The God who made us in his own image has not given us the power to create a self that can survive on its own. From the beginning, our true identity (who weare) has been tied to our Creator (who he is): “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him” (Genesis 1:27). God created us to be like the moon: cold and barren on our own, but aflame with light when we come near the sun.

She didn’t want to lose herself.

Friends had invited her to church, where she was suddenly confronted with her own fork in the road: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). For the first time, she understood that coming to Christ would mean coming to die.

But there were so many parts of herself that she didn’t want to die: her hobbies, her friends, her sense of humor, her future plans. Who would she be if she handed them over to Jesus? She thought of some Christians she knew — nice, neat, and bland. They seemed to dress their souls in beige every day. She wondered if Jesus would flatten her personality, her identity. She feared, with Nietzsche, that “in heaven, all the interesting people are missing.”

She didn’t want to lose herself. And so, she heard Jesus say, “Follow me,” and she walked away.

Building Babel

Losing your life has never been easy. The age has not yet come, nor will it ever, when self-denial will be convenient, or taking up a cross comfortable. In our culture of self-help and self-realization, of individuality and independence, of “you do you” and “follow your heart,” Jesus’s call to lose ourselves stabs at the very heart. Who will we be if we hand our self over to a Lord who demands all of us?

Many in the world hear Jesus’s call and, like the young woman, fear that following him will destroy all that gives meaning to me. They’d prefer to keep their own identity, that self they’ve been fashioning for so many years. And so, they stay in their little land of Shinar, adding bricks to their personality and appearance, their resume and persona, building Babels to make a name for themselves (Genesis 11:1–4).

Even in the church, many of us cannot help but be tempted by our culture’s obsession with a self-made self. Though Jesus has taken a wrecking ball to our former selves, we can find ourselves walking wistfully among the ruins, even trying to raise little shacks here and there.

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