'Dirt is Good'

I've begun to describe following in the will of God like a really long walk and with that in mind I love the idea of 'desire lines' the off-pathway tracks people create in the countryside by wandering wherever they choose. This morning I was drawn by the sunshine and general autumn crispiness of everything to Debdale Park and in my walking and talking with God encountered an uncontrolable desire to head 'off road' right across the middle of a glistening leaf blown field - a prophetic, if tiny, statement about heading out onto new terrain.

So off I marched only to discover that the aforementioned glistening was not just the glory of the Lord but was in fact mud! In the middle of the field and up to my ankles in very cold mud I made a decision.

God likes mud, and actually getting stuck in it can be alot of fun - although it helps if you have dry socks with you. Make of this what you will, but for my part I think things are about to get pretty muddy.

Who are you?

Recently I watched a documentary in which a homosexual man tried to discover why he was gay, the cause of who he was. Whatever your views on the nature/nuture debate it was heart wrenching to watch him ask questions cutting to the core of his identity, not just who am I but why am I; and if the cause can be identified as environmental does that mean I'm not who I think I am???

The science in the programme seemed inconclusive and at times tenuous but it got me thinking about the construction of identity. I'm no psychologist but it seems to me that we may have a 'real' objective identity (who we actually are) which may differ from our 'percieved' identity (who we believe ourselves to be), although the latter may as well be real as it becomes the basis of our decisions and actions. The frightening thing is that a considerable amount of our percieved identity seems to be constructed unwittingly either by ourselves or by forces outside of our control. It is a rare moment of clarity in which a person says to themselves 'this is an opportunity to create myself, now who do I want to be'.

So back then to the idea of a 'real' identity which may exist for each of us whether we recognise it or not. The biblical conception of the human self does seem to suggest that before we shape and are shaped 'we are'. The biblical call to repentance and faith is nothing if not a call to rediscover who we really are, made in God's image, designed to glorify him. But the Bible doesn't just focus on this underlying intrinsic (and quite slippery) sense of self, many of the biblical writers also engage in identity construction; for example Peter in his first epistle takes time to lay out the identity of those he writes to before giving moral instruction hinging on 2:11 'Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.'

For Peter identity is a conscious and deliberate basis for behaviour, and perhaps our Christian faith enables precisely that; open eyes to percieve our real nature and freedom from sin to shape ourselves and our world accordingly.