Ever since I was a kid and first heard about amnesia, I have been afraid of it. There seemed to be a Twilight Zone kind of scary to it, this idea that you could be someone and not know who that someone is. It made existence seem untenable, undoable. How can I be if I don’t know who I am?
I’m drawn to this theme in stories. As Disney dramatic as it can be, I’m drawn to the scene in the Lion King when Simba is told to look at his reflection and remember who he is. I’m drawn to characters in books and movies that are lost and trying to find themselves in order to find their way. I think about Andrew Largeman in Garden State who describes family as that “group of people that miss the same imaginary place” and want him to realize that place isn’t imaginary, but simply something he has forgotten. I think about The Truman Show and how audiences pulled for Jim Carrey to not give up, but to realize that his instincts are correct, that there is a bigger world out there than the one he is the center of.
The human plight is one of a race that has forgotten where it comes from and forgotten who it is, a people who live in darkness so deep they think the place they miss is imaginary.
James 1:23-25 gives a picture of an amnesiac who looks in the mirror and then immediately forgets who he is. It is a frightening image, if we sit with it for longer than a second. We are a people prone to forget who we are. So we are called back to look again and again and again. To stay focused.
Now, this is not a passage about self-obsession. The mirror we’re called back to is one we can see our Father in, in much the same way that Simba is told to “look harder” at his reflection in order to see his own father. That’s how he begins to remember who he is and how we begin to remember who we are.
The principalities and powers that shape this world are telling us a story of who we are, of what it means to be human. The fact is that, almost from birth, the world will ask you who you are and, if you don’t know, it will tell you. It is a story so prevalent, we seem to breathe it in just by going outside. It becomes our default setting, the story of me at the center of the universe, like a confused Truman, longing for something more, but fooled by something less.
“…the so-called ‘real world’ will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called ‘real world’ of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. That is real freedom. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the ‘rat race’ – the constant, gnawing sense of having had and lost some infinite thing.” (David Foster Wallace, This Is Water)
Becoming a Christian is about embracing a different story and a new way of life. Following Christ isn’t simply about who we are in the next life, but about who we are in this one. It is about remembering who we are. It is about allowing the gospel to be planted in our hearts so that it might bear fruit in the world.
“…there can be no Kingdom of God in the world without the Kingdom of God in our hearts. The starting point is our determined effort to bring every thought and action under the sway of the Kingdom of God…The Spirit of God will strive against the spirit of the world only when it has won its victory over that spirit in our hearts.” (Albert Schweitzer)
And how do we do this?
“How do you awaken your spiritual Center? By thinking about it? By praying and meditating? By more silence and solitude? Yes, but [so we might live, and live] consciously…I don't think that we think ourselves into a new way of living. We live ourselves into a new way of thinking.” (Richard Rohr)
James takes us back to Christianity as a way of life. Our way of life requires prayer and meditation, but only so we might begin to live consciously, to be truly human, to be awake.
From death to life. From darkness to light. This is why it is said, "Wake up, oh sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you." (Ephesians 5:14)
“Spiritual practices could be called life practices…because they help us practice being alive.” (Brian McLaren)
And what does it mean to be alive in Christ? Ephesians 2 states that we are made alive in Christ so that we might know God's grace, be God's workmanship, and do God's work.
This takes us back to the end of the first chapter of James. We are made alive in Christ so that we may be like Christ, so that we might do what Jesus would do, so that we might be Jesus to people, a servant to the widow, the orphan, and "the least of these."
James 1:22 states that we must not simply hear the word, but do what it says. And so scripture begins to fill my head, begins to remind me what it calls me to do.
“What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with God”
“Do to others what you would have them do to you.”
“Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself.”
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