Aiding spiritual growth, persons ought to list the various persons they are, working from there to live in-and-out the real and single self. This is a major matter for anyone who wants answers to nagging questions like: Who am I? Had King Saul prayed about himself to find his persona and character God meant for him he may not have become schizophrenic. Who was Saul as the young, shy, well-formed youth, caring for his father’s property? Who was he to his children, especially Jonathan, who was so attached to his father that he could not leave him at the end when the father took him to war and death? Noble Jonathan died with his father in battle against Philistines. Who was Saul when he schemed to murder David, pal to his son? Who was the disguised Saul when he engaged the witch of Endor? Will the real Saul please stand up?
A popular book on multiple personalities in a woman was published during mid-twentieth century and made into a major motion picture. For years the theory of multiple personalities in a single individual was advanced, and continues for a few with reduced emphasis and sketchy support. For centuries the concept, in a simpler context, has been the theme of writers. Even church ministers adapted to it, usually in hypocrisy themes. Here we do not make it as complicated as many professionals treat the matter, but the issue is nagging and needs to be addressed. We may, without understanding, exaggerate our language to gain a favorable perception with others and ourselves for life’s mysteries. We may act out a physical addiction, like sexual preoccupation, and know that it is not genuine about the values we hold, or want to hold. We may fake humility or love. Even in our maneuvering we usually know when we are not genuine. We may be gracious to others and mean to our families. If crime and tragedy follows no one can believe that the person was like that. Some ministers have violated the principles they believe in because a bad self is permitted to emerge shutting off the approved range of influence. Context may determine some of the self-choices as in a social setting, another at work, and another in the privacy of home. We may give an entirely different self to our mates, children and others. I have known professional counselors who press orthodox views to clients, but live on the edge, even engaging in diversions like the drug culture. The real person is poorly privatized. Was the Apostle Peter the self of denial with oaths at the fire, or the apostle of the gospel, heralding the Church? By the Holy Spirit, he found out and was humbled. Are we persons of parts?
Much of this matter relates to hypocrisy, but hypocrisy is not usually perceived as a descriptive enough term to encapsulate the contradictions in us. One of the purposes of our lives as Christians is to conquer the enemy self-parts that do not express our deep down feeling of who we want to be and what we want to do. When a Senator from an eminent New England family had violated norms of what he ought to have been, he acknowledged in a poignant statement that the event in question did not really represent his values: who I really am. This understanding of the stew of self with good and bad ingredients is one of the most important matters persons face, to put to spiritual death the hypocrisies that confound and violate us, and then to be made into the holistic persons God means for us to become. The community at large does not seem to take seriously that a major matter for human beings is in life formation which cannot be accomplished without spiritual perceptions mixed with human/civil ones to make a satisfactory life, not only acceptable with God, but acceptable to the self who is in formation. Serious stuff. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020