To Thine Own Self Be True

There is a Peanuts comic strip where Lucy told Charlie Brown that she would hold the football for him to kick. But when he ran up to kick the ball, she pulled it away. Charlie Brown went flying through the air and fell flat on his back. Well, one day Lucy went up to Charlie Brown and offered once again to hold the ball for him. “No thanks!” said Charlie Brown. “Every time you say you’ll do it, I fall flat on my back.”  As soon as Charlie Brown accused Lucy of this, she began weeping and sobbing, “Oh, you’re so right. I admit that in the past I’ve played cruel tricks on you. But I’ve seen the error of my ways! I’ve seen the hurt in your eyes! Won’t you give a poor repentant girl another chance?”  Charlie Brown said, “Okay.” So he backed up, started running at the ball, and just as he was about to kick it, Lucy pulled the ball away. Once again Charlie Brown went flying through the air and ended up flat on his back.  As Lucy walked away, she commented to Snoopy, “Unfortunately, recognizing your faults and actually changing your ways are two different things.”

That is an astute observation. It’s not enough for us merely to recognize our faults. We must also change our ways!  The question that most struggle with is how? This age old question remains. You want to grow in your personal relationship with God. You want to love God and to love others more than you love yourself. You want to be a person of integrity. But let’s face it. That’s really easy to say but not so easy to do. If we were truly honest, many would have to admit that they really don’t see any substantive change taking place on the inside. And so, what should you do about this dilemma?

It’s becoming more and more clear to me that the first thing that needs to happen is that there needs to be an acute awareness that it hasn’t happened and isn’t going to happen by climbing the religious ladder of memorizing verses or by learning and proclaiming religious doctrine or theology. For most, all this has lead to in their lives is a belief in a system rather than in a person. The result for people like this has been that their entire identity gets wrapped up in that system. As one writer put it, some people have become so programmed to be dedicated and so dedicated to the program that being honest about who and what they are isn’t even an option for them anymore.

So often modern day religion has taken from people their own hearts. They’ve been convinced that their heart is something that can’t be trusted. In its place people have been handed a script to learn rather than a Savior to follow. It seems so much of what it means to grow spiritually is defined by modern religion as memorizing verses, learning doctrine and gaining theological knowledge. The result is that the learned religious script becomes people’s safety blanket that they run to when they feel spiritually intimidated rather than living and speaking authentically from their hearts about their journey that has both struggles and triumphs. Is it any wonder that a non-believing world laments that they see very little that is authentic any more in believers?

What I’m trying to say is that it is becoming so very clear to me that when it comes to recognizing your faults and actually changing your ways in the context of spiritual growth and maturity, it’s not rocket science. You don’t have to be a Bible scholar or even a Sunday School teacher. You don’t have to be able to parse verbs in either Hebrew or Greek. You don’t have to be a super prayer warrior or a mission minded Christian soldier. It’s a lot simpler than that. The playing field has been leveled.

Spiritual growth and maturity happens for all of us when we are willing to be honest and true to ourselves. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to figure that out. If I had listened to my mother it wouldn’t have. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve heard her say, “To thine own self be true.” That was a call to be glaringly honest with yourself. It is a call to listen to our hearts and then be true to what we hear. Your heart won’t lie. It always will tell you the truth and point you to the One who is truth.