Waterloo, Ontario
Soundtrack: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Stones In The Road
Good evening. I have a Facebook friend who almost exclusively posts memes with Bible verses on them each day of the week. Yesterday's seemed aimed at the ending of 2017. It simply read, "The old life is gone; A new life has begun!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)
Why are we always attempting to shed things from our past? Why do we try to convince ourselves each New Years Day that we can magically shut the door on who we were the previous year and start completely new?
What if we embraced our whole selves instead?
There is a particular fixation in many Christian circles on dying to the old self and being born again. The act of baptism often symbolizes dying to sin and rising to new life. The act of the eucharist/communion symbolizes the continual remembrance of the death of Jesus and one's own joining Christ in his death so that we too may rise in glory.
For years I tried to die to my "old self," or to sin as they say. I had been taught that since I had accepted Jesus into my little beating heart when I was 7 years old that I had died to my old self, which was sinful, dark, even evil. Yet as I grew up I couldn't stop sinning or doing bad things. You see, there is no magic switch, as much as we might like to believe, that turns us from being bad little boys and girls to men and women worthy of love.
We should never try to crucify a part of ourselves, or "die" to a part of ourselves. It's not psychologically, emotionally, or I suspect physically healthy. It's the same as trying to flick that other magic switch, the one where we resolve each year to suddenly become a brand new person in some way, shape, or form.
You see, each of us is a messy, mixed up bag of good and bad, happy and sad. We are capable of beautiful things like art and music and making love, and we are capable of heinous things like injustice and murder. We need not repeat the wrong-doings, or "sins" of our past, but we also need not shun our dark sides. Often we try to compartmentalize, putting parts of our lives in neat little boxes, locking some of them up in cobwebbed closets, while putting others on proud display. Instead, what if we were to have an open house where we let trusted friends and confidants roam around, giving them the keys to every room in the house? After all, isn't that what we really want? To be seen for who we really are, warts and all, and loved because of all of it?
Before turning over a new leaf in 2018, make sure to bring along the old ones, because they bear the stories of our lives.
Mark Andrew
