Summary – The Gift of Being Yourself

Transformational Knowledge

Just having knowledge about God is not enough. We can have theories and ideas about God that make no difference because they are objective, not personal. This knowledge is not able to transform us. We can know that God is loving and that God is forgiving, but that is different than experiencing God’s love and experiencing God’s forgiveness. Experience grounds our spirituality in reality.

We can also view ourselves in the same way. We can think about ourselves objectively and from a distance. Our view of ourselves can be limited to an idealized/pretend self.

Transformational knowledge is always personal. It is always based on a relationship. In this case, it is both our relationship with God and ourselves. This is subjective knowledge based on experience, The type of knowing is deeper than head knowledge. Many Christians talk about a personal relationship with God, but don’t know God even as well as most acquaintances.

Knowledge of God in The Gift of Being Yourself

Knowledge of God begins with objective knowledge about God. This provides a foundation for experience to build on, not to replace. Transformational knowledge comes from personal knowing of God’s divine love. The primary way we know God is through Jesus, who is the image of God. Jesus seeks an ongoing relationship with us. This relationship is built on spending time together through prayer, meditating on the life of Jesus in the gospels, and increasing our awareness of God’s presence in the events of our lives.

Knowledge of Self in the Gift of Being Yourself

Our true self is something we receive from God, not something we make for ourselves. Our identity begins with knowing that we are deeply loved unconditionally by God. It isn’t a sentimental feeling, but a deep and persistent love. We accept God’s love in the vulnerability of our sin.

Next, part of knowing ourselves involves encountering the unwelcomed parts of ourselves and accepting those parts as part of who we are. Self-acceptance wakens the power these parts of our lives have over us.

We have all built up unconscious strategies for coping with the world we live in. From an early age, we develop psychological defense mechanisms that provide stability. We need to break through these illusions to understand who we truly are.

Next, Benner talks about the sin behind our sins. It is easier to get at the surface level sins without understanding the underlying sin at the root. The Enneagram is a way of categorizing personality types that calls out the “basic sin” of nine different personality types. For example, someone who is an enneagram five needs knowledge and longs for fulfillment. They are tempted by greed, stinginess, and critical detachment.

The False Self

Our false self arises from our mistaken belief that happiness will come from living our way instead of God’s way. We develop a personal style that we use to preserve an image of ourselves that we use to relate to the world. These masks become our identity and our reality. We can learn to recognize our false selves by noticing where we get defensive or where we display patterns of compulsive behaviors.

Next, Benner looks at the example of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. He resists the false selves of power, prestige, and possessions. When Jesus was twelve years old, we see evidence of his understanding of who he is when his parents search for him and find him in the temple where Jesus says he is doing his father’s work. Jesus did not look at the expectations of others for his identity, he looked at his relationship with God.

Benner concludes with a discussion of vocation. Discovering our true selves leads to a calling. We are first called to be humans. Then we are called to be Christians. Our unique calling will be based on our gifts and abilities. It is a way of being that is both best for us and best for the world. The discernment of our calling is a lifelong process.

Top Takeaways – The Gift of Being Yourself

My top takeaway from this book is a better understanding of the role of sin in forming our false selves. Many sins can be boiled down to the core sins of pride, anger, or greed. We will continually fall into the same sins until we address the underlying sin that leads us back to the same spot. It is worth reflecting on where this core/basic sin comes from and how we have made it a part of our identity as a way of coping with the world. I don’t think there are easy answers to this, but worth the work of exploring it in a community of trusted Christians.

Critique – The Gift of Being Yourself

The Role of Experience

My first critique is the way Benner ties identity to our experience. On one level this is obviously true. We only ever view anything through our experience of it. But I don’t think this is what Benner is saying. He seems to contrast experience with objective facts or head knowledge. Experience seems to only refer to emotions or heart knowledge. As someone who is much more a thinker than a feeler, I think Benner’s approach falls short of fully encompassing everyone’s experiences.

I don’t think that feeling and thinking can be so cleanly split. We can experience God through thoughts and feelings. We can have a relationship with God with both our thoughts and feelings. I regularly experience God through ideas and concepts. These ideas and concepts can lead to feelings and emotional states (love, awe, worship, etc.) that form a basis for a relationship. Benner is right that our relationship with God needs to include experience and not just information and the relationship must involve feelings and emotions, but I would add on the value of experiencing God through emotions flowing out of objective facts.

The “Givens” of Being

My second critique is the role of the Bible. While Benner states that he doesn’t want to diminish the value of the Bible in knowing our vocation, he does just that. He claims that the “givens” of our being are more core to understanding God’s will for our lives than the Bible is. The “givens” are our temperament, personality, abilities, interests, and passions. As an evangelical, the authority of Scripture and sufficiency of Scripture are of primary importance. This seems like an unnecessary distinction. We know Jesus and ourselves through the Bible. The Bible provides the framework that we use to define the aspects of our personality, abilities, and interests that align with the Kingdom of God. We should be wary of undermining the role of Scripture or thinking it is somehow in conflict with who we are.

Evaluation – The Gift of Being Yourself

This book provides a compelling discussion about the relationship between knowing God and knowing ourselves. There are many other resources about knowing God written from a theological perspective. What makes this book unique is the emphasis on knowing ourselves written from a psychological perspective. This may leave some readers with theological questions (or even concerns) with the book. I suspect Benner would be fine with that. He isn’t trying to write theology. If you are looking for the overlap between theology and psychology, then this is likely the book for you.

The book includes helpful exercises for reflection at the end of each chapter as well as discussion guides in an appendix for use in a group setting. This book is short and can be quick to read, but the content will take a lifetime to fully integrate into your life.