Take Me As I Am

“Much of our dif­fi­culty as seek­ing Chris­tians stems from our unwill­ing­ness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accord­ingly. We insist upon try­ing to mod­ify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image.“

~ by A. W. Tozer ~

“Take me as I am.”

We say that — aloud or tac­itly — to each other every morn­ing when we head out into the world and inter­act. Every look, every ges­ture, every word that comes from our mouths, the clothes we select, the jew­elry with which we adorn our­selves, the hair­style we sport, the car we drive, the home in which we live … every­thing that makes us our unique self is, in essence, a cry to the world: “This is me. This is who I am. This is what I’m about. These are the things that mat­ter to me. Please take me as I am — and love me any­way.”

We spend our entire lives try­ing to fig­ure out the answer to a decep­tively sim­ple ques­tion: “Who am I?” We change jobs, pro­fes­sions, clothes, hair­styles, hob­bies, activ­i­ties, friends, life part­ners … try­ing on dif­fer­ent styles to see if they “fit” and pro­vide us with the answer to that ques­tion, even though, as we are ques­tion­ing, other peo­ple are mak­ing ongo­ing assess­ments and draw­ing con­clu­sions about us based upon their observations.

There are many peo­ple who believe that the con­cept of “God” is sta­tic: Unchang­ing, unyield­ing, unbend­ing, already fully evolved. They urge us to “take God as He is.” In my expe­ri­ence, many peo­ple who describe “God” in that way see “Him” as an entity or being that exists “out there” some­where. In other words, they talk about “God” as being exter­nal to them­selves, sep­a­rate from but related to them.

There are oth­ers who see the con­cept of “God” as ever-changing, evolv­ing, expand­ing and con­tract­ing, unique to a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion or cir­cum­stance. There are folks who believe that they are one with “God,” and “He” dwells within them and they within “Him.” There is no sep­a­ra­tion of enti­ties because they are the man­i­fes­ta­tion on earth of “God” by virtue of being “His” creation.

It seems to me that, for the for­mer group, quotes like that selected for this week res­onate because they are con­sis­tent with the notion that we are the ones who are mal­leable while “God” is not. We are capa­ble of change, but “God” never changes, nor do “His” expec­ta­tions, hopes, dreams and, of course, for­give­ness when we fall short of the goal of mold­ing our­selves to per­fectly mir­ror “Him.” We are inher­ently rebel­lious, but “He” for­gives our rebel­lion, lov­ing us in spite of our foibles.

And it seems that those who adopt the lat­ter approach see “God” as an exten­sion of them­selves so that, as they evolve over the course of their lives, so does “God” and their inter­nal con­cept of God­li­ness or God-likeness. They strive to attain a higher level of under­stand­ing of what it means to be Godly, not for the pur­pose of achiev­ing accep­tance, love, for­give­ness and con­comi­tant per­fec­tion — because those things have, in actu­al­ity, already been freely given — but because they seek to under­stand fully what it means to live in har­mony with “God” as they per­ceive “Him.”

So for an indi­vid­ual who per­ceives “God” in that man­ner, the above quote might take on a dif­fer­ent kind of mean­ing. The idea of tak­ing “God” as “He” is relates more to accept­ing and lov­ing one­self, acknowl­edg­ing the inher­ent worth and equal­ity of every indi­vid­ual. Less empha­sis is placed on obe­di­ence, dis­ci­pline, adher­ence to a pre­scribed set of rules and reg­u­la­tions, and more energy is devoted to achiev­ing jus­tice, tol­er­ance, egal­i­tar­i­an­ism because of the inher­ent value of those con­cepts rather than because achieve­ment of those goals is dic­tated by an exter­nal power or force. Adjust­ing one’s life and the world around one­self is less about con­for­mity with a uni­ver­sally accepted, stock image of what it means to be Godly or God-like than tai­lored to devel­op­ing a life image that is uniquely and espe­cially one’s own.

Is there actu­ally a dis­tinc­tion between the two lines of thought? If so, does it matter?

I believe that it only mat­ters when we use our per­sonal under­stand­ing to declare that our way of per­ceiv­ing “God” and “His” plan for the lives of other per­sons is the only cor­rect way. No one has an exclu­sive under­stand­ing of the man­ner in which to attain or achieve “God’s” uncon­di­tional love, accep­tance or for­give­ness, or the gift of unend­ing life. Those things have already been imparted to each and every per­son. No one has a per­fect under­stand­ing of who or what “God” is or how “He” thinks or rea­sons. Rather, we all need to honor and respect each other’s indi­vid­u­al­ized under­stand­ing and per­cep­tion of the Divine Cre­ator and trust that the Spirit works in every other person’s life as surely as it does in our own.

My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we cer­tainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes com­plete in us — per­fect love!

This is how we know we’re liv­ing steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for our­selves and con­tinue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Sav­ior of the world. Every­one who con­fesses that Jesus is God’s Son par­tic­i­pates con­tin­u­ously in an inti­mate rela­tion­ship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.

1 John 4:11–16

Please take me as I am — flawed, incom­plete, evolv­ing … a work in progress — and love me any­way. I, like you, am cre­ated and dwell in the image of the Divine Cre­ator who loves us all com­pletely and unconditionally.

Thanks go to Deb­o­rah at Choco­late and Cof­fee for host­ing this week! Drop by and read the other par­tic­i­pants’ dis­cus­sion of this week’s quote.

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