On Becoming a Person

My senior thesis in seminary was titled “Psychotheology, ”  suggesting that there were and are significant similarities in Paul Tillich’s theological term, “The New Being” (in Jesus the Christ) and Carl Roger’s psychological term  “the fully functioning person.”  That thesis was, in a way, my profession of faith.  It was my statement at that time about what I thought the ministry of Jesus was about in terms of the person and as a consequence, then, of what the church was meant to be and to do.  I thought then and still do that the Gospel of Jesus was about new life for the individual, he or she becoming  a “new” person, whose goal was and is to build community among all peoples.  Time, experience, and growth have not changed my mind, but rather clarified  and enlarged the original thesis.

Tillich’s “new being” and Roger’s “fully functioning person” I argued then, and argue still, are one and the same.  The most important thing in all the world is the fulfillment of humanity (my  humanity, your humanity and everybody’s humanity)—persons becoming fully human, becoming all they are meant to be, attempting to live their lives as authentically as Jesus lived his life.  

This “new being,” this “born again” person, this “fully functioning” person no longer lives in self-concealment or according to the expectations of others.  He or she is open to the changing, fluid, process which is who he or she is.  This new being recognizes and accepts this same process in other persons.  He or she accepts with open hands what is going on within—listening sensitively to the inner self (actually the many selves within)—ever moving toward the “is-ness” of who he or she is.  Kierkegaard said this “new life” means “to be that self which one truly is.”  This is not an easy way to move.  Jesus said the way is  narrow and never easy—suggesting that this new life is a journey which never ends.  It is a continuing way of life—a fulfillment which is never completed.  

Am I a “new being?”  Am I “born again” in this sense?  I want to be this “fully functioning” person—but even in my finest moments I realize that such fulfillment is never complete, nor can it be.  A fully functioning person is and remains a human being after all—always in the process of becoming a person.  

We are called to Ascend...