Finding Your You

 

This one's a toughy - some might even say "problematic" - Luke 6:27-38

Who are you?

I mean, what defines who you are, at your very core, in the center of your being?

Like all the kids in Sunday school who answer the same way to every question, I’m sure most of us want to shout out that the answer is “Jesus!” And we leave it at that. And that would be a good answer for us, I think. But I’m wondering if we can go even deeper. Who are we really? How do we know who we are? How are our identities shaped, personalities formed, sense of selves defined?

It’s a really important question. And we answer it differently depending upon our developmental stage. As infants, we are merely an extension of our parents who provide for our needs. If they’re responsive and attentive in providing for us, then we build trust in them, in ourselves and in our world, and that helps us to explore and take risks with others, with ourselves and with our worlds. As we grow, the hope is, at least, that we become more independent, we learn and grow and discover who we are through a lot of trial and error, exciting advances and disappointing reversals. We test out what keeps us in and what kicks us out of the good graces of our communities. And this development doesn’t just stop when we’re 18, or when we graduate from college, or when we get married or if we have kids of our own. We are, even through adulthood, always in a state of becoming. We’re always evolving, our brains are elastic, and we can change and grow in our perceptions, understandings, and identities long after the grey matter has physically stopped multiplying. You’re not done. You’re not finished, no matter how old you are. But, most of us, about 75% of us, according to psychologists and theorists Kegan and Lehay, most of us get sort of stuck in one developmental stage. Most of us function out of and find our identities in what they call a “socialized” mind. That means, basically, that all of our decisions, all of our thoughts, and the authority upon where our identities rest comes from outside of ourselves. We believe what we believe because our culture believes it. We use the language that we use because that’s the language all around us. We trust in what we trust because that’s what we were taught. We function out of a world where living in community matters, fitting in matters, considering the ideas and thoughts and perspectives of others matter. And this is all really good stuff. It’s how we can live in community, it’s how we can live with mutuality. Relationships matter. We want to please. We want to belong. We love those who love us. We do good for those who do good to us. We lend to those who will return the favor. We function out of that part of the golden rule that emphasizes pleasing others so that they’ll please us. Doing for others so that they’ll do for us. We don’t have to think much about it. There’s a “right” and a “wrong” way to react, and most everyone in the community has agreed on these ways. And this works really well for most of us, most of the time. But it’s those occasions when we’ve really been slapped, those times when someone takes something precious away from us, that we can lose our way. There’s no blame there; it’s just what happens. It hurts. The socialized mind works really great until we’re faced with a crisis where simple reciprocation of “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” falls apart. Suddenly, instead of returning positive for positive, we want to return negative for negative. When someone hurts us, we sort of lose our sense of self and all we want to do is retaliate. Do unto others what they have already done unto you. We lose ourselves thinking about how to make the other person suffer just as much as they’ve caused us to suffer. We don’t want to focus on our own hurt, so instead, we focus on how we can hurt someone else. Instead of “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” we “Do to others as they have already done to us.” Our responses to pain become prescriptive. We become reactive. We are the cornered dog ready to fight or flight, instead of the full human with agency and choices about how to respond. Hate responds to hate, and then we’re all just spiraling.

There’s a little bit of erasing the self that has to happen in order to truly hate someone. Because then we don’t have to deal with the truth of the whole situation. Then we can compartmentalize, draw clear distinctions, define an “us” and a “them.” We don’t have to confront our own failures when we’re hating someone; we get to use up all our energy making lists of the ways that that person has hurt us. The situation becomes black and white, either/or - I’m right and they’re wrong - and it’s easier to occupy this space rather than enter in to the true messiness of the situation. It’s easier just to react without thinking than to take a minute and remember who we are.

And we do this as victims, too. When we’ve been hurt we lose sight of this messiness. We list the ways we’ve been wronged, and we lose sight of ourselves in the process. Either we start to believe that we deserved this horrible treatment, or we start to think that the perpetrator deserves worse. We begin to hate the other, or we begin to hate ourselves. We forget about our true selves in both situations. We lose a sense of ourselves, and the only way we exist is in response to what that other person did to us. It’s one of the negatives of having a socialized mind. We define ourselves according to the outside culture and community and relationships, and if that culture and community and relationships have hurt us, have really slapped us across the face, we lose that culture, that community, those relationships, and thus, we lose ourselves. If all I do is worry about how to “do to others as they have done to me,” then I can forget about myself altogether. I can ignore how I’ve been hurt. I can be blinded by revenge. And I can simply be reactive to everything in my life. 

But I think Jesus wants us to remember ourselves. I think that is what Jesus is encouraging to all of us that listen. Jesus wants us to stretch ourselves past this socialized mind so that we can discover our true selves, we can become, what Kegan calls, “self-authoring.” Because if we know who we are independent of that culture and that community and those relationships, then we can go back to those places after they have hurt us and respond not out of our anger or our need for revenge or our base reactiveness, but we can go back to those places and function out of our true selves, our original goodness, out of who we really are, out of our identities as children of the Most High. When we come back to ourselves, we come to realize that getting slapped says far more about the guy who slapped us than it does about us. So it doesn’t really matter - to the heart of who we are - if we get slapped again. I mean, of course it matters. It hurts. We shouldn’t walk around getting slapped all the time. But Jesus says that there’s something in us that cannot be reached by that slap.

 If the thief needs the coat so badly, give him your shirt as well, because it’s just a coat and just a shirt, and not you at all. You don’t have to be tangled up in the emotions of the other person. You don’t have to define yourself according to your need to participate in this social community of quid pro quo, exchange of goods, tit for tat, expectations.

We can give the guy on the corner five bucks, and it won’t matter to us at all how he spends it, because we know who we are - we’ve made a choice out of who we are - we are a people who give to those who ask because we are made like God, because we are made to be merciful just as our Father is merciful.

Your you-ness comes, not from your relationship to society, but from your relationship with God. Your you-ness comes, not from your need to perform a prescribed role or with some knee-jerk reaction, but from your identity in Christ. 

It can be easy to forget your “you” because even in our passage today the you is implied. It’s a list of imperative statements where the “you” - the subject of the sentence - is “understood,” but not named. These are commands for things we should do, and as such, the English language doesn’t require that we explicitly state the “you.” What’s really being said here is, “[You] love your enemies,” “[You] do good to those who hate you,” “[You] bless those who curse you,” and “[You] turn the other cheek.” “[You] give them your coat.” “[You] give to everyone who asks.” But you can’t do any of those things, if you don’t have a you.

Sometimes I think I’ve been doing the Golden Rule all wrong. Sometimes my “you” gets lost. Instead of [you] do unto others as you would have them do unto you, I’ve erased myself from the equation altogether. Instead, I’ve lived the Golden Rule by saying “treat others as they would like to be treated,” taking myself and my needs out of the situation completely. It’s a way to give everybody what they want, rather than assert myself and my needs. Sure you can cut me off in traffic, sure you can go ahead of me in line, sure we can go to your favorite restaurant again and again, sure I’ll smile and nod and acquiesce because my job is to give you what you want. It’s the golden rule, right? I’ve neglected myself so much that I’ve been erased, all because I thought that this is what Jesus told me to do. But Jesus wants us to return to our you. You can’t do unto others as you would have them do unto you if you don’t have a you.

But this isn’t quite what Jesus is saying. He’s actually doing something much more radical. He’s telling a rag tag group of slaves and women and children and elderly and sick and mentally unstable to return to their “yous”. Remember who you are, and don’t just accept a role that society has created for you. You don’t have to function out of your illness, or abuse, or poverty. You can function out of your goodness, your you-ness, your inherent worth as a child of God - so much so that you don’t lose much, if anything, of yourself when you get hit again or you’re coatless in the winter. 

Now this is important: Jesus isn’t saying, “go run down to everyone you meet and invite them to hit you.” He’s not saying, “if you’re in an abusive relationship, just stay there and keep getting beat up.” He’s not even saying “don’t even get mad about it.” He’s not saying, “don’t be hurt.” When you turn the other cheek, it’s gonna hurt.  He is simply saying, “Remember your you.” “Make choices out of your you. Not out of your anger, or your immediate emotion, or out of the expectations of society.” 

If we don’t remember our “you,” it gets really, really easy to forget their “them.” It becomes really easy to forget that others have a you, too. If we don’t know that we are children of the Most High, we will judge, we will condemn, and we’ll forget about the humanity of all of those around us. If we remember our you, suddenly you’ll see the “you-ness” and the child-of-God-ness in everyone else. Once you start authoring yourself into being, you can give room for others to author themselves. And when we all can author ourselves, suddenly the slapping stops, everybody has a coat, and a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into all of our laps.

I always used to interpreted this passage to mean that we’ve got to suffer. Almost enjoy it, even. Look for it. Ask for it. I sort of let the “As You would want to be treated” part of the instructions drop off into the ether, get sucked up into a black hole of nothingness and sacrifice.

But this passage is about Jesus telling us to find the you - to put ourselves back into the story. You belong here. You have your own humanity and you can make choices out of that humanity. You don’t have to react the way everyone else reacts. You don’t have to do what has always been done. We don’t have to retaliate violence for violence. You have other options. We are children of God, that’s our you. Jesus is telling us to remember our you and make choices and respond from our you-ness, not from expectations, or societal pressure, or knee-jerk reactiveness.

So turn the other cheek. Show the one who has hurt you that you can make choices, not out of what is expected or is culturally acceptable, or even out of raw emotions, but out of someplace else, out of your you-ness that comes from being a child of God. You can stop the cycle of violence that hatred can bring by putting yourself back into the equation. Find your “you” and show it to your abuser. Find your “you” and hold on to it, because that is how you will love your enemy, that is how you will heal from this brokenness. Once we find our “you,” we will be able to see ourselves in the one who has hurt us. And that is where true healing begins. Maybe our enemies will still be our enemies, maybe our anger will still be our anger. But we’ll be able to love them because we’ll be able to love ourselves. We won’t have to define ourselves by their definitions or by what has happened to us, but by our own definitions, and our own choices. We will self-author. We will make our own choices. Have you ever had a moment when you just knew who you were, deep down, and nothing was going to shake that? Have you ever had a moment when hurricanes could come crashing in, and fires destroy, and friends could hit you across the face, but there you would still be, standing, still you? A moment when you could give away everything you have and yet you’d still be whole? That’s resurrection. We will know who we are. Easier said than done, I know. This doesn’t take away your righteous anger, it doesn’t take away the pain, but it does return you to yourself.

Thanks be to God.