What Have I Become?

Johnny Cash made Hurt famous—but it was written by Trent Reznor, a 30-year-old caught between two versions of himself: the person on stage and the kid alone in his room. And in that tension, he asks a question most of us quietly carry: What have I become… and how did I get here?

This week, we’re using that question to rethink something many of us were taught to fear—sin. What if it’s not about punishment or getting it right, but a signal that something in your life is pulling you away from who you actually want to be?

If you’ve ever felt that gap - between your life and your values, between who you are and who you’re trying to be - this one matters.

Join us at the Spiritual Gym this week. Let’s figure out what it looks like to actually live abundantly… not just trying not to screw it up.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

I'm not quite done, but what a beautiful line. If you don't change, you die. We're gonna get to that at the end of the message. The band's about to play a song they've played here before. It's called Hurt. Does anybody know the song Hurt? Originally, Hurt, well, let me say it this way. About 10, 15 years ago, Hurt came out by Johnny Cash. Beautiful song sung by a man at the end of his life. It was released just before his wife June died. And so when you when you hear it through Johnny Cash's voice, you hear this song of a man looking back at his life going, I don't know if I can live without her. But here's the thing Hurt was not written by Johnny Cash. Hurt was not written for Johnny Cash. Hurt was written by a man named Trent Reznor. He was 30 years old when he wrote it. He was not looking down at his life, going, I'm, you know, I'm looking back at my life and how did I live it and my relationship? Will I ever feel love again? Will I ever, will I ever, this hurt ever go away? That's not what he's doing. He's exploring something completely different. He's a 30-year-old man who was a self-professed geek. He's like, I spent my life listening to records in my room. And then he becomes the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails. One of the first big industrial bands. He's playing in front of stadiums of people. There's like huge crowds of people, and he's this guy who goes, I'm just this weirdo. And I have thousands of adoring fans. He writes this line. Can you throw it up for me, friend? What have I become? My sweetest friend. Everyone I know goes away in the end. You can feel the loss, the sense of I'm not connected. I don't know. I don't know who who knows me, who who loves me. And he says, if I could start again a million miles away, I would keep myself. I would find a way. A man torn between who he is and who the world sees him as. Who he's trying to show the world that he is, but he's not. And through the eyes of a 30-year-old Trent Reznor, we don't see loss, we don't see a lifetime of marriage. What we see is somebody going, How do I live?

SPEAKER_01 3:07

How do I show the world who I am? How do I be my true self? That's not who they want to see.

SPEAKER_02 3:23

I'm gonna get the band to play hurt. I want you to watch it through the lens of what in our lives are we hiding from the world around us? What parts do we keep to ourselves? As they sing the lyrics, find that part of yourself again. What came up? What is your brain going? This is what I hide. Insecurities, that's an easy one, right? If we don't like a part of our body, we wear clothes that cover that part, so we don't have to show that to the world. Tall, skinny guy. Always felt a little insecure about being tall and skinny. I remember every year when I was a kid going from long sleeve season to short sleeve season. I had to show my body. I didn't like it. Hiding is easier, isn't it? Maybe it's not insecurities physical, maybe it's mental, emotional.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

What else comes up?

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Failures? Things where you're not enough. It's so easy to just put them aside. I just I just won't show up with that part. I just won't show them that part. I won't let that part be part of me. I'll be over here. It's sobering in the words of Trent Reznor. If I could do it all a million miles away, I would keep myself whole. I'd find a way. This is a series on sin, so you're probably wondering how in the hell is Vince going to get from there to sin? We'll get there. Because Trent Reznor actually taps into something that some of our greatest theologians have tapped into on what they call things that undermine abundant life. It's a line from a Jesus story. Jesus said, I have come, he was talking to his followers at the time, his kind of his core group. I have come to give you life and teach you how to live it abundantly. How do we get to abundant life? That just sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Life that's abundant.

SPEAKER_02 6:17

Life where you have so much life that you look forward to your life. You have so much extra. You can give it to people in Mexico with a house build. We call it taking water. It's coming out of you because it's abundant. It's not the sense of my life is just compressed, truncated. Now, we've been reacting to traditions. I grew up in a tradition, a Mennonite tradition. God bless Mennonites. Nice. Good dough. We take care of our dough seriously. Someone asked me the other day, would you like day old bread? And I was like, sorry, what did you just ask me? Did you just call the Pope a name? Because that's what it sounded like. Didn't catch that joke. All the Mennonites in the room got it. We grew up with this idea that sin was a list of things, list of things that you don't do. You're scared of, you run away from. Anyone else? No, don't put up your hand, but if you've even watched The Simpsons, you know that Ned Flanders is always about if there's someone's having fun, someone's sinning. That's what we know, right? Sin is the thing you run away from. It's the thing you're scared of. The whole thing is about what do you not do. Now I grew up really religious. I always expect or I was always taught there's a um a list of sins, things you're supposed to do and do not do. So a couple weeks ago, I went through every instance of sin in the Bible. That's not the joke. You did what? Every instance of sin. Guess what I didn't find? A definitive list of things you're not supposed to do. That was sobering. Because I grew up there. Whatever that is, that's bad. Run away from that. It's not about living abundantly. This is the joke. Um, I grew up in a midnight community. We had sex ed at church. That's the joke. Guess how long it lasted? Don't do it till you're married. Done. Like anything. Sexuality, sexuality with yourself, sexuality with another human being, sexual thoughts, any of it. It's all that. You do that, you're gonna burn. In fact, I don't know if you, but all of us got it. But the girls in our community got it even worse. They said, if you're sexual before you're married, it's like somebody put a piece of gum, you are the piece of gum, then they chewed it up and then they spit it out. And that's what you're giving to your future partner.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

That's brutal, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 9:18

It's this. Was there anything about how to live life abundantly? No. Sex was bad, it was all bad, it was all that. Run away from it, don't do it. If you did it, you're bad. You're a chewed up piece of gum. You just need to like feel bad. There's a lot of just feeling bad, a lot of guilt. Which is strange. The sex that I got was wait till you're married, you'll figure it all out. No sexuality until then. So you would think that the Bible would be particularly negative towards sexuality, right? Which is strange that there's a book called Song of Songs. Guess what word is never mentioned in that entire book? God. Guess what's in that book? Two unmarried couples, they happen to be straight couples, woman and a man, who are particularly hot and heavy for themselves and each other. Like they think they are like them. Now, just in case you think that maybe I'm exaggerating, there's a bit of hyperbole here. I'd like to take a passage from this song of songs and just read it out loud to you. Okay, throw it up for me. My beloved thrust his hand through the latch opening. My heart began to pound for him. I arose to open my open from my beloved, not the door, but open. And my hands dripped with myrrh. My fingers flowing with myrrh on the handles of the bolt. Sex is bad. That's all metaphor. That has nothing to do with sexuality. It's literal myrrh. That's what she has in her hand. It's literal myrrh.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

That's not myrrh.

SPEAKER_02 11:24

How is it that we did this with the source text of that? You gotta read that sucker with your eyes closed. That is some hot sex right there. And there's a whole book of it. There's a reason I never heard one sermon about Song of Songs in my entire history. I did go to a lecture. Tremper Longman III, pardon me. Sorry, Tremper, you're a fantastic scholar. Um, Tremper Longman went through this whole thing about Song of Songs, and then he says, Oh, by the way, um it never once says in the text that they're married, but because of our tradition, they're married.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Great scholarship, buddy.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

But you see our tradition does it. It's this. This is sin. It's all about making sure you don't do these things, whatever sexuality is. She is in behind closed doors, her hands are covered in myrrh. What do you think she's doing?

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Someone just said gardening. Euphemistically, yes, gardening. For all the 12-year-olds in the room, gardening, ask your parents after. That's you, buddy. He's like, Oh, this is so uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Oh boy. Okay. Living life abundantly. How do you do it? Completely denying physical pleasure with yourself, with others. How do you do it? How do you conceive of that? My tradition just said that is bad. That's all you have to pay attention to. They never said, but what is good? How do we do this? How do we move towards something? And that's why we're taking sin not as this, like, whatever we're not supposed to do, this list of things that if you do this, some conception of God will be angry at you. We're asking a different question of sin. How can sin guide us towards an abundant life?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

To me, that's exciting.

SPEAKER_02 13:39

How do I take my life and level it up? Have more fulfillment, have more stuff, have a better way in the world. Last week we talked about this idea of lack. A guy named Um Peter Rollins talks about it. It's this idea that says Well, actually, let me tell you through the story. We talked about it through Adam and Eve's story. In case you didn't grow up in Sunday school like I did, Adam and Eve is this ideology. Uh, and ideology is well, actually, I should say it this way. I take Adam and Eve's story as an ideology. It's a story of how we got to this moment. It's not designed to be historical, it's not designed to be factual. It's the question of how did we get here? And someone tells you a story that the answer is, this is how we got here. It says there were two people, Adam and Eve, in the garden. There's a character God, the God says, Don't eat of this one fruit of a one tree. The snake walks up, and yeah, he walks and talks. That's how it rolls. He walks up to Eve one day and says, Hey, are you allowed to eat of any fruit? She's like, Well, we can eat anything but that one. Thought that was interesting. But she doesn't seem to care, which is strange. Until that snake says, You know, if you eat of that fruit, you're gonna become like God. And suddenly Eve had a thought in her mind, wait a second. I'm less than God, I am lacking something that if I just eat this fruit, I could be better? My life could be better. And suddenly, instead of being able to eat anything she wanted, any fruit of any tree, all that she had, she was living in the Garden of Eden, what we call paradise. So, okay, whenever you just take something away from a child, they cry. That's just how it rolls. It's all good. Eve, instead of focusing on all the good that she has, all she can think of now is, but I'm not like God. But I could be like God. And we realized when we see sin as a guide, as an indicator, as this way of saying, Hey, hey, are you living abundantly? Because Eve went from I'm living my best life to having this incredible time to obsessing about the thing that she's lacking. You know, sometimes I don't like my job because the whole week before and up to and after my message, all I'm paying attention to is all the different ways I'm seeing my life through lack. And I'm like, if I was just some heathen, I could just ignore all this stuff. Just be blissfully angry about things. Every once in a while, my wife's like, are you in lack? And I'm like, mmm, so right. We realized there's a if you can pay attention to where your mind goes to lack and make a different choice there. Realize, oh wait, I just have this belief that if I could only have this thing, if I only had this job, if my health was only this way, if my relationship was only this way, if only had this thing, then everything would be okay. Doesn't work. That's the sin of lack. If only everything was perfect. I was talking to two perfectionists after the message, and they were like, sorry, there's something other than lack? I don't understand. How does it fascinating, isn't it? Today I want to take the Adam and Eve story and I want to push it further as another way to gain more abundant life. Because Adam and Eve, they eat of the fruit. Adam, Adam's like a bumbling moron in this story. It's like Eve does all the decision making. He's like, oh, what should I eat this? Yeah, okay. Dummy. But as soon as they eat of the tree of the fruit or the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they take it. The first thing that they do is they go, We're naked. Do you see what's really interesting here? And remember, I take this as an ideology. It's the kid saying, Mom, why do I have to wear pants? Well, there's once this Adam and Eve character they eat in the free. Now we all have to hide our genitals. It's just the way it rolls. I don't know. Ask them. But do you see what happened suddenly in this moment? We went from an Adam and Eve character that were completely open to the world to suddenly they were hiding. What did we start with? The Trent Reznor story that says, There's a part of me that I hide. There's a part of me that I hide so I can be this rock star, this guy who leads entire stadiums of people. But to do it, I have to hide part of myself.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

Often we think, what's the harm in hiding?

SPEAKER_02 19:11

Really, what's the harm? You know, someone brings up something political at a family dinner, and you're like, someone at work does something bonehead and you're about to go, I'm gonna keep the peace. It's kind of, it seems like, you know, the whole sin thing where sin's bad, keeping the peace seems like a good thing, doesn't it? And yet the very thing that we see in the Adam and Eve story is they go from being fully themselves to hiding. Trent Reznor writes an entire song that says, if I could move a million miles away from my own life, where no one knows me, I'd figure out a way to live without hiding. There's a scholar named Paul Tillich. He says hiding. He actually defines it this way. He says, Sin is the separation of yourself from the part of yourself you can't bear.

SPEAKER_01 20:23

The part that you hide.

SPEAKER_03 20:26

Your insecurities, your failures, all the things that we don't want the world to see.

SPEAKER_01 20:44

When you look at your life, could you conceive of showing the world who you truly are?

SPEAKER_02 20:58

If Telek is right, and if that's the core of sin, could you conceive of it? Because I'll be honest with you for a moment, I can't. Or at least in this right right here, right now, I can't. I've hidden the things that I've hidden for a good damn reason. All the kids are out, so it's okay. I can swear again. A friend of mine told me his version of the Trent Reznor song. He's an addict. Um, I think he would use that term in the present tense. He said, Vince, I don't think you understand what hiding does. He said, just like Trent Reznor, I always felt like the world didn't like me very much. That if I didn't pay attention, if I didn't if I didn't show up a certain way, they would leave.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

That I'd be alone. And I so desperately want love. So he says, here's what the addict cycle is.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

We so desperately want that love that we put on a mask and we hide the things that are painful about us, the things that are unlovable, the things that are too much. And we think at the beginning it's for a good cause, right? Of course I would just hide it. Can any of us conceive of opening up about your insecurities? Talking to the person next door on the street, yeah, I have a reading disability. Sorry, I can't actually read. Going to work and saying, yeah, you know what? I can't actually handle this job. Going on a first date and being like, yeah, I'm already divorced. It lasted three weeks. Yeah, like anything under a year, we just don't count it, right? He says, this is what we do. It starts off that we hide. We put on a mask, and then here's the thing, the thing that's so unbelievably painful. The reason why I think hiding is a sin, not in that sense, but in a way that undermines abundant living. He says they put on this mask and they love me behind the mask. And every day, the thing that I want so much, I'm getting, but I know it's not for me. Because I am not there. I've hidden part of myself, and now it's the most painful thing because the very thing I want, the very thing I desperately need, I am getting, but I know it's not for me. And so I go back to hiding even more. But that feels so horrible. Because I know I can't be loved here. So I put on the mask and I feel their love, knowing every time this is not for me.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Because they don't know who I am. Hiding means we can never be loved.

SPEAKER_03 24:12

Because the people who love us don't even know us. The people who love us don't even know us. And now that love is like ashes in our mouth.

SPEAKER_02 24:38

Paul Tillick said the spiritual journey, I would say it, a life of abundance is about reconnecting to those parts of ourselves that we've hidden from. Because sometimes we've hid them for so long, I've lost touch with them. Me and my wife were out for dinner last night. We're talking through again this. I'd like to be free of it some days. And I had to apologize because I was like, you know, the way I hide from you is not something I'm embarrassed about. There's stuff about that too, but that's not the big one. Mine is when you're stressed, I was taught to hide my relational needs from you. Stop asking for what I need. Stop engaging with you. Just letting you be. Oh, you're stressed. Okay, I'll just take care of myself. I'll take care of my own needs. Sounds really nice, doesn't it? Until three weeks later, I blow a hissy fit over nothing. Because I've suppressed it for so long. She's like, what could I have done differently? I said, You did nothing wrong. Nothing. Three weeks ago I hid something from you.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Thinking I was doing the nicest thing for you. And look at the cost.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

I'm gonna have the band come up because I want to hear that song once more. This is all about me, folks. You, like many of us, probably have very good reasons why you're hiding. Why you've separated from parts of yourself. This part over here I don't show. This is the part I show up in the world. It makes sense, right? I'm just keeping the peace. I'm just doing good things. I'm making sure that it's easy for other people. I'm not asking for what I need. Sin as a mentor, as a guide, as an indicator says, be very mindful of what you hide. Because the cost of what you hide will be higher than you want to pay. Trent Reznor, in writing the song, said, I would give up anything. I'd give up my mound of dirt, I'd give up anything. I would move a million miles away from fame and fortune and everything that my life has become. To be whole again.

SPEAKER_01 27:38

To not have to hide the part of me that's not the rock star.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

The wisdom today from Trent Reznor, from Paul Tillich, and from Adam and Eve is this. The cost of hiding is tremendous.

SPEAKER_01 28:03

And the cost is paid with less abundance in our lives. I don't want to pay that anymore. I want to do the work to show up even when it's hard.

SPEAKER_02 28:23

Amen. Remember, amen in this context is hell yes. So hell yes. Okay, let's let the band play us out. Remember, in your mind, think through what it is that I'm hiding and what's the cost of that. We'll see you all at the River and Parkway clean up.