how do we view ourselves?

Identity impacts the way we belong to God and each other, which infuses how we join with God in His mission. For us to welcome and engage in authentic conversations and authentic relationships, we need to first be ok in our own skin.  How can we truly love our neighbor as ourselves if we don’t even know how to love ourselves to begin with?

We need to begin to know ourselves as God knows us… as accepted, adopted, named, validated, and redeemed.

I wonder if this has happened to you: You don’t feel like you fit in with a certain group, you risk a comment, or try the one-liner you thought was funny, and it’s answered with blank stares. What’s the first thought that comes to mind?

For me, that experience taps into a gut-level fear of not mattering.  My input isn’t needed.  My insights into life and observations don’t really make a difference.  I might as well not even be here.

Paul Tillich calls this the “fear of non-being”.

Remember the diving scene in What About Bob?   (if you’re saying to yourself, “What is What About Bob?” then you need to pull up Netflix right now and stick it on your queue… or just do the old fashioned way and rent it at Blockbuster).  In this scene, Siggi is trying to learn how to dive.  He’s decked out in all black totally petrified to dive off of the dock.  His dad is trying to teach him how when Siggi responds, “We’re all going to die.  You are going to die.  With all the horror in the world, what difference does it make?”

Fear of non-being.

If we are driven by a fear of non-being, then we will never offer ourselves, our true selves, in community.  We don’t dive in because we feel like it doesn’t matter. We begin to fill our heads with corrosive “self-talk,” phrases like, “They don’t care about this…  It’s not really worth the risk…  People will just reject me and I won’t matter, so I’ll just save myself the pain.”

Do you ever have those thoughts?

What are your responses to those thoughts?

Do you withdraw?  Can you name a person who actually knows that you have these thoughts?

What would it take to offer yourself anyway?