New Sel(ves)

Transitioning out of college has not been the smoothest thing for me. By no means has it been awful, but it has been a substantial adjustment. It has been a challenge to find the best ways to invest myself and find a healthy rythm that is feels more life-giving than life-restraining.

Part of this grew out of some serious faith questions I was trying to reconcile in my mind and my life after being more aware of the way scripture came to be the authority in a faith that existed 300 years without it. And now it has become such a trump card in some conversations that I just couldn't shake my discomfort with that kind of dynamic for a long time.

Combine that with being put into (in my opinion) a hyper-Christianese and Christian subculture environment where theological and moral conservatism was the well established norm for the first 2 months after graduation, and a jaded apathetic 22-year-old is what you are bound to get. And that is what I was and am slowly moving out of.
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I am now slowly trying to reinstitute habits and disciplines that I have been frustrated and antagonistic with for the past year or so. Principally, this includes reading sections of the bible and trying to let the teachings on morals and conducting life offer me advice that I will take seriously and not simply turn a cold shoulder too.

I'm trying to let the love that motivates me to live again in the place I first discovered it.

That can be a tall order when you have moved beyond that for a substantial period of time.
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I have been pleasantly surprised with how seamlessly I seem to have been able to step back into feeling motivated and convicted by scripture. I am in no way depressed about that or anything of the sort. Actually, I am just very glad that my response hasn’t been cynicism. I have been in times where I really enjoy and like being cynical because cynicism is deceptively satisfying but even more so it is secretly corrosive.

I started reading Colossians because it seemed like a small commitment incase my ability to ingest Scripture hadn’t returned yet and I wasn’t going to be running into any ridiculous culturally relative ideas that were going to tire me out and give me an excuse to side-step any kind of ideas of relevance in the text.

As I read, everything felt familiar just like the years old pen marks of underlining and bracketing certain sections and phrases that were once newly profound and freshly perspective-changing. It felt familiar but challenging because of how much I had forgotten.

I had forgotten the sterness and the urgency with which Paul (or a compadre) would write. I had forgotten about the earnestness and the sense I got that he wanted things to be better for me and anyone else who read his words. I had forgotten the ways his sentences would remind me of the unhealthy and deplorable ways I was thinking and acting throughout the days. I had forgotten what it was like to want to become the way those words described a person who loved God with their life.
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In Colossians 3, the terminology of new self and old self comes up. The idea is that we are new when we believe and have faith in Jesus and the old self is a process of removing. Piece by piece old attributes of our personalities and desires flake away as new values and actions are molded and welded to us like an armor that cannot be removed.

I thought about how I sometimes go through stages and seasons where I feel renewed and different and like there is a new motivation in life thrusting me forward. In some ways, that seems really flippant when I think about what Paul is talking about here.

Ultimately, I should be new in permanent ways since I was about 15 or 16-years-old (when I became a Christian) that are unlike my “old self.” And I think that has happened. I think there are a ton of worldviews, mindsets, practices, demeanors, and overall character items that have been stripped away from me and that I have little engagement with anymore.

At the same time, I recognize my ability to become overwhelmed in different periods of time with the situation at hand and really do become a different form of myself. I become altered in my behaviors and thoughts and priorities because I haven’t set up a foundation that doesn’t shift with the changing times. And that is my mistake.

I recognize that putting on the new self is a life-long process and I am beyond thankful for that. Still, I think there is something to be said for striving for a solid consistency in practice and personality that transcends who we are because of what we believe. And that bedrock is what I am looking to create and foster now. Better late than never.

We are part of a never-ending growth process while always being the same new self. What a challenge.
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Peace.