Measuring
Life

Let me turn your thoughts to three possible ways you define yourself:

Egocentric
Ethnocentric
Theocentric

Yes, you are correct—you probably could create other ways or combinations of ways in which you define who you are but let’s begin with these three routes.

Egocentric would be defining yourself through your own perception of yourself and probably would include the input of your immediate family of origin, those who were relatives or the nearest circle of influence. In this you learn to see yourself through their perception of you, how they value you, interact with you, how you are respected or disrespected as an individual. These have the earliest contact with you and interact with you and your most basic affirmation of needs or denial of fulfillment.

Ethnocentric is a broader spectrum where you see yourself through the eyes of the ethnic group you identify with; this would be foremost the ethnic group you belong to by birth, the ethnic group you grew up as part of or a broader group that you identify with through behavior, practice or beliefs. While this originally was defined by birth characteristics, it has broadened in the most recent century to embrace the other identities.

Theocentric would be how you see yourself through the eyes of your god. Yes, this likely is strongly influenced by your group of closest participation but may well have a deeper individual identification beyond the group-think to how you understand your god. You need not necessarily be religious (hence the small “g”) and have created your own perception of god as you understand it. You take your identity from something similar to the ‘manifest destiny’ we have mentioned in earlier blogs where you see yourself as distinctive to everyone else, maybe even with an element of superiority in your uniqueness of worth as you have defined yourself. Or, theocentric could be you seeing yourself through the eyes of God which would be even more of a challenge than the other possibilities. How doe an individual in the embrace of any culture come to have a perspective likely divergent from the influence of peers? How much exposure would it take to displace the ego or the ethnos with a theos view of yourself? Is it possible to exchange the world view, the human perspective, for the divine view? Would you even want to try such a possibility? Would you think a divine view to be better than either of the other two world views?

First Corinthians 2:9-10 & 14 allude to the difficulty in us having a theocentric view apart from the participation of God:

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”—these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. … The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. ¹

As I write this blog, the volume of Jeffrey Epstein documents are in the public domain and what I find to be the most tragic truth to come out is the revelation of his attitude that ALL other people he knew were of lesser stature in his own eyes, that he saw himself as elevated and superior to ALL other humans. His dream of seeding the human race with his superior DNA was expressed in his pursuit of eugenics and even the prospect of transhumanism (think along the lines of cyborg).²

“The natural person does not accept the things of the [Divine] for they are folly to him…” Man, left to create his own identity, may well create his own Hell.

How do you perceive correctly enough to rise to the Divine view of man without allowing God to provide the perspective?

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.”³

But, contrary to the way that seems right to a man—

“Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God,
who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” ⁴