Who Am I?

Let me begin with an apology for the insane length of time between posts - I have been in that place where I didn't seem to have anything to say.  And as I am learning more and more, when you are in that place it is far better to remain silent and hope your "voice" returns than to just try and speak without saying anything.

This week I have been struggling with this idea of personal identity - not in the abstract, but in very concrete and specific terms.  To put the point on it, I have been struggling with the answer to the question of who I am.  Who is Joseph Boggs?

I can locate myself in a physical milieu.  I live in Oklahoma City, OK...in the southwest quadrant of the city close to the airport, in a three-bedroom, 1 1/2 bath house.  I drive either a Saturn Vue or a Pontiac Grand Prix.  All this I can say about myself, but it is not my identity.

I can locate myself in a professional milieu as well.  I am "Pastor Joe."  I attempt to shepherd the congregation of May Avenue Wesleyan Church from day to day and week to week.  I attend district meetings and events.  I have two degrees that tell me I can do this, and I am licensed to do it.  But like my physical milieu, this is not my identity.

I can even locate myself in a relational milieu.  I am married to Melissa and the father of Hannah and Ike.  I have a great mom, dad, and a sister that most brothers would kill for.  My in-laws love me and I them.  My niece is named Kate, and I have an as yet unborn niece or nephew on the way.  But again, my identity is not these relationships.

Somewhere along the line of my life, I have lost my sense of identity.  As far back as I can remember, I have worked hard to make people happy.  Not everyone and not all the time, but I have been a chameleon of sorts, changing my color to fit the situation.  When I was young, I wanted my mom to think I was a good son, so I would (occasionally) clean my room or try real hard at school.  To be sure, my mother didn't "force" me in any way to be like this...I just was.  I wanted my sister to think of me as a cool little brother, so I offered to beat up guys two years older than me and twice my size.

As I got older, this trend didn't change - in school, I wanted people to like me, so I did stupid things and ended up in military school.  After military school, I wanted to make my Dad "proud" and I wanted him to see me as something more than the kid who has never quite figured it out.  Again, it never seems to matter that my Dad has repeatedly told me how proud he is - I deceive myself into believing it isn't really true - that he, like so many others, is just benignly tolerating me.

In college it was professors - I wanted to be the smartest student, so I asked more questions and wrote longer papers.  I even do it now - I try to shape my thoughts, ideas, and feelings into forms that are pleasing and comfortable to the people of my church and, most importantly, to my wife.  I even do it with God - assuming that God won't like the "real" me (even though I can no longer even identify who that is).

I don't know why I compulsively do this, but I fear that, in doing so for so long, I have forever lost myself, the one who God created me to be.  There is a song by Blue Man Group called Persona, and the second verse has the following lines talking about the masks, the roles that people play:

In the evening I take it off

But there's another one underneath

And I can't seem to find

the bottom of the stack

I might just lose my mind

and never get it back

The song, which is one of my favorites, captures my feeling so well.  Am I so afraid of who I might be that I have forever buried the unique me?  Am I so concerned about being rejected that I won't let down my guard?  Can I continue to live as the guy without an identity, the chameleon?  What will happen if I never discover my true self that has been buried for so long under an avalanche of faces and masks - the faces and masks of complete strangers?

These are my questions.  May God grant me the answers.

Against Poverty

Every generation in our history has had to deal with a besetting social "sin."  For some, it was the battle against slavery in the Civil War.  For others, it was the fight against sexism and chauvinism in the movement for women's suffrage.  For our grandparents and even our parents, it was the insidious sin of racism and segregation that they struggled against during the Civil Rights Movement.  Every generation faces its own besetting sin, and ours is no exception.

I am convinced that the besetting, overarching social sin in my lifetime is the continued existence of abject poverty.  As the gap between the haves and the have-nots continues to grow, more and more people are forced to choose between life's necessities because they simply cannot afford everything they need.  There continues to be large portions of our own population in America and even more so around the world that cannot get even basic medical or dental care because doctors and insurance companies have, by their prices, made such care the privilege of wealth.  As colleges continue to raise tuitions year after year, the poorest members of the global community are increasingly shut out from the very thing - knowledge - that would afford them the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty.

It is absolutely unbelievable that, in the year 2009, that there are still thousands upon thousands of people who die from malnutrition and starvation.  More than unbelievable, it is immoral and sinful.  Our greed motivates us to milk our own products for the highest possible profit and to place higher taxes on imports from other countries.  Our lust after "bargains" allows us to constantly overlook the malfeasance of many big-box retailers whose workers in third world countries cannot even provide for their own needs.  Our pride dictates that we have to keep up with our neighbors and co-workers in the accumulation of more and more stuff - toys that we don't need, books that we don't read, clothes that we don't wear.  All the while people surrounding us are dying.

For most of the Cold War years, the residents of communist nations were referred to by the epithet "godless commies."  The inference being, of course, that the American way - the capitalist way - is somehow ordained by God and better.  I ask, though, is there a more "godless" economic system than capitalism?  Where is the God in the relentless exploitation of supply and demand so that Exxon-Mobil can record a $500 BILLION dollar profit in the midst of the worst economic recession in decades?  Where is the God in a system that tells the poorest of the poor that they just need to "get a job" while doing nothing to help them acquire marketable skills.  No, the system is broken.  Capitalism is just as godless as communism is and ever was.

The failure, though, goes beyond the system.  Way beyond.  The larger failure is the failure of the Church - the people of God - to step up and to follow in the footsteps of Jesus to meet the needs of the poor.  Sure, there are Mother Theresa's out there - but they are few and the need is much greater than they can meet.  Jesus himself spent nearly all of his time with the forgotten, the neglected, the abused, the hated of society; yet we spend our time lobbying for laws and currying for favor.  Rather than give to the poor we spend our resources on the latest gadget we just have to have to be "relevant."  We somewhere have lost sight of what Jesus did and what Jesus taught.

The parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25 tells about the day when we will all stand before God and answer for our life's choices and actions.  As Jesus condemns the goats - those who failed to provide food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, clothes for the naked - they ask him, essentially, "When did we have an opportunity to do those things?"  Essentially, they plead ignorance of the need.  Those of us living in our current world will not have that option.  We will not be able to plead ignorance, to say that we are somehow unaware of the need.  There will be no, "When did we see the hungry?," because the hungry stand on corners in our hometowns.  There will be no "When did we see the thirsty?," because we watch the thirsty push shopping carts down the streets we drive.  There will be no, "When did we see the naked?," because the naked are on our news every day.  No, the only thing we will be able to do in that moment before Jesus is to hold up all the stuff we have and the things we did instead and pray that Jesus will have mercy on us.

The time has come for poverty to end.  There is more than enough food in the world to feed its population.  There is enough money in the world to provide clothes and jobs and medical necessities to even the most destitute.  This issue cannot be ignored anymore.  It is to our everlasting shame that, while we stuff our faces at McDonald's, others dig through trash cans for stale, moldy food.  Poverty must end, and soon.

Church, rise up and show the way.  We must remember our task to stand against the grain, to be COUNTER-cultural.  The government won't eliminate poverty and the system is so broken that it would take decades to fix it.  We cannot sit back and wait for laws and ordinances to eradicate the social sin of poverty.  We followers of Christ must get our hands dirty, we must get out of the pews and onto the streets.  We must stop building our churches in the safe haven of the suburbs and start locating ourselves instead in the midst of the poor and the suffering.  We must trust that God will provide for our own needs even as we pour out everything we have to help the poor in our communities and around the world.  The famous Bible verse doesn't say, "Whatever you have done for the best, the highest, the greatest of these."  Rather, our task as sheep - as lambs of God - is to seek out the LEAST, the LOWEST, the POOREST.

There is no legitimate reason for there to still be people who die from lack of food or basic medicine.  Poverty can be defeated - not by individuals, or even by churches themselves.  Poverty will be defeated when God's people rise up and, in God's power, do battle against the world which causes poverty.  

So let's stand up, get out the door, and start fighting!