WHO ARE YOU?

Do you really know who you are? Seems like a pretty easy question, except when you try to answer it. There are literally only two ways to answer this question.

One is to tell us all "about" yourself, that is, what you do for a living, if you are married, have any kids, what your hobbies are, what you enjoy, what you don't enjoy, etc. Or you could tell us "of" yourself, who you really are on the inside. Your actual characteristics, personally, your true nature, internally.

You are a nice guy full of love and compassion, with some leaning towards debate, having quite the intelligence, and the wisdom to use that intelligence, in a various amount of situations, and circumstances. Your honesty is unquestioned and you could be trusted completely, given the opportunity.

One question, to the same person, has potentially two completely different answers, and could be, describing two different people. What I mean is, from which answer could you tell if one was a possible criminal or not?

Certainly not the first answer, as we have seen a surprising number of seemingly normal people "externally" turn out to be murderers, robbers and such. How many times on the news have we seen "normal" next door neighbors committing violent crimes? What I'm getting at, is, there are, basically, two ways to know an individual person. One is externally, things "about" the person and the other is internally, knowing the true nature "of" a person.

Do you see the difference?

A lot of us can gather information, say "about" Jesus Christ, data like where he lived, how long he lived, what a good teacher He was and what he taught, how He healed people, what type of work He did etc., but that wouldn't be the same as meeting the Man, now would it? I don't think so! A lot of us know all about Jesus and it is sad to say that there may be some of us, who have yet to meet Him, personally. Hopefully you are not one of those who haven't received Him as Lord and Savior yet, I would think not if you are reading this.

Anyway, being involved in the area of problem solving, most of my adult life, and sufficiently trained, as such, I have learned one thing to be true. We, who are problem solvers know, that the "effect" (fruit) of a problem and the (root) "cause" of it, usually, are two completely different things. Unless you fix the actual (root) "cause" of a problem, then you will see all kinds of different "effects" (fruit), from that same "cause". So one would still have the problem unless one actually fixes the "cause", although undetectable from examining the "effect".

What I'm saying is you cannot identify a true (internal) "cause" of a problem from the "effect" (external). One type of information is gained externally, through the five physical senses, "seeing the effects" of and is superficial. The other type of information is gained internally, through an in-depth awareness, and perception of the thing, being complete and whole knowledge, experientially.

It is in the actual examination of a problem, internally, "getting to know through experience" the workings of the thing you are dealing with, that gets you to the heart of the problem, and able to find it's true "cause".

People are the same way, in that we all have different kinds and types of "effects" (external characteristics), but none of which really indicate the type of person we are (internally as our true self), because we control those "effects" to communicate different things at different times to different people.

The most basic understanding of this is when someone lies and/or tells the truth, the only one who really knows that he is lying and/or telling the truth is the person himself, and God, of course. So it would be virtually impossible for us to determine a liar from an honest person in just "seeing the effects" of or just listening to what they say. We have to have an understanding of that person's true nature, his inner self and through that we would determine if he is a liar or if he is honest.

It is these two different types of information we are looking at. One of an external nature in the "effect" and the other of the internal nature the "cause". This will help us to determine the real vital stuff of our true Christian growth and the stuff we can live without.