BP 210
Who are you? What is your identity? What does it mean for you to be self?
Psychologists and philosophers have been asking these questions for at least 150 years and religious individuals even longer than that.
Some philosophers and religious thinkers have described the self as an immortal soul that exists above and apart from the physical body. Others, who have shunned the non-physical self and often tend toward atheism, believe that an entity called the self does not even exist. Therefore, you are a nobody.
Many psychologists take the self very seriously as they seek to understand things like self-regulation, self-esteem, and self-identity. Of course, with all the recent developments in the study of the physical body and neuropsychology in particular, some researchers emphasize the self as being one and the same as the brain. There is no place for a self that is a non-material mind or a being beyond the physical.
Some psychologists argue that when we discuss the self, we need to consider ingredients like social influences on the development of the self, the psychological self, genetics, and brain functioning including hormones and neurotransmitters. One researcher in the periodical, Psychology Today, summarizes the self with the comment, “Hence, the self is a multilevel system—not simply reducible to genes or neurons—that emerges from multifaceted interactions of mechanisms operating at neural, psychological, and social levels.”
I agree that psychological, social, and biological ingredients are important in studying the self, but my belief from Scripture (and common sense) is that the self exists independent of all these influencers. The self is an entity created by God before the world began that enters the body at the moment of conception. This self (person) is certainly influenced by psychological factors, biology, neurology, and the social world, but exists separate from them.
One ingredient of the self that is missing in the theories of many philosophers and psychologists is the spiritual. As soon as we mention the spiritual identity of the self (the metaphysical or “super”-natural), we lose many people because they believe that the physical is all there is, that there is no God, or at least not a personal God who creates and loves and communicates.
How do we respond to those who disagree with the statement that a self is a created being that is undisputedly influenced by factors such as other people, genetics, and neurology but is created by God and thus a spiritual entity?
Scripture gives us good answers. 1 Corinthians 2:14 comments on the person who denies the existence or the personal presence of God, Jesus, and the Spirit: “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”
The “natural person.” This identifying descriptor sounds initially quite positive. It’s good to be natural, right? It’s good to eat natural foods and supplements and usually good to have your natural hair color. “Natural” sounds synonymous with normal and healthy and good.
Not in this context, not spiritually. “Natural” means something quite the opposite when we enter the spiritual domain.
The 1 Corinthian passage indicates that the “natural person” does not embrace what God says and may not even accept His existence because such truths are spiritually discerned. A person must have certain spiritual prerequisites to accept and “see” God’s truth just as you cannot see distant galaxies with the “natural” eye but need a powerful telescope.
A follower of Jesus will announce that God created me—the self that I am—but such a truth will not be accepted by those who lack spiritual understanding, by those who see spiritual truth as “folly.”
As a side comment, we who now see (who have been given spiritual telescopes to see hidden and secret spiritual truth) do not judge those who do not see because our seeing has been given to us as a gift. In fact, our hearts’ desire as those who see is to tell others that they can also see if they but ask.
Later in the same 1 Corinthians passage, we see a reference to the “spiritual person” in contrast to the “natural” person. The spiritual person is someone who has “the mind of Christ.” The larger passage in chapter two informs us that the Spirit of God in us reveals to us the thoughts of God the Father and also gives us the mind of Christ. We are not limited to “the spirit of the world” mentioned in verse 12 but “we have received . . . the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.”
So, speaking of the self beyond simply psychological, social, and neurological terms, there is the possibility of a “natural” self and a “spiritual” self. The former does not understand the truths that come from the Spirit of God while the latter is inhabited by the mind of Christ. I’d say that’s a world of a difference. A spiritual world of a difference.
Briefly, in Romans 5 we also see what I would call a reference to the “self”:
“For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” ~ vv. 7-9.
Similar to the 1 Corinthians passage, we see here in Romans that the self can be “set on the flesh” (the “natural” person in Corinthians) or the self can be “in the Spirit” (the “spiritual” person).
Unfortunately, the person whose mind is set on the flesh is “hostile” to God, does not submit to God’s law, and indeed cannot submit to God. Meanwhile, the person who is in the Spirit has the Spirit dwelling in him or her.
Again, we see a world of a difference between the mind (self) set on the flesh and the mind set on the Spirit. A chasm gapes between these two individuals.
Are you a “spiritual” person who knows Jesus as your Reconciler—the One who bought and brought friendship between you and the Father? If so, your self is not “natural.” You are in the Spirit and also have Christ in you as Romans 8:10 says. You are not like other people in this world who are hostile to God and see spiritual things as “folly.”
If you have a self that has Christ in you, you will feel different and be different than the natural people around you. You won’t fit into this world “naturally.”
In fact, you will live in this world but not be of it. You will love others, but you are walking by faith (because you have spiritual eyes) and not by physical sight. You possess an additional set of senses they do not have! They are limited to the physical senses while you have spiritual senses that hear, see, feel, taste, and smell things (fragrances) beyond this material world.
Know that many of those with a self that is “natural” will be hostile toward you just as they are hostile to God in Romans 8:7. As they hate Jesus, they may also hate you even as Jesus calls you to love them.
Remember what John 3 says: “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God” ~ vv. 19-21.
As a “spiritual” person who has the mind of Christ and is in the Spirit, you are filled with light. You are no longer loving darkness but loving the light. Philippians 2 says that if you have (or are) a self in whom God is working, you are “blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world . . .”
As a lover of Jesus, you are a psychological entity. You are a social person. You are housed in a body that has a brain and a specific genetic makeup and hormones and neurotransmitters. But you are much more than that. You have a self created by God in the imago dei before time began. You are an eternal being who is living for but a breath in this world but forever in the next. You are passing through on your way home. You are elect exiles.
I love what Colossians 3 says about you: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
You are not natural. You will one day be glorified with Christ, the One who is your life. You are far from natural. The God of the universe lives within your self! “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” ~ 2 Corinthians 4:7.
When you are discouraged, when God feels so far away, when you feel forgotten, unlovable, not chosen and not special, do your best to remember who you are. Remember whose you are. You are a spiritual son or daughter who is loved by the eternal God who will bring you home to live with Him one day.
You are not natural. You are not going to die one day and turn to dust only to be forgotten by humanity and the Divine. You are not a mist that will dissipate into nothingness. Your body and your spiritual self will rise again!
You have been chosen by God and called by name. You, your “self”, is precious to Him. He made you and died for you. How will He then forget you?
“But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me;
my Lord has forgotten me.’
“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
yet I will not forget you.
Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
your walls are continually before me” ~ Isaiah 49:14ff.
“The Lord your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing” ~ Zephaniah 3:17
