Lose Yourself [cross-post]

Lose Yourself

by Tony Campolo


As a college professor, I could always count on someone coming into my office around the beginning of May and telling me he wasn’t coming back net semester. (It was usually a guy.)

I would try to be professional and ask, “Please tell me, why?”

The student would look at me and say, “I need time!” If I asked why he needed time, the answer was invariably, “I need time to find myself!”

There’s a whole generation of students out there trying to find themselves. And they’re all looking in the same place – themselves!

You could predict any one of them saying something like this: “Doc, I’m tired of playing the roles that others have prescribed for me! I’m tired of being the person my family expects me to be, that my friends expect me to be, that this school expects me to be, that the church expects me to be! I’ve got to peel away each of these socially prescribed identities and the socially generated personas. I’ve got to peel them away one by one and come to grips with the core of my being — the essence of my self hood!”

When I hear that kind of stuff, I get a bit queasy in my stomach, and I cannot help but say in return, “What if, after you peel away each of these socially prescribed identities and socially generated selves, you discover you’re an onion! What if you take that long guru journey into yourself, and when you get there — nobody’s home! Stop to consider the fact that if you peel away all the layers of an onion, guess what you have left? Nothing! And it just may be that when you take that trip to the innermost recesses of your soul, that’s exactly what you’ll find.”

I am convinced that the self is not an essence waiting to be discovered through philosophical introspection. Quite the contrary! I believe that the self is an essence waiting to be created! We create who we are through the commitments we make. And without commitments we have no identity. That’s why Jesus said, “Whosoever seeks to find himself, will lose himself. But, whosoever is willing to lose himself, for my sake and the sake of my Kingdom, will find himself.”

Jesus is telling us that it is in commitments to Him and the work that He has for us to do that we discover who we are and what our lives are all about.

From the UCC Network: 04/07/2011 "The Fighter’s Comeback" [cross-post]

The Fighter’s Comeback

Excerpt from Romans 5:1-11

“… suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

Reflection by Lillian Daniel

A boxing movie’s greatest accomplishment is to interest people with no interest in boxing . . . in boxing. And the movie “The Fighter,” tells the compelling true story of “Irish” Mickey Ward, whose surprise welterweight title was nothing compared to his struggles with his older brother, Dickie Eklund.  

The two brothers are a study in contrasts when it comes to their bodies, their physical endurance and their character. The younger Mickey works out on the punching bag with furious intensity and endurance, determined to improve himself, while his older brother parties with his friends, and abuses his once fit body with drugs and alcohol all day long.

A has-been and petty criminal, Dickie the older brother imagines himself training and mentoring his younger brother. He even convinces himself that the documentary camera crew following him around is filming his boxing comeback. 

But later when the show comes on television, Dickie, now in prison, watches and realizes that it is a show about drug addiction and he is the star, but the star loser.  Suddenly, the former athlete sees himself as he really looks physically. After years of drug use, the ex-boxer is bone thin, out of shape, and missing teeth. And that’s his turnaround moment.

In the next scenes, Dickey begins a regimen of prison yard exercise, running, lifting weights and boxing. It is as if the former athlete knows that in order to have any healing inside, he has to work on the outside too. By the time he leaves prison, he knows he’s not ready for the professional ring, but he has a body that is drug-free and works again. You realize that the athlete might really have a comeback in his future after all, not as a boxer, but as a responsible adult who can follow through for the people he loves. 

Because suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Talk about a comeback. 

Prayer

Dear God, be with all those who suffer, all those who endure and all those who hope. In other words, please be with me. Amen.

About the Author Lillian Daniel is the senior minister of the First Congregational Church, UCC, Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She is the author, with Martin Copenhaver, of This Odd and Wondrous Calling: the Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers.