The MP3 and text of Part 1 are also available.
Fight Club Clip
“If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?”
Now, those of you who were here a couple weeks ago know I love this film? But why? Why did this film resonate so deeply when it came out? And why does it still resonate with so many, particularly young men and women? Well, what is Fight Club actually about?
It’s a movie about being sick of being you. It is about a boring guy who gets pushed around and whose deepest passions are trivial…who desperately wants to live a different kind of life. It is a story about something we all experience…a deep sense of dissatisfaction with self.
None of us are really who we want to be. And so in the next ten minutes or so I just wanted to revisit the pivotal verse the Jacob story which, as it turns out, poses precisely the same question: What do you do when you are dissatisfied with who you are? You see, Jacob really doesn’t care for being Jacob…he never really did…his story seeths with his dissatisfaction with who he was…and he tries two different ways of dealing with this dissatisfaction which align with two different approaches that are generally on offer in our culture...First he tried to:
1. Be someone else.
I mean, let’s be really honest for a minute…have you ever wished you were someone else?
Well you are not alone. I have. I think we all [2] have.[3]
This is the direction Edward Norton’s character takes this in Fight Club. At one point Brad Pitt’s character tells him…
And this is exactly how Jacob initially tries to deal with his dissatisfaction with who he was…
You see Jacob spends most of his early life trying to be someone else. [4] Jacob’s spent most of his early life trying to be his more impressive older brother…trying to be Esau. We get three stories about their early life and each one is a story of Jacob trying to supplant Esau…trying to be someone else:
i. Jacob’s struggle to be Esau start’s literally at birth. He comes out grabbing his brother’s heal. That is how he gets his name ‘the grasper’. Literally from his first breath he’s not going to be second without a fight. He wants Esau’s position.
ii. In the second story, Jacob shows that his brother may be strong and masculine…but he’s not that bright. So Jacob uses his cleverness and his mad kitchen skills to make a play for Esau’s role.
iii. Then, in the final youth story, Jacob actually puts on an Esau costume. He literally tries to become Esau so he can trick his blind dad into giving him Esau’s stuff…which leads to one of the strangest verses in the Bible:
Two things have always startled me about the Genesis narratives. 1) they are brutal honest with characters that ring true in their complexity and brokenness and 2) these stories resonate with our self understanding and the best insights of human psychology…in these ways, you could say they read like a Dostoevsky novel. Because the characters ring true and the psychology rings true, it is easy to see ourselves in these pages…we are Jacob…we are the struggler. We’ve all wanted to be someone else. And many of us have even tried to pull it off…but it never works…not really.
And we all know that. In fact, it is a relatively ubiquitous insight. Our culture’s poets and story tellers are almost unanimous on the idea that trying to be someone else is a flawed solution to the problem of our dissatisfaction with ourselves. And so they offer the alternate solution
2. Be yourself
I found dozens of quotes that illustrate this but let’s just go with three that capture the phenomenon:
The ubiquity of this idea I think is captured in the fact that it comes to us in mediums as diverse as the wrings of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Step it Up 2 (which I feel the need to clarify, I have not seen). [5] 
A couple weeks ago, I was exploring this idea I sent an e-mail to a bunch of friends asking them if they could think of cultural artifacts that revolve around this idea of ‘just be yourself’ and they put together a long and diverse list. The list included films from Cool Runnings, to Forest Gump, to Space Jam…it included lyrics from Pink and Audio Slave...
…it included children’s books and of course it included recent inspirational facebook posts. Which was just the tip of the iceberg. I did a image search on “Be yourself” and found page after page of crafted images that package this idea for viral inspiration.
Our cultural teachers and story tellers are unanimous on this one…well almost.
Trying to be someone else is a mistake. The key to a happy and meaningful life is, above all, to ‘be yourself.’ It is to embrace who you are more completely, more authentically and with more abandon.
‘Be yourself’ may be the first commandment of our cultural cannon.
And that is exactly what Jacob does next. After his episodes in trying to be Esau he moves to Haran and undertakes a 20 year experiment in being himself. And he learns something very important…something, I suspect if you’ve given it any thought, you’ve also learned.
‘Being yourself’ is waaay overrated.
Here’s the problem…our cultural obsession with ‘being yourself’ has, frankly, always confused me. I mean what does that even mean? A couple years ago Amanda and I stumbled on a high school drama called My So Called Life. It was a flawed series [6] and only ran for about a dozen episodes…but it had periodic flashes of substantial insight…but my favorite line of the whole thing was
Implicit in the idea that you should ‘be yourself’ is that the self is discovered rather than formed.
It makes the process of character formation a passive rather than an active process…you are at the mercy of the raw materials of ‘you’ placed there by capricious, random biological and cultural processes.
But you are a project not a puzzle. For the most part ‘you’ are something you become not something you find. Christianity uses the metaphor of ‘spiritual formation’ much more than ‘self discovery.’[7]
And that is really good news for most of us, because the person I see when I reflect on my decisions and behavior is not the person I want to be. I am petty, bitter, materialistic, selfish, apathetic, deceitful, lazy, self serving.[8] When someone tells me, ‘just be yourself’ – my response is ‘um, no thank you.’ So the cultural injunction to ‘be myself’ doesn’t make a lot of sense as a solution to the problem that Jacob faced, that Norton’s character in fight club faced and that most of us face…dissatisfaction with self.
You see, dissatisfaction with self is a healthy impulse. The alternative is narcissism. [9]
And Jacob found the same thing. After his attempts to be his brother ended and ended poorly, he moved to Haran for 20 years, where he decided to ‘just be Jacob’ – and you know what, ‘being Jacob,’ got him rich. [10] But his 20 year experiment in ‘being himself’ resulted in hurting not one, but 4 women, raising over a dozen deeply damaged children, and essentially leaving a wake of professional and relational destruction. It turns out, that Jacob wasn’t someone worth being. He spends 20 years ‘finding himself’ on a ranch in Haran, only to not like what he found.
You see, you are not a toaster. If you are going to become someone worth being, you can’t start with trying to be someone else…and you can’t start with something as shadowy and self serving as your whims and desires.
But if we can agree that being someone else is a horrible way to form your identity and that ‘being yourself’ is way overrated…where does that leave us? There has got to be a path that is better than just ‘discovering’ our disappointing selves. Is there a third option? Well, Genesis 32 suggests there is. You can:
3. Become God’s Version of You
Instead of ‘wanting to be someone else’ or ‘just being yourself’…we can cooperate with God to become His version of us.
And so there is this little dialogue after the wrestling match that goes on all night. Jacob says something about as profound as my 4 year old would say…’I won’t let go until you give me something.’ But as I talked about 2 weeks ago something fundamentally changed during the fight. Jacob’s encounter with Jesus changed his character. [11]
And so God looked past the stuff that Jacob thought he needed…and went all the way back, to the thing he wanted most from the very beginning. Jacob wanted to be someone else. He wanted to be someone who mattered. So God asks him:
‘What’s your name?’ [12]
‘Jacob’ comes the reply. And that is more than just his name, for decades it has been his identity: “Grasper, deceiver, betrayer, manipulator…” The smartest guy in the room.
And then God says – no more. You are someone else now. You are my man for my purpose and my covenant. “Your name will no longer be Jacob…but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.”
Jacob is stunned. Suddenly he starts to realize that this encounter was much more than he thought. And there is a moment like in the batman films where he asks ‘Who are you?”
The wrestler doesn’t answer…but it is clear. Yahweh himself has given Jacob a glimpse of who he could be…something better than being his brother…and something better than continuing to be himself…he could become Israel…he could become God’s version of him.
The alternative to wanting to be someone else is not to ‘be yourself’…it is to become the you who God sees…to become God’s version of you.
But here is the thing. You can’t do that. And neither could Jacob. By the end of the chapter, Jacob is already back to his old tricks, pulling one over on Esau …there is a lot of Jacob still there and there will be through his entire story.
But do you know what Israel means?
Israel means ‘God strives for him.’ When Jacob surrendered to God, God took the lead in his process of becoming.
You see, this is the turning point of the story not because Jacob magically changes or because he has a new surge of willpower but because he has entered a relationship with a transforming God. This passage is a turning point in Jacob’s identity not because Jacob has changed, but because Jesus has taken his case. And that is what happens when you surrender to Jesus, when you trust him and make that surrender public through baptism…and when you walk with him in the gradual process of becoming his version of you. Jesus takes the lead in establishing your identity and guides you along the uneven but hopeful road of transformation…of becoming his version of you.
Tonight we are going to hear three ‘Jacob stories’ – stories not of wanting to be someone else…and stories that are not satisfied with self discovery…but stories of the uneven road to becoming who God the you God sees.
-3 student testimonies of transformation and becoming – recognizing how god sees them and trying to live in that reality
Other talk MP3s available Here
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[1] I almost always write two talks and then cut one of them…this time Dan and I decided that I should just give them both.
[2] There is a whole commandment that revolves around the assumption that it is a fundamental human impulse…more than one if you include theft as an attempt to assume someone else’s material identity.
[3] AD: When I was a kid I desperately wanted to be an NFL QB, but I was 5’10 and 101 pounds- I just wasn’t an NFL QB Now I want to be Michale Westen- smoother, less flusterable, more of a rule breaker, etc.
[4] I owe this insight to Rob Bell.
[5] I had a much longer list, but went with these three because they represented the range of high brow, middle brow and low brow cultural voices.
[6] It took itself a little too seriously…but, come on, this was the same era in which “Saved by the Bell” ran for like 18 seasons.
[7] Stuff Adam Darbonne Says: There was a fight in college basketball a couple months ago (I think Cincinnati). In the press conference the guy who started fighting said something to the effect of “I’m really sorry. That wasn’t me- it’s not who I am” Whenever I hear something like that I always think, “Apparently that is you. It may not be who you want to be, but it does reveal something about you.”
[8] People say all the time ‘well no one’s perfect’ – but that’s a smokescreen…no one’s close. What they are really saying is, “I grade myself on the curve and I hate other people, so I seem pretty good to me.”
[9] And it is no coincidence that our culture who celebrates ‘be yourself’ as its canonical insight, is also characterized by narcissism.
[10] …and it got him laid…a lot. –yeah, I wrote that…then I cut it. So at least there’s that.
[11] Assault became clinging. And that was God’s plan Jacob. The grasper became the hugger.
[12]AD: There’s a great scene in the movie Miracle that illustrates this perfectly. Early in the movie the coach asks all the players who they are and they say their name and school. Then this clip happens after a terrible game. It’s 8 minutes but it’s worth watching- you could use a piece of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9AajQn7b18&feature=related
[13] Alternate ending: Now, the process of becoming Israel doesn’t happen instantaneously. Before the chapter is even over, Jacob is already doing something deceitful. There is still a lot of Jacob there, and there will be throughout his story. But he has been introduced to his true identity…who God sees that he can be. And it is the turning point in his story.
The wrestling match leaves Jacob no longer wanting to be Esau…he doesn’t want someone else’s story…but he also doesn’t want to be satisfied with Jacob…his story of self making…he emerges from that wrestling match, broken, limping, but with a picture of how God sees him.
This passage is a high noon showdown (whistling high noon music) – except it is in the middle of the night - between Jacob and God…Jacob doesn’t survive, but he gets what he always wanted…to be someone else, someone significant. You see it took him longer, but before he could be …he had to become like Abraham in at least one way…he had to become an alter builder…someone who’s best confidence is not in his or her own abilities, but in their alliance with God.
God wants Jacob to give up on being Esau, and to recognize that Jacob is a d-bag not worth being…but that when God sees him, he sees Israel…he sees a better Jacob…a Jacob transformed by wrestling with God and finding love in the face of God…a Jacob that isn’t living for himself but who is part of a mission and a purpose.
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