Post 2 - No Man Is An Island, Chapter 7 "Being & Doing"

1/26/21

Introduction 

Although I finished reading the chapter, "Being & Doing" and I am now on to the next, Chapter 8, "Vocation", I will backtrack to the start of"Being & Doing". 

Merton starts with the statement, "We must find our real selves." Merton suggests that our outward actions "reflect" our real selves. However, in our secular success-driven world, it is very common to view and judge ourselves almost completely by our outward actions. In order to find out who we really are - our God-given "being", we must look beyond just our "outward appearance."

Ultimately, being and doing should be completely united. However, until we get our being right, we cannot get our doing right. This is not to say that we should stop doing anything until our being is perfected. But rather we need to slow down and make figuring out who our real self is a priority.

Now it seems to me there are a couple "real selfs": 1) who we are now and 2) who we are meant to be when God first created and then redeemed us. This implies that God, our creator and redeemer, is the one we need to go to for answers. Now, since God knows each of us better than we know ourselves, he is the one that can really answer question 1) - who we are now. And when we come to question 2), it is God alone that knows what he has in mind for us - so only he can reveal it to us. 

In addition, there is a third, related question, have we succeeded in living a fulfilled - or should I say "successful" life. Now here is where most of us tend to go astray - particularly modern Western man. Even Christians that should know better tend to judge our success by our doing rather than our being. But, to begin to really answer the "real self" questions requires looking beyond our actions. And we need God's help for this. 

Why is this?

It seems to me that outside of the light of Gods Word and Spirit shining light on us, we all have a tendency to have an inaccurate view of our "self" and our actions. If we are still self confident and proud - we tend to have an inaccurately elevated view of ourselves. This is typical of individuals deemed "successful" - at least by today's society's view. On the other hand, if we feel we have fallen short of society's view of success, we may be beaten down till we feel like a "failure." Those in this position tend to have an inaccurately low view of ourselves.

To some extent, we might be seeing our "false self." What is this false self? I think it is anything we see in ourselves that is inconsistent with our real self - either as it is or as it is meant to be. To varying extents, people often create a false image, Merton likes to say a false God, of ourselves. This false image may be what we like to think we are. Often, this is also what we like others to think we are. 

Speaking of others, one good starting point is to try to let go of what we think others think of us or how they define success. Rather, focus on what we really think of ourselves and how we view success.

We can then really start correcting our faulty view of ourself by asking of God some of the questions many Godly men in scripture asked. 

"Search me Lord." "Try (evaluate, judge) my Spirit." "Reveal the thoughts of my heart." Such questions show that all these knew that they needed to go beyond just letting go of what others think and be really an independent thinker. What they really needed was God's help to show them what they are really like. 

For me at least, I think this will give us a pretty good start on moving toward answering these questions.