This says all that needs to be said about success. You are who you decide to become, unless you give that away to someone else.
Seth Godin’s apropos and brilliant piece today, Identity and Ideas draws an important distinction and raises an important question. The distinction is that some people receive their identities from other’s ideas, while other’s identities don’t derive from a dictated ideological position. The latter are free to examine various ideas, modify as needed, and feel no threat to their identity. This raises the question: Who gets to tell you who you are?
Seth writes:
”One way to define our identity is to fall in love with an idea (often one that was handed to us by a chosen authority). Another is to refuse to believe our identity is embodied in an idea, and instead embrace a method for continually finding and improving our ideas.”
Seth Godin
I am in the latter camp. I hope that is the case for you. If it isn’t, who have you allowed to tell you who you are? Whose ideas of what your life means and of your place in the world have you embraced and adopted as your own? Or maybe you’ve convinced yourself that you are independently finding and improving your own ideas. But your unwillingness to confront and accept evidence that destroys your current views contradicts that notion.
Can you not see this is the height of insecurity? Maybe you’ve allowed someone to tell you who you are your entire life. You look for someone to tell you through a lifetime of habit and conditioning. You probably adopt and parrot every new thing you hear (as long as it comes from a charismatic source popular with your current circle of friends). Because those who get their identity from outside themselves can never escape the bondage of fear over what other people think. Even though these same people who couldn’t care less about you; except as another ideological clone reinforcing their own beliefs.
Is this too harsh? Maybe. And just maybe it isn’t harsh enough. After all, I’m not the one trying to tell you who you are.
The letter kills but the Spirit gives life, making the Bible both the most life-giving, and potentially dangerous, book ever. Within its pages is not the only place truth can be found.
# 33 on my, 99 Life Tips – A List is: The Bible, while true if rightly understood in terms of scope and purpose, is not a science book, nor is it the sole repository of truth.
I believe in God (generally), and I’m a Christian (specifically – with my own non-standard definition). As such, my tips for life and my writing touch on this topic. This is another Bible associated tip. It is related to the one preceding it, which suggests that the reader see the Bible as a spiritual menu. I believe that the Bible is true. However, not in the same way that a scientific research paper, or a mathematics text book is true. And, the main point with this tip is to insist to the reader that it (The Bible), is not the sole repository of truth. It’s ok to find truth outside the box.
God hasn’t gone mute and is still speaking
It is odd that anyone who believes the Bible at all would think that it is the complete record of all truth for all time. There are several verses in both Testaments that make the assertion that God is both a ”speaker” and that He is still speaking. Here is a very small sampling (Psalm 29 (all); Hebrews 1:1,2; Hebrews 12:25 (”speaketh” – Greek present, active, participle signifying continuous and repeated action).
Creators gonna Create…this “extra-biblical” truth is baking intelligent noodles everywhere
If that is not enough, the fact that cosmologists have discovered an ever-expanding universe is enough to bake anyone’s noodle. Talk about a metaphysical and philosophical quagmire. Into what is the universe expanding? What exactly is the previously non-existent space (area) that is being annexed? This fact even poses problems for evolutionists. What is in this frontier space area that is evolving? In response to environmental pressures in an environment that does not exist? Right…
This also poses problems for classical physicists. The first law of thermodynamics states that matter can be neither created nor destroyed. And yet…the universe expands. Something is being created by something to fill something. This premise seems more like an article of faith than empirically verifiable science. Here is an article from Scientific American with some impressive mental gymnastics attempting to explain the contradiction.
Thus endeth the digression
OK, enough of that digression. Back on the road here. Truth isn’t confined to the Bible. You can find it everywhere. I find it in the midst of the most elaborate lies…in great literary works of fiction. I also find it in sunsets, Grateful Dead songs, Quentin Tarantino movies, and in the gliding flight of a hawk in a lazy summer sky. Not that those those other sources have equal authority to be esteemed as on par with the Bible. Truth is not stagnant. It is still being disseminated.
”Sometimes the light’s all shining on me, other times I can barely see…”
~ Grateful Dead: Truckin’
Look, the Bible is ”living literature” as Jordan Peterson says in his book list. I like that. Although not written in the canon of scripture, it rings true to me. As living literature, it speaks to each person differently at different times.
Two important things I’ve learned about reading it. The first is, it is most definitely not a book for me to read to find out how you should live. One passage compares scriptural truth to a mirror. You don’t look at yourself in a mirror to find out how someone else looks. The minute a Bible reader does that, they’ve veered from the purpose of the texts.
The second is: When you hear truth in its pages, be a doer and not a hearer only. (John 7:17, James 1:23,24). Otherwise, reading it is doing you more harm than good.
Suppose God is the Author of all truth, wherever it is found
Here’s an interesting thing to contemplate. What if we agreed that God is the author of all truth wherever you find it? And, that as such, it is impossible for God to lie. Yes, I know. That means there is something an all-powerful God cannot or at least will not do. If we accept that premise, it becomes easy to see that the Bible is not the sole repository of truth. It becomes possible to believe that God can speak to you at any time, from any source. It might even make you open your ears, and pay closer attention, no? After all both of the following are true.
”You ain’t gonna learn what you don’t want to know.”
~ Grateful Dead: Black-Throated Wind
and;
”It is senseless to pay to educate a fool since he has no heart for learning.”
That Greek word for Truth is alētheia. This word does not limit itself to doctrinal, logged, codified truth. It is the word for REALITY. If we accept as true what Jesus says about being, Himself, Reality, then, of course we must admit that the Bible is not the last, sole, comprehensive repository of all truth.
”Maybe you’ll find direction around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you.”
