Lady Gaga and Finding Your True Self

A friend of mine teaches at a local Christian high school. "What do you think about Lady Gaga, Mr. Jackson?" a student asked him.

Mr. Jackson is not only not particularly interested in pop-culture, he more or less abhors it. I'm not even sure if he knew who Lady Gaga was.

"What do you think," Mr. Jackson responded, pulling out the classic teacher stall-tactic.

"I think she's true to who she is," the student responded, "isn't that a good thing?"

Mr. Jackson commented later that this student had bought the whole package of the culture that skips over the part about dying to yourself in order to truly find yourself. I think most of us would prefer that route.

A year ago this time I was in the process of filling out an application for my new job as an Area Director. Being the external processor that I am, I would have naturally preferred to have been talking about it with just about everyone that I knew.

But I sensed that the Lord was calling me into a discipline that's somewhat foreign to me: the discipline of silence. I sensed that I was supposed to go against my natural grain and share my process with just a small circle of friends.

"When words are many, sin is not absent," declares the writer of Proverbs. In other words, the more you talk, the more likely you are to sin. In our culture's paradigm, this would fit in the category of "in-authentic."

In the case of last year's process, I was not expressing myself freely. I was entering into a discipline practiced by Christians throughout the centuries of shutting up rather than running my mouth. I was cultivating intimacy with the Lord by guarding something that he was leading me into.

Any healthy marriage has things that only the husband and wife share in together. The same is true in our relationship with God. As much as I harp on the importance of community here in Piebald Life land, the danger of co-dependence on people over intimacy with God is a perpetual faith-walk hazard.

We must learn to die to ourselves in order that we might live unto Christ--and therefore find our true selves. Sometimes this means that we embrace activity that is not our natural inclination--like keeping silent about a major life process for us external processors.

While millions follow Lady Gaga on Twitter (#1 most followed, at least for this week), she fumbles around and re-expresses her "true" self about every two to six weeks. Is that really life? Is that really joy? Is that really all that "authentic" after all?

There's a much better way. But it's much harder. I'll be praying that I, along with Lady Gaga, and along with you all, might have the strength of the Spirit to walk in it.