Stuff for our resume, stuff for our therapist

And a deeper treasure waiting patiently for us

Rafa, not concerned about a resume or a therapist.

This being human can feel like a real mess. There’s a side of you that you put on your resume, and there is a side of you that you only show to your therapist, your priest, or a very close friend.

There’s the part you allow others to see, the part that perhaps has achieved some good things, maybe even won an award or two.  And there is a part of you that you hope no one ever finds out. 

Part of you conveys confidence about your life.  And another part secretly suspects that you probably don’t have what it takes, you’re not as smart as other people think you are, not as handsome or pretty. The compliments people give you? They’re probably just being polite. Deep down, you think, you’re not nearly as capable, virtuous, or good-looking as people sometimes say you are.

This messiness, striving, and insecurity just comes with the package of being human: two sides of our lives – one for the resume, the other for the therapist. And it can be frustrating to sense that so many people out there seem to be doing so much better than we are – so much more virtuous and at peace with themselves in almost every way.

But I love the definition of a saint that I read recently. “A saint is someone whose life has not been sufficiently researched.” 

For most of us, we realize it wouldn’t take much research for us to be disqualified.  We just hope no one will look too closely.  But what Paul couldn’t wait to tell the Corinthians in his second letter to them is that there is another truth about every human life, and this truth is so much more important than everything else. 

Paul knew all about resumes – he had an impressive one.  And he knew firsthand about sin and failing – he admitted that he knew and wanted to do the right thing, but he didn’t. Two contradictory sides to his life that he knows will sound familiar to others. But something happened to Paul; he had an experience. He was struck blind, knocked to the ground, and heard a voice. And when Paul could see again, he began to speak about a hidden treasure in every human being.

“We have this treasure in clay jars,” Paul wrote, “so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”

(2 Corinthians 4:7)

Paul wants you to know that you have an enormous treasure that comes with the package of being human. You don’t have to do anything special or believe anything special to get this treasure. It’s already yours; it’s your true life, and it has nothing to do with your resume. It’s also unrelated to the stuff that sends you to the therapist or priest. There’s nothing you can do to earn or acquire this treasure; it’s simply the deeper, hidden truth of your life, and it’s waiting for you to discover it, experience it, and live it.

Thomas Merton put it this way:

“In prayer we discover what we already have. You start where you are and you deepen what you already have, and you realize that you are already there. We already have everything, but we don’t know it and we don’t experience it. Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess.” 

(Merton speaking in the Redwood Forest before his trip to Asia)

Jesus sums up the same insight in one of his best-known parables:

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

(Mt 13:44)

We have this treasure in clay jars. Maybe this “clay jar” is the part of everyone that makes mistakes, breaks down, and cracks up. We do our best to protect the clay jar and make it presentable, but it keeps cracking, so that fixing the jar can become an obsession.

We can put a cap and gown on our clay jar at graduation, showing it is credentialed; we can drape the clay jar with cool or expensive clothing or jewelry; we can buff the clay jar at the gym religiously; and we can transport it around town in a nice car.  But in the end, it’s always going to be an increasingly worn, chipped, and imperfect clay jar.

Paul later says a surprising thing about the cracks and imperfections in the clay jar of his life: “I’m not going to apologize for my weaknesses anymore, I’m not going to agonize over my failures or run to a priest or therapist to help me with my inadequacies, because I now see that the cracks in the jar, my weaknesses, are what give me access to a far greater power and treasure that has been inside all along.” (2 Corinthians 12:1-10)   

Obviously, that’s a crude paraphrase. But surely that’s at least part of what God meant by saying to Paul, “My power is made perfect in your weakness.”  By contrast, perhaps God’s power is thwarted, buried, or hidden when we focus on our own strength and accomplishments (or our failures and inadequacies). At some point, we all have to get our ego-selves out of the way, so that something greater can shine. As John the Baptist put it, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” (Jn 3:30)

I love that popular definition of a saint, “a saint is someone whose life has not been sufficiently researched.” But maybe saints are those who discovered that the sins and failings we thought would disqualify them turned out to be cracks that gave them access to the treasure inside. And when they discovered this eternal treasure (the treasure that is in each of us), saints are the ones who shredded their previously cherished resumes as rubbish, nothing compared to what they now knew had been theirs all along, just waiting for them.

For fun, I’ll conclude by quoting a passage from another letter of Paul, Philippians. Eugene Peterson’s translation of this passage (The Message) makes me laugh every time I read it. It’s not elegant, Elizabethan prose, but it’s hard to miss the point:

“The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn’t want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God’s righteousness.”

(Philippians 3:7-9 The Message)