rockbridge

Rockbridge is this awesome camp that my intervarsity chapter, as well as chapters from other schools in the virginia/carolina area, gets to go to right after finals for a week. I was somewhat required to go last year for training as a new small group leader and I enjoyed it so much that there was very little doubt in my mind that I would go back this year. I wasn't sure exactly which track I should sign up for, since part of me felt like I should learn what the evangelism track had to say, but when I saw that there was a new track called identity transformed, I knew that was the one for me.

To give you some further insight than what you need to know, I am almost always conscious of my "identity" or the way that I usually think of it, my personality. I think about it a lot in terms of character development and the way that I interact with others, since that's the main way that as an author you can convey what's going on inside a person. It's something I have pontificated in poems dating back to ninth grade and which has shaped my views of literature and entertainment for as long as I can remember having analytic thoughts of such things. I don't think that this makes me particularly unique, but I will say that from what I've gathered from others I probably think about this more regularly than normal people. I am constantly searching for characters with real depth who care about the core of their identity - what makes them tick, if you will. I mean, I like those people in real life too, but characters are easier to deal with without getting onto the messy subject of me and I can self-analyze without someone else probing my life.

So I signed up for this track and then I finished my semester and moved back home for three days then went to Rockbridge. First of all, I had a fantastic time and I love my community and I missed those who weren't there. All that aside, I learned a lot of things that I had been hiding from myself. I won't get into all the details because I think I could articulate it better in a conversation, and I don't really want random people knowing all sorts of weird things about me, but there are a few takeaways that I'd like to share and which I didn't think would be succinct enough for chapter sharing time.

We did a lot of cool studies using Colossians, Genesis, and other books to look at the original plan for humanity and then the idea of putting off our old selves and becoming hidden in Christ, or putting on a new identity in him. So at the end of the week we wrote false identities on post-it notes and tore them up and wrote our true identities on another post-it to keep with us. The false identity I chose - one which I sort of believe about myself but which isn't what I'm supposed to really identify with - is that I'm abnormal. I think that this is a pretty loaded word so I'm going to explain what I mean. I've always felt a little like the odd one out, and though that's a fairly common sentiment it goes back pretty far for me. I mean, I'm the middle child, the only blonde in my family, the one who just wanted to go in a corner and read upside down and eat salads and just in general be kind of weird. I wanted to wear toe socks with flip flops just to be controversial and I like Justin Bieber because it is so cool to call him a little kid and hate him but it is so much more fun to be difficult and like him. Like I've said before some of this is a conscious effort to be different. But being different and being abnormal are not quite the same, so it's a sort of negative thing to be abnormal...as if I wasn't made to overly think through things and sort people by the colors of their personalities or alphabetize my cd's. As if these neuroses were unhealthy and as if there was some clear definition of normal which I just didn't measure up to. It plays into my feelings of being awkward transitioning from homeschooling to public high school and the twang of pride but also isolation when people say good for me for being an econ major. It's not like any of these experiences are completely and utterly unique to me, but combined they make me feel a bit abnormal.

The second thing is that sometimes I feel unhuman. I sure hope other people feel like this too. But sometimes I feel unemotional, and sometimes I feel like I know more than everyone else (though then I step back and realize it's all in my head and I need a reality check), and sometimes the abnormality just dehumanizes me. I can become less human or more than human in my head. This is obviously bad. If I am less than human then I do not deserve grace. If I am more than human, then I am elevating myself and my ego is way overblown. When I think this way, I deny the basic needs of humanity and essentially I deny my need for Christ. But this week God showed me that I absolutely have the same emotional needs as everyone else, and I saw this in a variety of ways. Just as personality theory taught me, I have a need for achievement, a need for affiliation and a need for power (though I think this one is not a super big deal for me). (See David McClelland's need theory.)

I have all of these human constraints and it makes me feel like I'm doing an econ problem, but I have to maximize my utility of life function subject to my humanity. Obviously hiding myself in Christ puts me on a higher utility curve because he's not human. When you take whatever you want to strive for and you try to get to it through your own means, you will do it very badly. I may make a lot of money or surround myself with decently nice people, but I still need achievement and I still need affiliation and I still need meaning and I still need direction, I still need love. God provides me with all of these things in a way that no one else can, especially myself. But to let him do this I need to recognize my humanity and allow others to fulfill my need for affiliation because he never meant for us to go through life on our own.

(See larger image, created by yours truly, but only really interesting/understandable if you know about consumer choice.)

So my new identity, the one I'm choosing to adopt, along with clothing myself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience (Colossians 3:12), is that I am the unique but very human creation of the God of the universe, not a mistake, not misplaced. Although I am unique I am not abnormal. Although I am human, that is precisely the way that God created me and it is not my fault but I am not complete without him either. I need God just as much as I need other people, and I can't live without either in just the same way that I can't live without food. One of the ways that I see God's love is through his children, through the love that we demonstrate to one another, and though it is not perfect it is way better than human attempts at love which we see in movies as showing up at an airport or remembering a trinket. It is the kind of love that sacrifices, and Christ was the ultimate sacrifice, giving his life for me though I am so far from perfect or even "good" that it goes beyond my comprehension that he would do such a thing. Our sacrifices are much smaller but the Christian community, and specifically the intervarsity chapter at w&m, is one of sacrificial love, something which I have not seen matched in other settings. And finally, I am precisely where God wants me to be - in the family he created, with the friends he put in my life, on the campus he wants me to be at right down to the room I'll be living in next year. I am so excited to see the fruit to be born in the fall - though this summer is not a mistake or a time to be thrown away, either.

So that's a bit of what Rockbridge was about. Also, grades and jobs and relationships and everything else that is broken in my life don't define me. And God mends these things and creates new and better things.