Aaron Lansky on Being like Moses

We are who we are, where we are, when we are. And in that sense I prefer to compare us not to Chone Shmeruk, a twentieth-century Yiddish scholar, but to Zushya, a nineteenth-century Hasidic rabbi. “When I die,” Zushya foretold, “God will not ask me, ‘Zushya, why weren’t you more like Moses?’ God will ask, ‘Zushya, why were you not more like Zushya?’”

— Aaron Lansky, Outwitting History

I like this. The Christian life isn’t about becoming more like this or that particular saint; the Christian life is about growing exactly and precisely into the “me” that God intended from the beginning. I’m not supposed to try to be someone I’m not; I’m supposed to shed all of the things that aren’t really me, like a sculptor chipping away the bits of stone until the statue is left. (And, of course, I can’t succeed at this without God’s help.)

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