Braveheart is one of my favorite movies. I used to watch it at least once a week while I was in college. There’s this great scene right after William Wallace gives his first rally-the-troops speech when his closest friends ask him what they should do next. He tells them “just be yourselves.”
I’m not about to draw a comparison between William Wallace and Jesus. But I wonder if he (Jesus) asks us to just be ourselves. (I’m not talking about out natural selves here: we’re told that we’ve been given new selves and that our old selves are to be killed off.) What exactly would give me that impression? I’m so glad you asked!
In Romans 12, Paul talks about being ourselves like this: 6 let’s just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t. If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; 7 if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; 8 if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face. (The Message)
This is the part where I start asking questions that I don’t have answers for. If Jesus expects us to just be ourselves, what exactly does that mean? How do you just be yourself? Does that mean to do whatever occurs to you? What if we don’t look anything like our new nature? And what if we can’t remember who we are?
No doubt these are very western first-world questions. So maybe I’m asking the wrong questions here. Maybe better questions would be: How do we kill off our old selves? And how do we pay more attention to what Jesus has to say about what we are to do?