One of the best rock albums of the last 20 years, in my rankings, is Social Cues by Cage the Elephant. Three songs from the end is a track with the title, “What I’m Becoming.”
I saw Cage the Elephant live in KC one summer and I love their music, but they are not, on the surface, a profound group. No, their lyrics are not eloquent or nuanced. No, their music is not some cool, obscure new rock, nor does it contain hidden symbolism or forthrightly spiritual messages. If anything, their lyrics are intensely emotional and sometimes chaotic, but their classically rock and roll sound grounds them.
I was struck by the lyrics in “What I’m Becoming.” When vocalized by Matt Shultz’s crooning sound with an oddly slow melody in an otherwise upbeat album, the chorus lyrics stand out. There is a heart-wrenching reality in them: “I’m so sorry honey, for what I’m becoming.”
I find a haunting nature to those words. Notice they are not past tense. “I’m so sorry, honey, for what I’m becoming.”
I don’t know about you, but I do think about who I am, about my purpose, and who I’m becoming. In modern living, there’s this strange amalgamation to life—the pace and pressures of work, the commitments of family and friends, the information overload on all fronts, the screens that both intrigue and numb, and the pressures of finances. This can be all consuming, distracting, entertaining, and we can drift without realizing it. I can easily look up after a while and realize, “Huh. That’s strange. I haven’t caught my breath.”
Even more, the idea that we are becoming something or someone in the midst of modern life can feel like a luxury of attention and intentionality that we just don’t have enough emotional or psychological bandwidth to care about.
Yet still, the ache is there underneath it all: “Do I like who I am?”
Or, “I am supposed to become like… Jesus? Cool – that sounds achievable.”
Or even, “How do I get to who I want to be?”
Secularism’s definition of Christianity
One of the great commitments of a secular age actually constricts what the word “faith” means. In our secular age, if faith exists at all, it can only be a private faith. In other words, faith is something that the heart assents to and therefore it’s something that really should stay there. For many, even their own definition of their faith has been unknowingly shaped by this commitment. Even more, a Christian “decision-list salvation” narrative can play into the hand of this secular lie…here’s what I mean:
If we think that “faith in Jesus” is foremostly expressed in a singular decision someone makes at one point in their life in order to be saved, and then they subsequently do their best to go to church, do what’s right, pray at dinner, and be “good” for the rest of their lives…then I would say that kind of faith is shaped more by secularism than the Bible. Why do I say that?
Well, have you ever heard the phrase: “the emPHAsis is on the wrong sylLAble.” That’s what’s happening in that kind of “faith”; the emphasis is on the decision and not on the becoming.
Again, that kind of faith is more about a decision than about becoming…or rather, “the way” of becoming.
This is how faith, for our secular age, is relegated to being an ingredient in a larger recipe of how we define the good life. Faith turns out to be one strand of the tapestry of a good life, but that good life is defined more by the values of our age than by the values of one’s faith. When these collide, values of the age give way, and then faith moves underground, changes, or becomes neutered.
Christian faith as the way of becoming
Christianity is not less than salvation in Jesus: professing faith that Jesus Christ is Lord, his victory over death and sin, and that he alone is the way to eternal life. It can’t be less than that or it’s not centered in the gospel. But Christianity is more than just a decision…it’s devotion. A life of devotion to Jesus. In other words, faith in Jesus is a way of life, the way of life…the way to become who we were always intended to become.
In his book, You are What You Love, Christian philosopher James KA Smith writes:
Many modes of Christian piety and discipleship that are suspicious of formal theology and higher education are nonetheless ‘intellectualist’ in how they approach discipleship and Christian formation, narrowly focused on filling our intellectual wells with biblical knowledge, convinced that we can think our way to holiness.
The journey of faith is not defined by a mental or intellectual assent to the belief in Jesus. That’s only the beginning.
The famous theologian JI Packer furthers this point in his well-known book, Knowing God:
You can have all the right notions in your head without ever tasting in your heart the realities to which they refer; and a simple Bible reader and sermon hearer who is full of the Holy Spirit will develop a far deeper acquaintance with his God and Savior than a more learned scholar who is content with being theologically correct.
His point: faith is about becoming. It’s something that is embodied…in all of life.
Now, here’s the balance: as true as these perspectives are, our focus to embody our faith in our lives shouldn’t lead us to devalue the role of the mind when it comes to this effort. In his recent book, Christianity as a Way of Life: A Systematic Theology, theologian Kevin Hector states that the starting place of any theology is devotion, which is ultimately, a direct extension of the heart of the Christian life. Christian theology is not just an academic kind of detached thinking about God…it’s part of the way of life that offers us, and Hector goes as far as to say it offers even institutions like secular universities, true understanding and wisdom.
Becoming in daily life
Here’s a thought I had in 2024: “Jesus is calling me to be who he wants me to be in the spaces he wants me to be in.” This then begs the question, “How do I be who he wants me to be when life looks like ‘x’?”
Certainly, God shapes us and forms us when we simply pray to him and trust him through life’s circumstances. But if Christianity is really a way of living, a way of becoming who we were meant to become through a life of devotion to Jesus… then James KA Smith is instructive: “If you are what you love and if love is a virtue, then love is a habit.” If he’s right, then it’s possible we might not really love what we think we love. What we love is what our habits suggest we love.
So, I started to think about that. What’s the first thing I do in the morning? What’s the last thing I do at night? What am I killing time doing? What am I reading? What am I watching? These suggest or reflect back at me my loves.
This made me reorient my daily patterns for the end of 2024 and into 2025. I’ve started a new routine called, “Winning the morning.” Winning the morning, through trial and error, has been an amalgamation of devotion, Scripture, reading, and work, that frees me for the rest of the day to be who God has called me to be in the spaces he has called me to be in. It’s my effort to become that person God wants me to be…a space of counterformation away from the age…and a space of formation toward Christ-likeness and who God has intended me to be.
Five years from now, I don’t want to apologize for who I’ve become (a call back to the lyrics: “I’m so sorry, honey, for what I’m becoming”) or be numb or cynical to the idea of becoming in the first place. I want to be more like who Jesus has called me to be in the spaces he has called me to be in.
