Deal of a Lifetime

I've been thinking a lot lately about self image. I've had a self image problem really as long as I can remember. Even when I was four, I thought I'd somehow failed because I wasn't as tall as other people. I wasn't nearly as hard on myself as I grew to be, but I've always been a people pleaser and perfectionist. For those who know the four personality types of sanguine, choleric, melancholy, and phlegmatic, I'm the strongest melancholy you're likely to ever meet, but I'm growing more choleric as time passes, which is a hard mix for both me and those around me.

Because of my personality, I place a ton of value on being the best at everything I care about doing: being the smartest person in the room, having the funniest shirts, always being on time, being at least fairly up-to-date on nerd culture (which is big where I live), being a good cook and photographer, always having what others might need in my car, etc. If I fail at any of these, I often feel like a failure overall. It's way too harsh and undeserved, but it is how I have been since I was about eight.

I went to Connect, our young adults group, for the last time this past Tuesday. The message was about the parable of the man who found a treasure in a field, hid it, sold everything he had, and bought the field. Jesus was using that treasure to represent the kingdom of God. The obvious moral is that it's so much more valuable than anything else we have in life, we'd be foolish to cling to our possessions when we can have this instead.

I think there is another layer of meaning to it, however. I don't believe Jesus literally wanted everyone to sell everything they had just so they could have a relationship with Him. I mean, Abraham, Job, and Solomon were very wealthy men. Even Jesus had a robe so nice that the soldiers, instead of dividing it as appeared the custom, cast lots for who would get it. There's nothing wrong with Christians having money or enjoying nice things, just something wrong with letting money get in the way of our relationship with God.

More importantly, if you sell something, you don't have it anymore. This may sound too obvious to be worth mentioning, but when we try to attain the kingdom of Heaven, do we really sell all we have or do we claim to give our stuff up and then take it back? You can't do that and keep what you buy in any earthly transaction. You have to give it in exchange and leave it.

This means more, I think, than simply being willing to walk away from your money or your job or even moving to a nation hostile to Christians and risking your life preaching the Gospel. I think it means that you have to give up even your old way of thinking about yourself.

We do this with other things in life. When you become an employee of a company, you think of yourself as an employee, which means (or should at least) that you are willing to submit yourself to the managers of that company and do whatever they hired you to do. When you get married, you can no longer go dating other men or women like you could when you were single. You think of yourself differently because your situation is different.

When we become Christians, our situation changes more than we can really fathom. Yet most of us don't seem to see the fullness of that difference. We see that we have been saved, but don't understand what that should mean as far as how we see ourselves. We're no longer a collection of cells here by chance, trying to get as much stuff as we can before we die and cease to exist. Now we're bought with the death of the Son of God, redeemed from a horrible fate, and made children and heirs of the Creator of the universe.

What is it we hope to gain by continually seeking our value in how others view us, or in whether someone we like likes us as well, or in how much money or power or fame we have? We can't add to our value, nor can we decrease it (and how much time, emotions, and energy do we waste worrying about or trying to prevent others rejecting us?), so we are hunting all our lives for copper when there is gold at our feet.

I don't think Jesus wanted us to sell all we have to get the kingdom of God; He wanted something much more valuable: our hearts, including the way we see ourselves. If we cannot give that up to Him, we are missing one of the greatest blessings of being Christians.