Value of Persons 4

My Paternal family of valuable persons. Ole and Hannah Burwick. Dad is in the middle.

Henri Nouwen’s book “The Way of the Heart” addresses the value of persons. “Anger and greed are the two main enemies of the spiritual life. Anger is the impulsive response to the experience of being deprived. When my sense of self depends on what others say of me, anger is a quite natural reaction to a critical word. When my sense of self depends on what I can acquire, greed flares up when my desires are frustrated. Greed and anger are brother and sister of a false self fabricated by the social compulsions of an unredeemed world.

“Solitude is the furnace of transformation. Without solitude we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Solitude is the place of the great struggle and the great encounter, the struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self.

“In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephone calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me - naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful deprived, broken - nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me wants to run to my friends, my work and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something.

“The task is to persevere in my solitude, to stay in my cell until all my seductive visitors get tired of pounding on my door and leave me alone.

“That is the struggle. The struggle to die to the false self - a struggle far behond our own strength. The confrontation with our own frightening nothingness forces us to surrender ourselves totally and uncondtionally to the Lord Jesus Christ. Only Christ can overcome the powers of evil. Only in and through him can we survivie the trials of our solitude.

“We enter into solitude first of all to meet our Lord and to be with him and him alone, keeping the eyes of the mind and heart on him who is our divine savior. As we come to realize that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us, that he is our true self, we can slowly let our compulsions melt away and begin to experience the freedom of the children of God. We can look back with a smile and realize that we aren’t even angry or greedy any more.”

And may I add, the compulsory solitude of the first three years of forced retirement compelled me to face my nakedness not covering it with performance fig leaves. The solitude was God’s personal game plan for me to acquire a balanced value structure – intrinsically and functionally. Eight years after the trauma of being fired and the subsequent depression, I am now enjoying life as I never have before.

How are you doing with intrinsic value? Are you recognizing and appreciating your value as a child of God walking in fellowship with Christ? Is your functional value (performance) in balance as you “Love the Lord with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself?”
Blessings to you, dear reader.