You Who?

You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal With It
By: Rachel Jankovic

"If you are looking for a book that will gently pet your bangs and soothe your worried brow, telling you how beautiful you are, this is not it."

PREACH!

So. refreshing.

Finally someone who will say it like it is and stop catering to our feelings. If Rachel was sitting next to me while I read this book, she would have gotten a hundred enthusiastic high fives. I'm tired of the secular and Christian trend alike making less of obedience and more of 'adjusting' truth to fit what we FEEL is right and true to ourselves and what makes us important. 'Identity' and 'meaning' are synonyms, and the world is really screwing these up. This is a book that sets the record straight- the record according to the Author and Creator of all things, who else?

We are getting the answers wrong to life's basic questions: "Who are we? Who decides? What does it mean, and why does it matter anyway?" Rachel is quick to point out that unlike what the world tells us, we are not writing our own stories. When we attempt to 'create' ourselves, it's choosing to defy God and what he created us to do and be. What we try to craft for ourselves is not what gives us value or importance. Our identity and meaning is found in obedience to and worship of our Creator, allowing Him to shape us into who he wants us to be.

Throughout the book, Rachel addresses fallacies like 'You just need to believe in yourself' or 'Follow your heart.' That only you can decide things for your true self. That being 'a daughter of a King' is a concept of privilege. And the implications of self-rescue (leaving or getting rid of anything that separates you from your true self).

True, the theme of obedience feels repetitive. But repetitive in a good way. Because she is trying to shock us out of our 'I'm in control and I can do anything I want because God will always love me and his grace always abounds' lifestyle. God is love. And grace is real and bountiful. But Jesus exemplified more than love. He was the picture-perfect definition of obedience. Scripture is clear- obedience doesn't save us, but are we really saved if we don't desire righteousness?

Let's see... what else...

In every chapter she points to Christ.
Her chapter on body image is phenomenal.
She emphasizes contentment and gratitude.

And she does not shy from the hard truths such as--

We need to DIE to ourselves:

"Stop trying to be true to yourselves, people! Hell is full of the true-to-self crowd! Be true to Christ! Let it all go! You are in good hands! It is far sweeter, more fun, and more interesting to die in Christ than to live to the self."

"We haven’t been called to ‘feel awesome about ourselves”, we have been called to faithfulness. We have been called to His purposes. The reality of following Christ is not that kind of cheap affirmation. It is not an emotional Snuggie for our cold hearts. It is a different thing altogether. It is a cross being carried."

We are NOT enough:

"You are free from worrying that you aren’t enough. You aren’t! None of us is! And that is good news. We weren’t made to be gods, we were made to be worshippers."

"The more like him we become, the more we become the person we were created to be. Instead of carrying a burden that focuses on knowledge of self, we shift the burden to knowledge of Christ. He is sufficient. I am not nor shall I ever be. He is faithful. He is perfect. He is capable. He is enough. And more than all these things together, the sweetest gift of all is that He has given himself to us."

"There is no hope for you that is not Jesus. There’s nothing interesting about you if it is not resurrected in him. There’s nothing defining about you that cannot live in Christ. Your selfishness is dead. Your lust is dead. Your need to be unique is dead. Your envy, greed, obsessions, guilts– they are all dead. Dead and gone in Christ. Stop trying to tidy them up and make them mean something, because they never will."

God doesn't love the selves we create:

"Christians who are struggling deeply with identity issues are getting so little help from other believers… We try to help them arrange their life and identity so they can still have whatever closely held things they have found in themselves (such as being same-sex attracted) and Jesus, too... more and more is being published by other struggling Christians on this topic, but it seems to be nothing more than a bunch of ideas for arranging things in your life so you can still think you qualify as a Christian...We Christians struggle to believe that Jesus could both love us and hate the identities we are fashioning. If he really loved us, he would be willing to be one of the presenting sponsors of whatever life we are busily creating for ourselves. He loves us, right? Aren’t we whatever we make ourselves? Doesn’t he love that?"

The organization of chapters weren't spot on, but the things she talks about do overlap a lot so I couldn't even propose a better plan.

I so appreciated this book in all its bluntness. In a culture of "tolerance" we've accepted a lot less than we are called to. Rachel slaps the blinders off our face and reminds us that history is His story, not ours.

Let's stop living in our tiny 'Jesus-sponsored' worlds and Be. His. Entirely.

A few extra quotes for your reading pleasure: (or hello, just go read the whole book!)

"If we try to write our stories like the world does, composing our little plot points and shaping ourselves into what we think it would be neat to be, but we love Jesus, this is just making him one more interesting plot point about us. We put our bumper sticker that says “Jesus – lover “on our little lifestyle car... But Christ will not be managed or contained like that. If he truly bought you with his blood, he did not do so in order to get a sponsorship position in your life. He’s not here to look good next your brand. He bought your life, and you are his."

"We are told over and over and over that you must follow your heart. And what our society has reaped from that unerring pursuit has been exactly what you might expect: a lot of wildly undisciplined and confused people, anxiously following their own wildest ideas, doing every self-indulgent and ill-behaved thing they can think of."

"The world tells us with endless enthusiasm that we can work our way to a perfect state of accepting ourselves and loving ourselves. The goal, they say, is to be able to love what you see in the mirror.… But if we do get ourselves there, what earthly good will it actually do us?… No matter how many times you tell yourself you are fierce or looking hot, nothing will come of it. There’s no salvation, no freedom here... The Christian should have an entirely different set of goals and aspirations. To what end has our body been given to us? So that we might glorify God. Do you know something that glorifies God? Christians glorify God when they are able to look in the mirror at their bodies – with all their faults and flaws and foibles – and truly love the One who gave it to them. That is the measure of a healthy body image."

"We do not continue to evaluate what the apple is doing for us once it is out of sight...This is the kind of simple joy we need to have in coming to the Word... Sometimes you won’t understand what you read, but eat it anyway in joy and gratitude, and it will change you anyway. The very act of eating the Word of God is an act of defining obedience. The Word is alive, and it knows what to do with you even when you don’t know what to do with it. (Heb 4:12)"

[Edit: I have now finished 'Girl, Wash Your Face.' (meh) ‘You Who?’ is indeed a response to Rachel Hollis' book and I can absolutely see why it needed to be written. Hollis' book is a promotion of self-sufficiency instead of God-dependency. I'm glad Jankovic wrote this book to remind us what the BIBLE says about our identity and who is in control, always sustaining us.]

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