There is no topic we love discussing more than ourselves. The self-discovery industry has never had more pull than it does in the contemporary West.
Christians might be tempted to push back on all of the obsession of self-discovery and reject it as ungodly. John Calvin, the 16th-century French Reformer, would disagree with this assessment. In the first chapter of Calvin’s Institutes, the Reformed theologian makes a point about self-understanding and our relationship that might surprise you. He says,
Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.
Calvin suggests that we ought to pursue self-discovery because we cannot know God without knowing ourselves.
On this point, Calvin is in agreement with Socrates, who said that the first step to true wisdom is to “know thyself.”
It is for this reason that Angel and I wrote Trading Faces: Removing the Masks that Hide Your God-Given Identity. We believe that the culture gets self-discovery wrong. We have believed the lie that we can craft our own identity or that our identity is understood by the roles we serve in or our attributes. No, God has given us many identities (the New Testament, in particular, is loaded with them), and they all point not only to who we are but to who he is. To understand who we are is to better understand who God is and to live the abundant life he has intended for us.
Trading Faces was released this past week. Here are a few highlights of launch week:
Over at Reclaimed Story, Angel and I share our heart behind the book.
Over at Gospel Centered Discipleship, you can find a free excerpt that relates to our false identity in our ideologies and our true identity as friends of God.
Finally, if you are local here in Tucson, Arizona and are interested, we would be blessed to have you join us this Thursday, October 26 at the Northwest Barnes and Noble from 6-7.
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Photo by Elisa Photography on Unsplash