“If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I am living for, in detail, ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for.” ― Thomas Merton
I remember when I received the e-mail where I was told that I had a DPhil ('Oxfordese' for PhD) position in Oxford if I wanted it (ha! Like they had to ask...). The next few minutes that ensued were a combination of a racing heart, a sense of non reality and many phone calls (some of which were quite entertaining, like my Granny who said "My... I was glad you were applying, but I never thought you'd get it." - talk about brutal honesty...).
Within little time I realised that I had started a new stage in life where I would have to learn to walk a very fine line between 'sharing something I was excited about' and boasting. Was I allowed to tell every living creature that I had gotten into Oxford? Why did I feel like this was something I wanted particularly people who had been mean, disbelieving or who had hurt me to know? This was probably a sign that my desire to shout it out to the world was not virtuous...
As months went by after the acceptance but before actually starting the program, I had to come to terms with the fact that, well, unsurprisingly I'm not a very nice person. I found myself being proud and arrogant - both in thought and in deed - as I felt like so many things that I did in the past that made me difficult, incompetent socially or weird were finally justified. "I'm weird and sometimes rude, but hey, at least its because I'm smart". It felt like this was the ultimate acceptance that would justify me, that would redeem all the mistakes from the past.
At the same time insecurity started to take hold of me - very slowly, creeping in almost imperceptibly. Could I actually do this? I'm not actually that smart. I'm glad they think it, but what if they didn't ask me the right questions in the interview? What if I fooled them into believing I was better than I am? Looking at my cover letter, I wrote a series of life events as though they were planned out and carefully architected, when in fact it was a mess, chaos and apparent chance which led me through the journey of my academic formation: I had zero credit in the way things worked out. Am I an impostor? These conflicting natures of insecurity and pride continue to battle each other out in the wrestling ring of my heart.
This slow insecurity continued to grow as the months of my course progressed and months became a year until the point where it became suffocating. Particularly with a huge shift in fields - a dramatic change from neuroscience to immunology made me realise how woefully unprepared I was for this enterprise. I had never studied to depth molecular biology anywhere else other than the brain, my self-taught patchy knowledge of molecular biology, biochemistry and physiology were less than an undergraduate level's biology - let alone when compared to Oxford students. I looked around me at other much more talented people who had an extremely solid background, excellent undergraduate studies and consistently outperformed me and worked longer hours. All of the expectations that 'I am in Oxford, therefore my life is being set up for great things' began to crush me.
Oxford is a very unique place for over-achievers. Normally the people that get here are over-achieving perfectionists - being knowledgeable and intellect driven is frequently what defines us when growing up. The problem is when you actually get to Oxford, your very identity is challenged and often unravelled, because everyone else is also an over-achieving perfectionist that loves to learn. Your performance, which used to be excellent, suddenly is barely average. You thought you were good at something - until you look at the other students around you who are much more skilful, intelligent and better suited at this, and you start to wonder what the heck you are doing here. Greatness has no room for error, greatness has no room for learning. Performance is everything.
This only reinforces both of the main models of sources of identity - traditional and modern. The traditional identity is the one that seeks truth and meaning outside of one's self - in family, in religion, in society's approval. The modern identity is the more western perspective that claims that you are wonderful, awesome, you don't need anyone's approval and the truth is within yourself; your passions and your heart should guide you BUT you are the one who must prove yourself. Ultimately, both of these models are performance based, only with different motivations.
And so students arrive from the east and west, pursuing greatness and finding what is often what they attribute most of their worth to - their academic prowess - to be questioned: if I am not the smartest, who am I?
Very frequently this results in mental health issues, overworked students and students being so crippled by the pressure that, ironically, they are unable to work at all. Similarly to many other students, I have had some stages at which progress and learning felt like walking (or trying and failing to walk) in a boggy terrain with knee-deep thick mud; the need to succeed blocked the path to learning. I tried to repeat to myself "if God has led me here, he will help me and he will see this through", but that really didn't help.
In the middle of the attractive flashing neon lights of academia, my faith was becoming less and less of a life transforming truth and more of a mechanical repetition, an intellectual exercise. As this progressed, so my ability to deal with failure and difficulty worsened because any challenge to my work was a challenge to my identity. It was only during one particularly bad week where I had made many mistakes and had held back substantially the work that I realised that maybe the purpose that God had for me was not a successful PhD, but to show me how empty my pursuit of a prestigious degree left me. Perhaps his intention was to point out in blinding signs how my faith that my degree could redeem all my mistakes in the past was, well, impossible. I began to love learning and knowing things so much that I began to hate it. In fact, because of my inability to get it right I started to hate myself - constant statements to myself of being stupid or foolish filled my head and my days to a crippling extent. Unrequited love for an idol had broken both my idol and myself.
As I thought through everything, that night I finally came to terms that it was entirely possible that God's will for me in this PhD was a catastrophic failure: humiliating me in front of all those whom I boasted to, stripping me of everything that I loved more than I loved God and teaching me in the hardest way that God cares more about my holiness than he does about my happiness. I had prayed for my work to be for his glory, but I now saw it was possible that his glory would be best seen in the brokenness of my failed self-constructed identity.
This was the point at which my prayer changed from 'help me to do this work' to 'give me grace to deal with failure, if that is your will' because failure seemed to be so terrifying, I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it without His mercy and grace.
After that things have not gotten easy by any means, but something has indeed changed. Accepting failure as a possibility has given me space to learn and, importantly, deal with criticism without it being a personal challenge. However, identifying and trying to give up my idol was not enough. I had a diagnosis, now I needed open heart surgery.
This week Timothy Keller was in Oxford giving a series of talks on what it means to be human, where he dealt with many things that all humans need (satisfaction, identity, hope, a means to deal with pain and suffering). Particularly his talks on satisfaction and identity felt like that surgery I needed, where he was dissecting and describing the process the past months have been (in fact, the description of identity a few paragraphs up was a summarised version of his description of sources of identity, first described by Charles Taylor in the book Sources of self).
Importantly, I placed to Tim Keller an intellectual question (If Christianity is not performance based, how can someone lose their salvation?) which seemed like it received a 'non-answer'. He highlighted that when you actually love God and your salvation becomes your motivator, you obey and live for him out of love rather than fear of losing salvation.
(note: there was a huge crowd around which made me quite nervous, so I unfortunately cannot remember the details of his answer so this is subject to my goldfish-memory)
After a night of sleep, I woke up the next morning and realised the implications of his answer - he saw past the cerebral question to the true issue in my heart. My struggle to love my idols less and obey God more was not because of loving too much something, but because of not loving God enough. But I wondered: I was trying to intellectually learn more about God, I was trying to spend time in prayer and with the Bible, I was trying (albeit very imperfectly) to obey God, and I had faith in God and in the evidence for Christianity: Wasn't that loving God?
That morning I flipped my Bible to 1 Corinthians 13 to try to figure out how I could actually love God and was surprised to read this passage for possibly the hundredth time in my life and only now grasp its meaning:
"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing."
Suddenly as I read this, I realised a few things.
(1) Having a spiritual gift (even the 'flashy' ones like speaking in tongues or prophesy) does not mean that you love God and that everything in your relationship is well with him. To quote Keller on this, "Don't confuse gifts with Grace". We are instructed to desire speaking in tongues and to prophesy, but love is to be our highest goal (1 Corinthians 14:1)
(2) Fathoming all knowledge is also not love.
(3) Having faith in God (and even being able to do miraculous signs because of it) is also not loving God.
(4) A self sacrifice - whether material or corporal - also does not mean you love.
So as I'm thinking about the ways in which I had been trying to please God, my 'metrics' of healthy relationship with him were incorrect diagnostic cues. My faith in him, my knowledge of him/his word, any sacrifices I was making in time or money, are all perfectly good things, but as Paul says: if I do not have love, I am nothing and I gain nothing from these things. So here Keller's point actually made sense to me, as it seemed I was going through the motions and manifesting the correct 'symptoms' but there was something inherently wrong with my motivation and my heart in doing them. As an overreaction to Christian movements that emphasise only emotions and the heart, I went to the overly intellectual side which is just as detrimental. This was why everything felt so darn difficult.
I would love to have a clear and simple answer as to how to love God more for anyone that might be going through a similar situation, but I simply do not. What happened in the days that ensued is something much more strange than I can explain or understand. As I had this epiphany of what was actually wrong with me, I had no idea what was the way to love God. I dumped all of this mess - my head, my heart, my work, my wrong loves and myself - into his grace with a prayer realising that for once I couldn't think my way out of this one. There was a change deeper than actions and thoughts that needed to happen in me, and I had no idea how (or if) I could help make it that happen.
The day that followed this quiet time was a bizarrely glorious one, of being able to really enjoy my work and not once did self-accusatory or self-hating thoughts cross my mind; and it genuinely felt/feels like a feeling of loving God. Of things working. Even with many things to do, I felt less lethargic, more energetic, excited about my work and genuine peace and joy - I feel different, physically, mentally and spiritually. It transcends understanding and is a beautiful place to be in. The most wonderful thing is that I don't have a clue how it happened and I love even more the fact that I have zero merit in it. A few days on, loving God more is not making me love any less the things that are important to me - but it is freeing me to love these things without them becoming my everything, without putting unreasonable expectation on them. I am free to not think less of myself, but to think of myself less. The most valuable lesson Oxford could teach me has nothing to do with the title I'm working towards - but it has everything to do with my identity.
