The Story We Tell Ourselves

It has been a while since I’ve written anything here. I’ve got a folder littered with half-finished blogs, but I’m finally finishing one off! It’s about what has kept me so busy over the last little while. A project I have been working on for what seems like forever is on the verge of release. In my final year at Bible College, I embarked on a research project that has, in ways I wouldn’t have dreamed of, come to dominate my life. It has shaped the way I think about humanity and how God made us. It challenged the way I understand our obsession with identity. And it got me a job, now it has become a video resource for youth. (With a book coming… one day).

In the resource, over 5 sessions, I break down the cultural narratives that shape who we think we are, assess the ways that sin impacts our sense of self, and tell God’s much better, much more compelling story for who we are. Then I take all those truths and consider sexuality and gender in their light. It is a deeply personal project in more ways than one.

It feels like a project that took everything I could give it. I used my design degree to create the look and feel and build the sets for the videos. It was such a joy to get to throw myself into the creative side of this project! It helped me reconnect with the joy and fun I had studying design. I use my own experiences as essentially, for want of a better word, a worked example of the difference that knowing God’s good story for humanity makes for us. How it makes life for everyone better, including those who would consider themselves in a sexual minority. I put my studies at Bible college to good use in shaping a theological anthropology that will help in a context with youth (youth ministry being another area of experience for me). It just all felt like a God ordained confluence of my life experiences all being useful at once.

All of this I felt aware of heading into the project. But the strange, surprising personal aspect of this resource has been a feeling of reconnecting with my past. As I was writing the script, I realised I was writing to younger me. I was considering what I would have wanted to hear as a teenager, what might have helped me. The things I wish someone had said if they had known what was going on for me. And I found, as I put myself into this project, that I met myself in an unexpected way. One off-hand comment from a producer stuck with me as I was filming- that I should look through the lens, past it, and imagine I am speaking to teenage Simon. As I considered that, I felt less cringe and more compassion towards teenage me. The fears and worries I carried that made the bundle of social anxiety I became. I had a sense of cringe about pre-teen me that I had never really wrestled with. Telling this story helped to unpick some of the unhelpful stories I had told about myself. I worked hard to distance myself from my past self. It’s funny how often preaching actually challenges you too. As I was encouraging people to trust in God’s sovereignty, to be confident in his love, to remember Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters, I remembered this included me too.

It wasn’t just teenage me I thought about, though. I collected photos of me as a kid to use in the videos. I used to be so embarrased thinking about me as a kid. I’d avoid talking about it. But looking at these photos, I remembered who I was before the fear of being seen and judged took over. The kid who unashamedly loved what he loved. That unselfconscious joy that you lose in those teenage years. I was definitely primed to reflect on this by my Psych, who often talks about “Little Simon.” But now I was thinking about how God made and loves and knows us while looking at photos of that little Simon. I’m still that person now, as much as before I would have liked to leave bits of me behind, now I remembered that my past was under God’s sovereignty just as much as I belive my future is. As I encouraged people to remember that God sees and knows and understands us in ways we could never, I had just a little glimpse of that bigger perspective.

I was teaching myself a kind of self-acceptance that isn’t a vapid ‘you’re perfect just the way you are.’ But instead, looking at and accepting the being that I am, as God made me. The past that I had, that God was utterly in control of. The good and the bad. It’s all with me whether I like it or not, so I might as well not pretend it never happened. Speaking the truths of the gospel while thinking about little me helped me shed some of the shame that just builds up over time, like dust in the corners of a room. No matter how well we know it, we all need to be reminded of God’s love sometimes.

While I certainly grew myself through all this, the resource also helped me to remember that it’s ok to feel like an unfinished project now- because we always will be this side of the new creation. But we can also have the confidence that we will be the finished project one day. That gives me something pretty amazing to look forward to- Being like Jesus! The very best person I could know. And it helps me to have just a smidge more patience for the one stumbling along the path there.

It was a surprise that working on this resource would be such a source of profound growth. I’m certainly glad it was. And if it could be a source of even half of the spiritual growth it has brought me for others, I’d be stoked.

To celebrate it coming out soon, I’m having a launch party, and if you are in Sydney on the 29th of June, I’d love to see you there. You can RSVP through FB here, or if you don’t have FB here.

The course itself will come out mid-July, stay tuned for further details.