What do you say about yourself?

8 January 2025

I would count myself incredibly surprised were I to learn that there was another time in history where people had more to say about themselves than the one we live in right now. At least in the richer, more educated parts of the world. We have the education, we have the time, and we have the means by which to spend an inordinate amount (of all those things) talking about ourselves. It’s not a coincidence that pyschotherapy is largely a 20th century invention.

Social media, of course, is the most blatant enabler of this habit, although not all platforms are equally lined up to self-expression. Some allow you to express your opinion about everything, so we do. Other platforms encourage you to reveal yourself (often in every and all ways) and so we do that too. In both cases more is revealed about us than we realise, or that is wise and good for us.

When we are asked and given the opportunity to answer the question, ‘who are you?’ we freely confess, at length, ad infinitum. There is a whole industry of celebrity ‘confessions’ which mostly end up serving as warning against, rather than for, celebrity. It should be no one’s goal in life to live in such a way as to be in a position to write such a book. We should not aspire to be a person who has nothing actually to say but who spends a long time saying it. Neither should we aim to be the person who has made so many errors of judgement in our pursuit of the trappings of fame that it breaks us. Anyway, confess we freely do.

In John 1, John the Baptist is pressed to talk about himself, ‘Who are you?’ he was repeatedly asked. And, like us ‘he did not fail to confess, but confessed freely’. And at that point the similarities end.

At least three times John was asked to answer the question and was even given several prompts in which he could have boosted himself. Are you the Messiah? No. Are you Elijah? Nope. Are you the Prophet? No sir.

You can almost hear the exasperation in the voices of the priests and Levites as they finally say to him, “Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

It is a good question. It forces us to reveal our sense of identity, it opens the door to our very sense of self but I wonder if John’s answer doesn’t show us the way to a greater sense of security. Even when pressed John manages to find a way of answering that is both about himself and not about himself. He is a voice but a voice that makes the way for someone else.

He knows who he is and he knows his purpose but there is something greater and he serves the greater. Paul shared a similar approach,

“Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.

2 Corinthians 10:17–18.

Spending less time commending yourself and more time both resting in and being one whom the Lord commends is the path to joy, purpose and satisfaction.