Becoming who you could be
At the time of writing the headline on the BBC news website is that on 29th March the UK government is going to invoke Article 50, starting our ‘divorce proceedings’ from the EU. For some this will be a time of celebration and for others a time of great sadness. However, whichever side of the Brexit debate people are on, everyone recognises that this is a huge decision that will bring with it a lot of change in our country. This got me to thinking about the ways in which we make changes in our lives and how we try to make changes in our homes, places of work, or the communities where we live.
Making changes is never easy and I am a great believer in the old maxim, ‘If you want to change the world, then you need to start with yourself.’ The trouble is that the changes we sometimes recognise we need to make in ourselves can be the hardest ones.
James March, a professor at Stanford University, says that when people make choices, they tend to rely on one of two basic models of decision making:
the consequences model… when we have a decision to make, we weigh the costs and benefits of our options and make the choice that maximizes our satisfaction
the identity model… when we have a decision to make, we ask ourselves three questions: Who am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me do in this situation?
Looking back, I realise that this is how my father eventually made the changes that helped him to stop smoking. Everyone knows (including those that smoke) that smoking kills, but knowing that does not change many smokers’ behaviour. My father had tried to give up many times, but finally made it work when he began to see himself as a non-smoker. If the consequences model for decision making is used, then having one more cigarette brings more immediate satisfaction for a smoker. However, when a person begins to see themselves as a non-smoker, when they see their identity differently, then if they use the identity model to make decisions they can find it easier to give up. This approach doesn’t stop the cravings, but I’m told it can make them easier to resist.I’ve found that this model works for me in dieting too. It is easier to avoid the temptation to snack on the wrong stuff if I see myself as slimmer/healthier and make the choice to avoid the biscuit based on the identity I aspire to (easier… but sometimes I still fail and have the snack!). The same is true for any changes that we want to make in our lives, John Burke writes ‘Knowledge of right and wrong doesn’t create lasting change in people. What changes people’s behaviour is knowledge of their identity! How they see themselves.’So it doesn’t help if we see ourselves as unfit, overweight, too busy to eat properly, too unqualified to attempt something... or more seriously, too addicted to give something up, too set in our ways to change a destructive behaviour.One scholar has noted that lot of Jesus’ teaching seems geared to confront and rearrange a person’s thinking about their identity. Jesus saw past the hurts, problems and pain in people’s lives and called out the identity that God intended from the beginning. An identity in which they were loved, precious, included in his kingdom and made in God’s image. Even today, when people understand this, they begin to make choices based on that identity and grow into it.
I think that sometimes people get the wrong impression when they hear talk about ‘God’s plan for the world’. It can be unhelpfully seen as something in which he is somehow the master engineer, or architect, with some grand design that he is working towards. However, I think his plan involves changing the world by changing people; helping people find and grow into their true identities, becoming the best that they can be, becoming the people they were made to be. And whilst on their own journey, helping others to do the same.From a Christian perspective, no matter what people have done (or not done) in life there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. A love that patiently, challenges and encourages us to grow into the people we could be. A love that is revealed, perhaps most completely, in the Easter story of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that is what churches throughout the world will be celebrating in this Easter. I hope you can join us.