Individu-um

Individuality is something that we all strive for. We search our whole lives to find a distinguishing mark; we revel in birthdays, graduations, award ceremonies, engagements, weddings, anniveraries; we revel in the events that tell us that there is no other like us, in events that tell us that something belongs to us; or, that we belong to someone or in some place. Marking out our favorite ice cream, preferred way of taking our coffee, preparation of eggs, and even the way we hang our towels, we delineate a difference that validates our presence in the world; no one else likes the flavor of mint-chocolate chip and takes his or her coffee with extra-hot soya-milk and prepares his or her eggs sunnyside up (but just so the yoke borders on turning solid) and hangs his or her towels inside out after a shower. Right?

Permutations and combinations are everything.

Bringing this to a personal level, and to speak quite frankly, I've been struggling with this concept a lot lately. It's a ponder (read: weight, heaviness, thought) that surfaces during the darkest and loneliness of times. On one hand, this desire has the potential to breed pride and selfishness, the desire to glory ourselves in this world; yet on the other hand, it speaks to a desire to just be worthy of love, to the need to have one's existence or friendship or relationship validated. We ask: 'what am I doing here?' and 'what is the purpose?' in trying to understand our place, our 'fit' in the world. As Tragic history would have it - from the Greeks to our modern Tragedeans - we ask these questions because of that sundering of man and God. C.S. Lewis talks about this great divorce and we, in the way that we look for purpose or feel lost at any point in time, are also taken by this idea.

However, as Christians, as people chosen by God to know Him, isn't this painful divorce supposed to be easier? Isn't this break supposed to be even partially restored? Isn't this pain of separation, of unknowing, supposed to be even a little alievated? Where does this desire to be individual, to be unique and special come from? Is it not at root the seed of original sin? that which prompted Adam to eat of the fruit?

I cannot wrap my head around this paradox: that we are at once worthy and no.

There is nothing inherently worthy about us; and yet, His blood on the cross speaks volumes of our worth, not in ourselves, but to him, in relation to the very Creator we're divorced from.

Posted on October 19, 2006 at 08:21AM