When you undermine a person’s deeply held religious beliefs, it can feel like an attack on their very existence.
My religious beliefs feel to me like a part of who I am. If you ask me, “what is an Abraham?” I will tell you that an Abraham is a born again Christian. I’ll tell you that he writes code for a living and likes to practice martial arts. I’ll tell you that he can speak Japanese.
If you tell me that Jesus isn’t real, or that I don’t know Japanese, I’ll be very disturbed by that. Because in my mind, the “self” that I am, is that person who has been saved by Jesus and can speak Japanese. If you told me that Abraham was a woman instead of a man, it wouldn’t bother me – but only because I’m so sure I’m a man, that nothing you say could undermine my belief in the existence of that person.
Now, if I couldn’t find a single person who agreed with me that Abraham is a man, that he has been saved by Jesus, or that he can speak Japanese, then I would be pretty disturbed. If that’s not me… who is?
In the United States we measure our value and our self-worth in terms of what we can do for others. And we measure it with a very concrete yardstick called “money.”
“Joe just handed me a ten dollar bill. Apparently, whatever I have to offer, Joe thinks it is worth $10.”
The Jews had the same problem 3,000 years ago; that’s why they invented the Sabbath. On the Sabbath, you’re not allowed to do anything for anybody else. You can imagine, after sitting around the house, not doing anything for anybody for a few hours, someone might say, “I feel useless. Like I’m not contributing anything to society.” Good. And the existential unease, that a lot of Americans feel and that goes along with that, is healthy.
It forces you to think about people in terms of more than what they can do for you. And it forces you to think about yourself in terms of more than what you can do for others.
So take away a man’s arms and his legs. Take away his ability to speak. And you will find a lot of American men asking themselves, “what good am I? What am I for?” Maybe his wife and children will say, “We love you!” And he will still answer, “Okay, great… but what good am I?”
That’s our cultural blind spot. Other cultures have other blind spots. Try to imagine your “self concept” being tied to a particular plot of land. A Palestinian man living in America, wants to go “home” to a plot of land that “belongs to me.” And a Jew living in Israel says, “You can’t come and live on this land. It’s inside the borders of a Western country now, where we buy and sell land on the market. And I paid a fair price for it. It belongs to me now. “
Do you know what that Palestinian man will say? “Then what good am I?” Maybe his wife and children will tell him, “we love you.” Maybe other members of his community here in America will affirm his value by hiring him to work for them. Maybe he’ll run for office, and promote the rights of black people to receive the same kind of education white people have access to.
But if he has no land, a Palestinian man still feels that same existential dread. He still asks, “what’s the purpose of my existence? Because if the person I thought I was – the person who rightfully owns the plot of land that my grandfather, and great grandfather lived on – if that person doesn’t exist… then who am I?”
That might sound weird to a Westerner. But it’s just a different version of the same category error.
Life is a process of maturation. It’s a process of losing parts of our “selves,” that were never really parts of our selves to begin with. Of losing a lot of things that we think make us who we are. But at the end of all that, there’s still someone there. Breathing, heart beating – alive. Someone exists. It just might not be the person we thought it was.
The “self” that I perceive when I’m in my 20’s, in my 30’s, and in my 40’s… the stories I tell myself and others about “who” I am, isn’t really who I am at all.
And part of the process of maturing as a person is realizing that losing things I think are intrinsic to my “identity” is good for me. Because after everything else has been stripped away, whatever is left, really is myself.
“For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
It’s like a process of refining gold. And you are the gold.
When you first start out, you’re an alloy. Impure. A mixture of a little bit of gold, and a lot of other stuff that isn’t worth very much. Maybe some copper. Maybe some dirt. And the more of that other stuff you remove, the more beautiful, and the more valuable you become. Not less.
So the next time somebody challenges you, and you feel that sting. That twinge of existential threat… stop. Try to step back, and really engage with what they’re saying. Resist the urge to defend your self concept. Maybe it’s an opportunity to shine a little brighter.
Maybe it’s an opportunity to find out who you really are.