Find yourself. Be your authentic self. Look inward. Trust your gut. These mantras are
everywhere, in movies, commencement speeches, coffee mugs, the advice we give our kids. The idea that the real you is buried underneath, and the great work of your life is to excavate it.
I understand the appeal. Something in us wants to believe the best version of who we are is already inside, just waiting to be found. It's a hopeful idea. But I think it's the wrong map.
Because when I actually look inward, I don't only find gold. I find fear dressed up as confidence. I find wounds that have shaped my decisions for years in ways I'm only beginning to understand. The self I find down there is complicated and bent and not entirely trustworthy.
Scripture doesn't tell us to find our true self. It tells us something more surprising. We get a new one. Paul writes in Colossians 3:3, "For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." A few verses later he says to "put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator" (Colossians 3:10).
Hidden with Christ in God. That's where your truest identity lives now, not buried inside you
waiting to be uncovered, but hidden in Him. The search doesn't go inward. It goes upward.
This isn't a small distinction. The world's version says you are the source. Scripture says Christ is. The world says discover who you already are. Scripture says become who you have not yet been. One is excavation. The other is transformation.
And honestly, the Scripture version is better news. If my identity depends on correctly finding my true self, I'm in trouble. I've misread myself too many times, too confident in my own instincts, too slow to see my own blind spots.
But if my identity is hidden in Christ, held by Someone who knows me fully and loves me
anyway, there's a steadiness self-discovery could never produce.
You don't find your true self. You find Christ, and in Him you become someone new, someone you couldn't have gotten to on your own. That's not the script the culture is selling. But it's the one worth living.
peace,
Nick
everywhere, in movies, commencement speeches, coffee mugs, the advice we give our kids. The idea that the real you is buried underneath, and the great work of your life is to excavate it.
I understand the appeal. Something in us wants to believe the best version of who we are is already inside, just waiting to be found. It's a hopeful idea. But I think it's the wrong map.
Because when I actually look inward, I don't only find gold. I find fear dressed up as confidence. I find wounds that have shaped my decisions for years in ways I'm only beginning to understand. The self I find down there is complicated and bent and not entirely trustworthy.
Scripture doesn't tell us to find our true self. It tells us something more surprising. We get a new one. Paul writes in Colossians 3:3, "For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God." A few verses later he says to "put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator" (Colossians 3:10).
Hidden with Christ in God. That's where your truest identity lives now, not buried inside you
waiting to be uncovered, but hidden in Him. The search doesn't go inward. It goes upward.
This isn't a small distinction. The world's version says you are the source. Scripture says Christ is. The world says discover who you already are. Scripture says become who you have not yet been. One is excavation. The other is transformation.
And honestly, the Scripture version is better news. If my identity depends on correctly finding my true self, I'm in trouble. I've misread myself too many times, too confident in my own instincts, too slow to see my own blind spots.
But if my identity is hidden in Christ, held by Someone who knows me fully and loves me
anyway, there's a steadiness self-discovery could never produce.
You don't find your true self. You find Christ, and in Him you become someone new, someone you couldn't have gotten to on your own. That's not the script the culture is selling. But it's the one worth living.
peace,
Nick