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What's Your Self-Image?

 The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?  (Ecclesiastes 1:1) 

 This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them—for this is their lot.  Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God. They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart. (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20)

 

Recently, someone asked, “What is your self-image?”

Other people have asked, “Why can’t you just relax?”

And the answer to the first question echoes the mood of today’s passage above. “Failure, failure.” The answer to the second is that if I relax, I have to face the answer to the first question. If I keep busy, I don’t have time to dwell on how much of a failure I have always been. If I keep busy, that irrational part of me can’t take over. And it doesn’t matter whether that failure is true or a lie. If failure is what I see when I look in the mirror, it’s what I see.

Better not to look. Unfortunately, this is also where a lot of defensiveness creeps in. If it’s better for me not to look, it’s infinitely more important no one else looks, and no one else makes me look. And this is really where the person who asked about self-image took his little talk. The key isn’t to turn our focus on ourselves. It’s to pay attention to God and to enjoy what He’s given us. That’s where the Teacher in Ecclesiastes takes us, too, as noted in the second passage above.

If I think about the things I’ve done and am doing and the blessings God has given me, and if I focus on those, I’m OK. If I think about myself, my failure to sell books, my failure to live on next to nothing, and the fact that it’s all on me in the sense that I don’t have another person living with me who can know how to do the things I don’t and pay some of the bills. It helps if I don’t have to think about how I lack self-control and otherwise seem to fall shorter and shorter in terms of adequacy as a Christian.

And I don’t think I am the only one. Paul’s answer to this dilemma of Romans 7 was in Romans 8 was to turn our attention to God. And in the letter to the Philippians, he said, “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)

 

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