Which mirror won't lie?

I got to thinking the other day…that is usually a mistake! :) Fortunately, this time it seemed to be helpful. Here is what has been occurring to me. It seems that each generation has its crisis point issue. It is the challenge of the times that must be met and defeated. Not to say there can’t be more than one tough issue, or that they must be spaced out exactly by the generation, but there are defining struggles throughout the years that shape the collective minds of the youth of the day. In the earlier years of our nation, I believe national identity was a crisis point for everybody. Who would we be as a nation, our values and structure, all those important details.

Somewhere after the Civil War, our identity became more of a foregone assumption and we began to struggle with placing that identity in the larger world picture. Not that this didn’t happen at all before, but it was in the 20th century that the U.S. became a large player on a world scale. The new struggle here was national self esteem. How do our identities and values measure up to the standards of the other world powers? We proved to the world throughout the early 20th century and beyond that we were a force to be reckoned with; thereby validating ourselves as worthy of respect on a national scale.

In the latter half of the 20th century it seems that the issue became less about national issues and shifted to personal ones. I don’t mean to say that individuals didn’t matter before, but the changing times of the 60s and 70s led many to rethink personal identity in light of new ideas and beliefs. This was for most folks my age, our parent’s generation. Their crisis point was personal or self-identity. Ours is different. I believe it is self esteem.

There are many reasons for this, though I don’t have time to go into them too much. I believe that for many the breakdown of the family has been the main factor. Many young people in this modern society, myself included, grew up in less than perfect homes. Without good relationships with both their parents children often grow up wondering if they are valuable. I believe we are experiencing the results of a parenting crisis in these days. I have felt the question that all of us are asking, I have asked it myself. Am I valuable? Do people like me? We need to know that we are loved and appreciated.

So, we seek affirmation from those around us. Sometimes it is through a romantic relationship, or a mentor, teacher or friend. Sometimes it is through acting out in desperation for attention or joining gangs or other groups with bad influences. We often trade our souls to our peers in order to obtain the recognition and validation we so desperately crave, forgetting that they have nothing for us. They are just as desperately seeking the same thing. Here is how I see this type of quest for value:

Person A feels that he is not valuable. He has “low self esteem”. Person A somehow decides consciously or more often unconsciously that if he can ‘fit-in’ with group X that he will feel better. A sets out to impress the members of X, evaluating his own self-worth based on his perception of how group X views him. He is creating an identity for himself based on his perception of others’ perception of him! I don’t see this as a good situation at all, yet many of us caught in this trap without even realizing it. Group X could easily be replaced with, say parent B or girlfriend C, or anybody else and the same could still apply. We enslave ourselves to others impressions of us, performing our lives on a stage to impress and please people who don’t hold the answer to the question we ask. I believe there is a better way.
My eyes were opened to this a few years ago as God began to teach me how He saw me. He told me that He loved me. He had died for me after all :) God enabled me to begin shifting my self-image from resting on my perceptions of what others thought about me to the place where I could place it squarely upon Him. He is my creator, he made me for the role I fill in life. It makes sense after all that His opinion should be the one that matters, not the views of parents, friends, or any other well-meaning but fallible individuals. Not that they were no longer important. I still am glad to be a part of community and I value my relationships with all the above-mentioned people. I am simply not depending on their opinion of me for validation of my self-image.

I still have so much to learn in this area and I feel that I know the next step. It is better to forget about myself altogether, in simple humility thinking only of God and others. Not that I debase myself, but simply that my focus and energies are so absorbed in serving Jesus that I am unaware of my own “self-image”. Well, folks, I am nowhere near there. That is my goal but I am still working on this first step of understanding myself through God’s perspective. What I do know is that He made each person in this world for a specific reason, and He died to reestablish a personal relationship with each of us. Our true identities can ONLY be found in Him, not in anything else. All other roads lead to emptiness, false selves, and play-acting at life. Those who wish to be truly genuine and comfortable in who they are when the show is over will seek their identity and value in the one place it can be met and filled once and for all: In the person of Jesus Christ. He is the link our generation is looking for, he can connect us to both who we truly are and a proper understanding of how that innermost self is truly loved by God in spite of the imperfections.

In Truth,
Stephen