Defining Ourselves

How we define ourselves is just as, if not more, important than how we define other people.

So often when we were growing up did we get told not to call other people names.  This was most likely done with the (unspoken) hope that we would outgrow such behavior as we got older.  While our name-calling regarding others may have lessened as we matured, many of us still fall into the trap of calling ourselves names that we shouldn't be called.  I said in my opening statement that this may be the more important behavior of the two, and here's why I made that statement.

How we define ourselves often distorts how we view the world, and therefore affects our interactions with it.  For example, if we are constantly telling ourselves that we are a failure, then we will most likely will never be truly successful.  On the flip side, if we constantly tell ourselves that we are successful then there is a distinct possibility that we will only try to accomplish things that we know we can succeed at, and not try to really push ourselves to accomplish truly great things.  In short, when we define ourselves in a certain way there is a danger that we will limit our behaviors to fulfill that definition.

This defining, or labeling (as it is sometimes called) is a symptom of our quest to understand everything which is a condition that goes back to Eden when Eve decided she had to know everything good and evil.  When we define something that means we understand it.  The problem is that understanding is often quite limited making the definition flawed.  Some have said that it is impossible to fully understand somebody else because we have not experienced all the things that they have, but that statement wouldn't apply to ourselves would it, especially considering that we have experienced everything that we gone through in life?

The problem with understanding ourselves is that we often have massive blind spots when it comes to our own behavior and being.  We often say that we are a good person, but reality says otherwise.  So how do we deal with this problem of faulty understanding and flawed definitions?  The answer to that question can be summed up into one word, surrender.  When we surrender ourselves to God, we acknowledge that He is the only One that understands everything.  Those flawed definitions then fade away and are replaced with the only definition that truly matters, "I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine."