Driven

Know thyself.

                First expressed by the Greek masters, but millennia later, the idea continues to beg a satisfying psychological model. From Descartes and Locke to Freud and Maslow, Gautama and Patanjali to Rhazes and Ghandi, philosophers through the ages have stressed the significance of self-knowledge as a fundamental building block in understanding life. Even Oprah and Dr. Phil host show after show to help people resolve personal and relational conflict, with the intention of improving self-esteem.

                But what is left when the applause fades and gratification evaporates? Personal guilt and fear, perhaps transiently masked, attest to my failure of an unattainable perfection. Desire for approval and acceptance is a self-generating monster. I cannot shake the uncanny awareness of an external standard.

                Maybe that’s why I need to know myself; determine my own truth. What is my conscience, but an evolving conglomeration of intangible social mores, parental values, and individual principles? In search of inner peace, I set my own standard, but continue being driven towards a now self-imposed goal.  And somehow the internal rules prove more enslaving. The self-created ethical system and personal ideal of achievement command a greater attempt towards imagined accomplishment. Shortcomings cause despair, success only temporary satisfaction. Once reached, a goal must be superseded. Instead of finding, I am losing myself in a destructive whirlpool of introspection.

What if I am known, more fully than I could fathom or bear to discover? What if truth is external, objective, and unchanging? What if the standard has been established and attained for me?

For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ. (II Cor 5:21)

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!  For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:6-9)

What if everything demanded of me is given to me in Jesus Christ?

I can accept that my reaction to the ugliness I find within and around me is futile. Peace comes in finding the love and acceptance I once desperately craved. Confidence grows from the source of that love – the Standard, the Judge, the Perfector.

I am more sinful and flawed than I ever dared believe, yet more accepted and loved than I ever dared hope. -Tim Keller)

I can lose myself in the perfect life of another. I don’t have to try to be perfect. I am known and accepted and loved. And in being loved, I have the power to love. Love without condition and criticism, without judgment and trepidation. I can love people without fear of rejection; without selfish intent; without restrictive appraisal.

 We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us. We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment … There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear… We love, because He first loved us. (from I John 3-4)

Know thyself? Yes. Possible only by knowing God. Destructive without knowing God.

Once driven, now drawn.

Be still and know.

Know God.