Students today are splitting their souls and leaving horcruxes strewn through their lives.
The Harry Potter Franchise has now brought in a total of $25bn, so I will assume that if you are reading this you have a basic understanding of fictional wizardry. In the stories, the evil Voldemort has split his soul into seven parts and left them in various places which are referred to as "horcruxes". Young Harry must track down these horcruxes and kill that part of the V man.
The university contingent are doing something similar. I am not saying that students are literally or intentionally splitting their souls! But I am noticing that students today are increasingly aware of various personas that they feel the need to maintain. They feel the need to be different people in different places.
For example, a friend of mine came to study at York University having decided to become much more outgoing and friendly than he had been at school. He got very drunk on the first football team social and developed a reputation for being outrageous. He came to church and was seen as wise, knowledgeable about the Bible and well read. He used his Facebook profile to give the impression of being funny, always posting comedy videos. He would delete his status updates if nobody 'liked' them and he made sure he was laughing in all his profile pictures. He used his Twitter profile to tweet deep, thought-provoking quotes and musings, with a black and white picture of him smoking a pipe. He joined LinkedIn and vastly exaggerated his CV to give himself a formal and professional demeanour. Before he knew it, he wasn't sure who he really was anymore. He had a school-self, a university-self, a football-self, a church-self, a Facebook-self, a Twitter-self, a LinkedIn-self and a plenty of other variations on a theme.
This is an increasingly common life issue for people today and we need to talk about it and dwell on it in order to navigate it. It is an issue of authenticity and integrity - something people are hungry for. I am increasingly convinced that a key to evangelism is loving Jesus and being the same person everywhere. People are attracted to reliable, stable and constant friendship, in a world of unknowns, relativism and variables.
In effect, we must learn to kill our false selves so that all that remains is our true self, the one that is created in the image of God. Jesus says we need to lose our life in order to gain it. (Matt: 16:24-27) St Paul says we need to die to ourselves in order to for Christ to live in us. (Romans 6: 8-10) We need to graft our selves into our true identity in Jesus Christ and allow him to prune off our false selves. Jesus says, "If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.." (John 15:5)
A person who knows who they truly are, who is unashamed by that and who is that person everywhere is fantastically dangerous and will change those around them. A generation who knows who they truly are in Jesus, that is unashamed of him in them and is like that everywhere is ruinous to the powers of this world and will usher in cascades of the Kingdom of God.
Let's kill the horcruxes and let the great Lion roar out of our true selves.
