Be who you are!

I have a talk I need to give at our school CMA meeting tomorrow (CMA= Christian Medical Association. I am not particularly nervous at the moment, but I've still got a decent amount of preparation ahead of me as of now. The problem is I don't know if I'll have much time. Therefore I thought it might not be a bad idea to get some of the diarrhea of thoughts running through my head right now onto something more tangible, like my blog. So here is what I am thinking. It is all about being who you are.

Understand that as I flesh this out, I am speaking as much to myself as to everyone else. If there is one thing I have been learning lately, it would fall under the heading, be who you are.

So who are we then? We are people, we are loved, unloved, we're believers, doctors, whatever. There are all these tags and labels that go into who we are. I want to focus on what I think is the best and most important answer to this question and how it relates to those of us who happen to be in medicine. So, if I ask again who are we? The answer is, for those of you who believe, is that we are beloved children of God.

I'm sure many of you know this. It is rather plain to say. Almost trivia in the way it sounds. However, there is meaning to it.

We need to start from the beginning of this. To truly flesh this idea of who we are out, we need to see where we have been first. This helps us to see what the weight of who we are really means.

If we take a look at Genesis, we see that God created Man and Woman in His own image. He set them on the planet and gave them free reign over everything, save that one tree with the bad apples on it.

He made Adam and Eve with a blank slate. They had done neither anything wrong or right. So everything they did, namely the good things, was to their credit. Whatever innate goodness they had, or righteousness (meaning right standing before God), was something they themselves earned. Afterall, they were responsible for their actions. So, in summary, Adam and Eve, and therefore mankind, started at 0 on the righteousness scale.

Then as we all know, everything went wrong. The manure hit the fan if you know what I mean. We had this great relationship with God building up our own righteousness and we blew it. We sinned, and thus began the reign of sin and death over mankind. Not just a physical death obviously, but a spiritual kind, the kind where we were separated from God. In summary, we went from the point of 0 in right standing before God, to more or less negative infinity.

For all intensive purposes, we were done. Over. And we have been since then. Romans 3:10 says " there is none righteous, no not even one". In our negative infinity-ness, there was nothing we could do to gain God's favor. Nothing to get into a right standing. In our very nature it is impossible for us to even desire God. We have been this way from before our birth (dead).

The story doesn't end there. God in his wisdom and mercy poured out his hatred, his wrath against sin on His own Son on the cross. By satisfying his wrath he made a way for us that by grace through faith if we believe in Jesus as our Lord and God we might have life and not death.

So how does this relate to who we are in the now? Romans 5: 12-21 does a great job summing this up.

You see what this is saying. It is saying that an exchange took place. The exchange being God has taken away our righteousness which leads to death and placed in us his righteousness, an alien righteousness (not of ourselves) that leads to lives. Ephesians says that he predestined us for adoption through Jesus, that he has raised us up and seated us at the right hand of God. We can now approach God with freedom and confidence, boasting in OUR righteousness, because in truth it is God's own. So the point of what I am saying is that through faith in Jesus, we have been brought from negative infinity to positive infinity.

Don't miss the importance of what this means. Notice God did not bring us back to a blank slate. He did not set us back outside of the pit, just for us to fall back in again. No, he took us all the way to the top, he gave us all that was Christ's so that we could never ever, ever, slip back. Positive infinity.

(use cross example)
So, what we need to do is realize who we are by seeing where we've been. You see, the more we see how terribly sinful we were, and in many ways still are, and the more we see how great and holy God is, the bigger the cross becomes, and this idea reflected in our lives gives God glory. The more clearly we see this, the more we are transformed by it.

Seeing this clearly we see we were brought from here to here. It is amazing.

So this is who we are. Dearly loved children of God. Delighted over. So all we need to do is be. Exist as who God made you to be. We need to be who we are in every aspect of our lives, and especially in medicine.

I really caught a great glimspe of this at the SMI this summer. The SMI was a gathering of 33 med students and faculty who more or less committed themselves to Christian community and to serving the Lord. (I've got some pictures to show)

Essentially, I was able to see faith played out in a clinical setting. In the family residency program I was able to see doctors pray for patients and share their faith. I even participated some. These doctors were simply being who they were. Children of God, dependent on him in their abilities, bringing him into the consult.

I challenge you guys not to live two separate lives. Heck, I am challenging myself. Don't be a Christian and a doctor. Be a Christian doctor. Be who you are everywhere you are. Don't hide it.

Galatians 2:20 says “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live in the name of the Son of God, who loved me and delivered himself up for me.”

You see how central Christ is here. He is in you. HE IS YOU. He is the centrality of your being. Your identity now is so merged with Christ that to live otherwise is to deny the very nature of yourself.

We must be ourselves in the practice of medicine. We must let the transforming power of Christ work through us to not only heal our patients physically, but to heal their being, the fullness of what they are meant to be.

This means praying both for and with our patients. This means sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ to them. It means giving them hope. It means being who we are.

So I'd really like us to break up into small groups and talk a little more about this. Ask each other what it means practically to be who you are where you are right now, and later on in your practice of medicine. What can we be doing right now, and how can we be Christ in medicine?

There it is suckas. Hope its alright.