Traveling at the speed of life, we don’t actually know what we think we know, it would be more accurate to say that we are in a constant state of interpretation – constantly reframing our point of reference, in subconscious ways, making micro-adjustments. And because we exist within so many layers of context, each insisting upon preeminence – we invariably create a short-hand for triaging our response to each unfolding circumstance. This is all done intuitively, instinctively, pre-cognitively – we are far more complex beings than we could ever hope to completely comprehend . . . but that doesn’t keep us from wanting to imagine a far more explainable version of ourselves.
This is why we are tempted to over-simplify our understanding of reality, vainly anticipating it should conform to our expectations – desperate to reconcile the world we presuppose with the one that actually exists. And all this would merely be an academic distraction if it weren’t so profoundly primal to our self-perception. Yet we leave it in abstraction — allowing the transience of circumstance and the unfiltered narratives of others to contextualize us. For when we allow the explanation of who we are to become ambiguous – invariably, alternative explanations rush into that vacuum.
Now, all of this might seem a bit like a trip down a rabbit hole, until it occurs to you that our culture has already assigned to you a social demographic profile that it expects you to live up to – it’s a readymade explanation of who you’re supposed to be. Such a bloodless explanation is built entirely upon the cultural sub-groups of which you are a member. It’s a calculation meant to subvert any notion of who you are as an individual. Therefore, your only significance is as a constituent member of a group, and who you are as a person has been made largely inconsequential. And that’s just the ditch on one side of the road.
The ditch on the other side of the road is the specious belief that you can be whatever you want to be – that you can somehow simply pronounce your significance into existence. Such self-affirming solipsism assumes an empty canvas without any preexisting context, and that all relational interactions you experience only have value as you are being served by them. Within this self-involved narrative of your own importance, you’re subconsciously tempted to imagine yourself as self–existing . . . even though only God can be self-existing.
These are the distorted explanations of you that a fallen world offers – either you are to be subjugated by the anonymity of tribal group-think, or you are to be beguiled by the self-delusion of believing that your significance in this world can be conjured up as an act of will. But there is a simpler explanation of you that normally takes a lifetime to unpack – you are the beloved of God! And if you can begin to wrap your head around this foundational reality – then not only will you begin to develop a truer perspective of yourself, you will also begin to recognize the role you play in the life of other’s . . . a role to which God is calling you. So not only is it a practical and workable explanation of you – it’s a fundamental explanation of everything else.
. . . so we place our faith in the one who is able to redeem all things.
