‘This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man’
Polonius to his son Laertes: Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1
Though it is now over 400 years since Shakespeare said it first, it’s still being said today. I heard it again this week, perhaps you did too – that ubiquitous call to be true to oneself.
Of course those who urge such a way of life cannot really mean it since to do so would be to ignore the internal contradiction of their own advice since any protestation by another that I should act in such a way is itself a call for me to act in accordance with their will and not my own. Furthermore, if they are honest, those who advocate such a philosophy would surely limit the extent to which they would wish me to follow their advice for surely they’d have a different view if my being true to myself meant I acted in ways that were contrary to what they deemed acceptable. That, I guess, is why one who was first heralded as brave and courageous for being true to himself could subsequently be forced to resign his job when that same motivation caused him to act in a way that was considered ‘unwise but not illegal’.
The thing is that to follow one’s heart is, for me at least, a bad idea because all too often my heart is not how it should be. Just as my thinking something doesn’t necessarily make it true, so my feeling something doesn’t necessarily make it right. To believe otherwise would surely be the height of arrogance. The reality is that being true to myself will frequently mean my acting falsely towards others, and my being kind to myself will result in my being mean to those around me. And so that other modern adage that asserts that we should first look after ourselves is revealed to be nothing other than a veil to conceal our true desire to put others second.
That’s why, rather than looking inside of ourselves to determine what is true and then imposing that on those around us, we need to look for truth outside of us and then seek to conform to that objective measure of what is right and wrong. Only then will we not fall foul of our ‘deceitful and desperately sick’ hearts.
And as we seek to do that, we may just find ourselves being found by the only one who, ‘though being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage’ but instead ‘made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant’.
And then, as we discover the one who was the truth, the one who, unlike any other, could justifiably follow his heart, we will see how he did just that by being kind, not to himself but to us as ‘being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!’ [Philippians 2:6-8].
Rather, then, than following our own hearts, we would do well to follow the only one whose heart is as it should be.
For as surely as night follows day, as Jesus Christ is true to himself, he cannot be false to any man.
Related posts:
To read ‘In Loving Memory of Truth’, click here
To read ‘The Sacrifice of Isaac – Law or Gospel?’, click here
To read ‘Water from a Rock’, click here
To read ‘The Resurrection – is it just rhubarb?’, click here
To read “Suffering- A Personal View”, click here.
To read “Why do bad things happen to good people – a tentative suggestion”, click here
To read “Luther and the global pandemic – on becoming a theologian of the cross”, click here
To read ‘T.S. Eliot, Jesus and the Paradox of the Christian Life’, click here
To read ‘Real Power’, click here
To read ‘Foolishness – Law and Gospel’, click here
To read ‘The Promise Keeper’, click here
To read ‘The Rainbow’s End’, click here
To read ‘True Love?’, click here
To read “Hope comes from believing the promises of God”, click here
To read, ‘But this I know’, click here
To read ‘I’ll miss this when I’m gone – extended theological version’, click here
To read ‘On being confronted by the law’, click here
To read ‘The “Already” and the “Not Yet”’, click here
To read ‘Rest Assured’, click here
Some musings 