To understand this let us recall Sartre’s famous reflection on a Parisian waiter. He once saw a waiter who was so absorbed in his role as a waiter that he seemed to define himself in terms of that job. Sartre wrote of how this young man was acting in a mode of inauthenticity because he was not embracing the reality that he cannot be contained by the roles he plays in life.

In the same way the various identities that we adopt are useful, but we miss something vital about our humanity if we act as if we are fully defined by them. The problem is that we do not want to embrace this insight because it is terrifying to do so. It is terrifying because the various beliefs and roles we adopt help us to feel like masters of our own universe, they protect us from the experience of chaos and give us a type of compass that can direct our activity.

Yet Paul calls us to fully face up to and enter into the truth that we are all naked, broken and hurtling toward death. He is calling us to identify with Christ on the Cross and thus embrace a profound experience of nihilism. But the trick is that in facing up to and embracing ourselves as outsiders in this way we actually find a form of liberation and freedom Paul knew as Resurrection life.

An excerpt from a blog post by Peter Rollins where he discusses Paul’s “Trash of the World” Universalism. Please go read the whole thing here.

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Drawing above by Chris Scarborough

Tags:CrossIdentityJesusPaul of TarsusPeter Rollinsuniversalism