Finding Our True Self

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

This is from one of the last broadcast recordings of C.S. Lewis in BBC radio in England back in 1941 to 1943 during the World War 2 when England was under periodic air raids by Nazi Germany.  The series of talks, originally under the title of “Right and Wrong: A Clue to the Meaning of the Universe,” would eventually be turned into Lewis’ classic book “Mere Christianity.”

According to Lewis our true self can only be found in God who is the creator of the universe and author of man.  It is through Christ, that we discover our real self once we surrender our life to Him in obedience.  Christ will not take away our unique personality but improve it, lead it to the personality He had designed for us since the foundation of the world.  Christ is like a salt that brings about the true taste of food.  Lewis would say that it seems salt would take over the taste of the food and make it taste salty because it has a powerful flavor (unless you put too much of it).  But if placed at the right amount, salt brings out the true flavor of food that would not be there if salt was not added.  Christ will bring about our true self, once we unite ourselves to Him.

If we are not yet in Christ, our self now is not the real one and it is a product of our upbringing, influenced from friends, media, education, and even some of it is even from the devil.  The self that you are intended to be does not come from nature but from above nature.  As a character of a book does not get its identity from the book itself but from the author of the book.

But we don’t go to God just to develop our personality. We go to Him because God is our parent (in God the Father), brother (in Christ), and even a spouse (in the Holy Spirit), whom we have to love out of justice (justice means to give to someone what he deserves) in the first place because He is our Creator, in the same way we have to love our parents of whom we owe our biological life.  But God is a unique parent because He does not make us feel duty bound to love Him because He respects our freedom.  He does not want fake love but true love and it can only come from freely choosing to love Him.  God could have made us robots by programming us to love Him but that is forcing us to love, which goes against the very nature of love. The nature of God’s love for us is to make us free to choose to love Him or not. God sends us many love letters, chocolates, flowers, courting us through our conscience and events of our life inviting us to have a relationship with Him.  And He makes this invitation to the very end of our lives.  If we don’t respond or reject Him, He will leave us alone, and we will stay alone for eternity, living without Him, in a place called Hell.

We have to give up our self to find our true self.  This is one of the paradoxes of life.  To live, one must die.  This applies in many aspects of life.  If you focus so much in trying to appear original or unique to others, you will instead not attain it.  It can be in art or literature, or in dealing with others.  Whereas if you just try to be yourself, not being conscious of how you are making an impression on others, but focusing on what you can offer them or tell them, then you will naturally come off as original.  If you are giving a speech to a crowd, and start thinking “I wonder what they think of me giving this speech?” then you will lose your focus and originality and give in to fear and anxiousness that spoil your performance.   The paradox is don’t focus on yourself and you will find your real self.  That’s why Christ said, “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:39)