleshly self. Perhaps we should say, "How about striving toward the minimal self awareness possible. How about practicing the attitude that we are assimilated and diffused into the essence of Christ?" I think someone already thought of that.
Col 3:3 For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
Matt 10:39 He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. Rom 6:6-7 Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.
Gal 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. Etc., etc. You get the point.
So I stabbed a dagger through MY ego…. But it healed in an instant! I threw it under the train; but it popped back up after the train was gone! I went to the steel mill and threw it into the furnace. It emerged like the Hebrew boys, without even the smell of smoke. So deeply engrained was this ego problem that it blocked out most of the universe around me. The reunion showed me that there was a universe beyond my skin. Not just the people there, but how far off the mark my perception of them had been. I knew that the indwelling Holy Spirit wanted to turn me inside out. And it is a long task. It is a life long progression, usually with many setbacks. All I know is: the ego is a terrible thing to be alone with. The longer we stare into a mirror, the uglier we become.
Ministry was a gift from God to me. It slammed me straight up against other people. I got involved in their lives. I had a preacher friend who told me, "If you’re feeling stalled and stale, you’re probably sitting in your office too much. Get out and be with other people. Talk. Presume that others like you until they prove you wrong. Do something constructive for them and let them do for you." Good advice. Doing for others is actually the best thing you can to minimize your own self awareness.
The "me" voices are still there, but my hearing is not so good anymore. The worse my hearing gets, the better my vision gets. I can actually think now. I think I am dying now, and I feel much better. I’m getting less insane and more sober; and I feel much better.
Did he just slander me? I think so, but "me" is out right now. Did that guy just honk his horn and shake his finger at "me"? I think so, but I don’t know where "me" is. Did that lady just cheat "me"? I think so, but I can’t get in touch with "me" right now.
It’s O.K.; for I say again: the ego is a terrible thing to be alone with. If it has to be there, may it be an ephemeral presence; and may it always be firmly chaperoned by sobriety.
