Monday, April 4, 2011

Words - Words - Words


I was recently challenged with the question: "What are your 10 favorite words?"  I had never really thought about it, but since the seed has been planted, I have now been pondering this question for a while. I have come up with a number of words, which change from day to day, mood by mood, but there are some words and ideas that are constant and I keep coming back to, and have for a majority of my life.
     This blog is not so much as a help for anyone as it is for me.  In the following season I am going to attempt to “flesh out” some of the thoughts in my life and I hope they will keep your interests till the end, possibly even spawn some thought in your life, and maybe even resolve some of the battles you have been going through, fighting on the battlefield of “false-truth” .


Word 1
Identity:


I think our need to define our identity is something God placed in us when He formed us and this need to be identified with something, Someone, draws us to Him.   But when we are separated from God, we have an almost magnetic tendency to fill this need in a worldly attempt with our own definitions.  Ask almost anyone what they do and their response will most likely be their job.  Most of us make a mistake by identifying what we do with who we are.  A banker is only a banker if there is a bank, a parent is only a parent as long as there are children, a worker is only a worker as long as they work, and a drug addict is only an addict as long as there are drugs.  What happens when their definition of who they are is altered, if they lose their job, or worse, if they lose their child?  They have built the foundation of their life on a certain identity, and now that foundation has crumbled underneath the weight of life’s uncertainty.
     Who or what we identify with is laying the groundwork of what we spend our time thinking about and doing, who we hang out with, what we set our goals towards, and many times our self defined identity, true or false, is a hindrance to our potential as the person God made us to be.  This thinking is also evident in the church as well.  When I became a Follower of Jesus, I was unfamiliar with how this whole “church” thing worked.  I didn’t grow up in the church, in fact by the time I was 28 years old, I might have stepped in a church building 5 times, a couple of Easters and a few Christmas Masses.  I had avoided God and all things pertaining to Him until then.  I had found that if I was confronted with the subject of God or Jesus, it was best to explain I had my own way of believing, which was a lie, but it helped me avoid the subject because what I was really was doing was avoiding the question of “Is there a God?”  because if I avoid the question, I won’t have to give an answer, and this is what I really didn’t want to do, because in the answer lies a response to the question. If I admit there is a God, then I should live like I believe this to be true, and if I believe there is no God,  then I am my own god, and life as we know it has no rhyme or reason, just eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. We are an accidental coincidence and our destiny is worm food and fertilizer.
     I guess the reason I picked this word is because even at this stage of my life, I am still struggling with my own identity. I know, in a general sense my identity, Christian, husband, father, son, friend, jeweler, musician, racecar driver, but under those umbrellas are a lot of characteristics which one could follow. So the struggle goes on, and I wonder if I will ever figure it out, or if it is better not to have this IDENTITY set in stone, for in the lack of detail is a lot of freedom to find those passions I never knew were there.

Curious, what do you think about this?

Aaron Huey

Aaron Huey
America's Native Prisoners of War