What’s the Point of Knowing Yourself?

I have been asked to lead a local school staff through an exercise on self awareness this week. How do we get to know ourselves? Why does it even matter?

“And um… by the way, ” you may be asking.

“What the heck do you mean, don’t you think I know who I am? If I know anyone don’t you think I know myself most of all?”

Well, maybe not.

The first step in getting to know anyone (including yourself) is to recognize that you need to get to know them. Human beings have an uncanny ability to assume things about people. This is why prejudice, racism, and confirmation bias exist.

We actually sort of need to make some basic assumptions about things in order to be able to move into the world at all. We need these assumptions to give us a sense of security and comfort. We basically trick ourselves into believing that we understand the world we are engaging with.  This self deception makes us feel safe in an unstable world.  

But what we often do is make assumptions about ourselves as well. And as you can imagine, the assumptions we make about ourselves are pretty generous.

That’s ok.

But in order to get to know ourselves a little better we need to admit that we may not be as great as we think.

That stinks. It hurts a little when we do that. After all, we want to think we are pretty great.

But it’s ok, because every one of us feels that tension between what we think we are, and what we know we actually are.

Look at it like this.

Would you rather go to your grave pretending you are great because you never had to confront hard truths about yourself? Or would you prefer to experience some personal growth and transformation?

No, for real. Pick one. And be honest.

From my experience, many of us would prefer to just put our heads down and walk toward the cemetery.

And, hey, I’m not judging because I do the same thing. I have so many things that I need to change about myself, but man, I’m not kidding, it is a thousand times easier to ignore all that ugliness and just move on.

But then I have to be honest. I really want to grow. I do. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m not terribly interested in change. My gut rebels against all thoughts of personal change and transformation. Personal growth is a phrase that scares me half to death.

But being better, well now that’s a future I can get behind.

But that future comes at the end of a painful process of change.

Jesus explained this growth process with two big nasty Bible words. Those words are “repent” and “believe.”

I think its kind of sad that a lot of folks sitting in church pews think this is something they are supposed to do once. You know, watching that televangelist pray, or maybe coming down front one Sunday or at a tent meeting sort of thing. And that’s all good and fine, but the truth is that these things are something we need to do anytime we want to grow.

If we stink at math we need to say “I was wrong, Oh! That’s how you do it!” (As I write that I realize that perhaps that’s why I always stunk at math).

If we can’t ever catch a fish we may need to say “Oh, I’m using the wrong bait, I need to try this one.”

Everything we do that involves becoming a better person will require these steps. Oh, that wasn’t the right way, I need to try something different.

But many of us just can’t bring ourselves to say, “I’m doing it wrong.”

I am at a place right now where I need to get better. The trouble is that it involves admitting I have been doing it wrong.

What have I been doing wrong?

Great question. And I really don’t want to answer. Because keeping people mostly at arms length is one of my safe places. And just putting this here in public is treading into dangerous territory for me.

But I have been depending on myself a bit too much.

If you didn’t already know this, the world can be a terrifying place. Frankly sometimes entering into this terrifying place as a pastor is really awful. We need to sort of have it all together wherever we go. Or at least we allow ourselves to believe that nonsense. And there is only one way to appear to have it all together. It’s actually sort of simple. You pretend.

So I have been doing a little pretending lately. Because…surprise! It turns I don’t have it all together.

I have also sort of avoided some community because that’s where the truth comes out. Nothing is scarier to me than that sort of thing. Being known is pretty awful. I don’t need people all up in my life.

If I could build my own perfect little world it would be a world where everyone thought I was great, never corrected anything I said or did, and had no idea how incompetent I feel on the inside. That’s the world I would like to live in.

Unfortunately for my broken parts, but luckily I suppose, that’s not the world I live in.

So I am going to be trying to live more appropriately in the world I actually live in.  A world that is not what it should be. A world where people (including myself) are messy. And a world that is full of opportunities to grow, if only I will allow myself those opportunities.

The first step to this is to repent. To acknowledge that I’ve been sort of doing it wrong lately. That I have been living as if I could build my own world.

The next thing I need to do is to believe. To believe that I don’t actually have to appear to have it all together. To believe that it’s ok if I mess up. To believe that even if I am a little bit incompetent, it will be ok, because God is in charge, not me.

That’s where I’m going. It is my aim to live more fully into the gospel this year and let a few more people see what a total and complete mess I am.

What about you? Where are you going? We are all going to the grave, but will you experience growth on the way there? Or will you keep your head down and ignore the beautiful mess of life?

I’m just gonna leave that one up to you.

Maybe you’d like to join me in trying to become more aware of your broken parts. Maybe, like me you would like to grow. If so, I would love to get to know you.