Shoreditch, self-discovery and what it feels like to be a bad person

I currently live just east of central London, in a place called Bethnal Green, and work about 10 minutes away, in an area officially classified as Shoreditch, the home of the famous Brick Lane. Shoreditch is a very Bohemian, artsy area, full of coffee bars, trendy shops and incredibly talented, hugely pretentious, fashion conscious, alternative, middle-class twenty-somethings who come here to live a penniless existence and rely on their parents to pay their rent. (As I said, I don’t live in Shoreditch, evidenced by the fact that my fashion sense is limited to a vague awareness that one shouldn’t wear socks with sandals.) In short, it’s one of those places people move to in order to ‘find themselves’.

I was thinking about this concept of ‘finding oneself’ the other day, as I’ve been contemplating (in my spare time) where people derive their identities from and what makes someone ‘me’ as opposed to ‘you’ or ‘him’ or ‘her’. And the thought occurred to me, what if you find yourself, only to discover that you don’t like yourself? What happens then? Is that why Bohemian hipsters from Shoreditch move half a mile to the west and lose their doubts in a haze of city-made money, or top themselves in their grotty one-room flats, or drink and adulterate away their insecurities? Does Shoreditch, a culture that outwardly praises individuality and self-expression, have so many people who look and sound like carbon copies of each other because, when they finally came face-to-face with themselves they didn’t like what they found?

I’ve had both space and cause for some self-reflection over the past 4 weeks, and after that time I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not a very good or nice person. In fact, I’ve discovered that I’m a bad and evil person. I am self-centred and deliberately cruel, frequently lie and pander to my own selfishness, talk behind people’s backs and have horrendous tendencies to jealousy, arrogance, vanity and laziness. I may be better at hiding these tendencies behind a veneer of decency than others, but that just makes me deceitful as well as all the above. And that list doesn’t begin to cover the deepest, darkest faults and secrets that I don’t admit to myself, never mind anybody else.

Please understand, I am not demeaning myself or attempting exaggerate my flaws in order to fish for compliments or favourable comparisons. I have no doubt that you, my reader, have a list of faults, flaws and sins just as long as mine, whether or not you choose to admit it. Which, if you and I are so badly flawed and yet would probably be regarded as decent human beings – unless the readership of my blog has expanded to loan sharks, drugs barons and serial killers, which would surprise me greatly – makes me wonder why anyone would want to find themselves at all. It seems like setting yourself up for disappointment.

As I was turning some of these thoughts over on the bus – which is a great place for deep thinking, unless you process aloud – I remembered that I’d originally been considering identity from a Christian perspective. The Bible has a lot to say about people being rubbish, but has a lot more to say about God being extraordinarly gracious, and the general gist of it all is that the evil we’ve done is no longer held against us, and that we are accepted as we are by God, because of Jesus’ sacrifice. This realisation hit me anew like a brick thrown through the bus window at my head: we are accepted as we are, faults and failings all. Including the things you’re ashamed to name, including those things you like to pretend don’t exist. God not only sees these things, He accepts you with them, because of Christ’s sacrifice and His grace.

What does it means for the deepest of our secrets and flaws to be accepted in Christ? What if the behaviour even you abhor in yourself is forgiven by God’s unimaginable grace? What if, when it comes down to the base line, all you are is an evil person who’s been shown immeasurable mercy?

I grew up in church and was always the good girl in church, in school, in the youth group. When I first came to God, I brought my life to Him because I understood that He loved me and that He’d died for the things that I’d done wrong. So I guess I always knew that I was what Christians called ‘a sinner’, someone who got stuff wrong. But I suppose I never really thought of myself as ‘sinful’ – I was a good person who, most of the time, behaved to a reasonable standard and somtimes got things wrong. It’s taken me nearly ten years since the night that I first met Jesus to realise that I am not a good person who occasionally does bad things. I am an evil person who, on rare occasions, is capable of actions prompted by the Spirit, done in the strength of Christ to the glory of God. And yet, God accepts me anyway.

For just under 2 years, I have been severely unhappy with myself, because I have not been living up to the person I thought I should be. This month’s revelation of my badness does not depress me – it frees me. Freedom because I am a bad person and do not have to live up to the reputation of a good person. Freedom because God does not have a bottom line for His love. Freedom because I am accepted and forgiven. Freedom because Jesus loves me and that love does not depend on me being a good person. And it brings me the freedom to do good things because I want to, not because I should.

I’ve been reading recently about two types of freedom – freedom from and freedom to. I once thought that being a Christian was about freedom from sinfulness and hell; I now know that it’s about the freedom that motivates and allows bad people to do good things. The word ‘Christian’ first originated as an insult in the first century AD, and means ‘little Christ’ – it aimed to poke fun at the similarity of Christ’s followers to their Lord. It strikes me that to be a Christian is a lifestyle rather than a belief. The belief is that God loves me and Jesus died for me, and that if I choose it I can trust Him and be saved for eternity. The lifestyle is not a requiste or condition of the above offer. It is a choice, made in response to our understanding of our evilness, God’s goodness and Christ’s sacrifice. A choice to glorify God, in the attitude of Christ and the power of the Spirit.

Although it was never my intention to do so, I came to Shoreditch and found myself. I was bitterly disappointed with the person I found. But I’ve also found that grace goes deeper than I could have contemplated and that the freedom that grace offers me is more encompassing and inspiring than I could have imagined.

So I am a bad person. But I know a good God who accepts all that I am. And that’s enough for me.

Peace,

AH

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