Is doing - being?

So there's this line that preachers preach (me included) - "don't be what you do, be who you are" - and I know why we preach it. We're in a crowed room meeting new people and our first question normally is 'so tell me, what is it you do?' It's like the classic conversation starter. So when they tell us they manage some major company or are a NASA physicist we have some internal chart that then tells us they are more important than us; we earn less than them etc, etc. We live in this majorly competitive culture and to survive in this culture we need to always be measuring others to ourselves to see who comes out on top. So preachers (rightly) challenge this cultural phenomena because we know a persons worth is not measured by their job title or their income levels ....so we preach it "you're more than what you do, who is the real you - away from the job, removed from the task ....just be who God made you to be." It sounds so existentially wonderful.

And at some level it is existentially wonderful - but at another level is it true reality? So let's return to the last blog article and the last blogging comments (thanks Tim and Morton). Can a pastor live in the dichotomy of 'this is what I do' and over here 'this is who I am' ....or is it all one, and we've created a false dichotomy and we have allowed a tension to exist that was never a tension in the first place. We've placed Greek thinking about parts onto something that is truly a whole.
Think about God. In the Old Testament he has multiple names, each name representing a differing aspect of his character. God is multi characteristical BUT he is fully one. You and I being made in his image - maybe we are multi characteristical - in both function and personality- yet this is who we are - the one.

Therefore ..... in the case of a pastor (and is it only in the case of a pastor??) "we are what we do" AND "we do what we are". So getting away from it, switching off from it, struggling with my identity sometimes more being formed by what I do rather than by who I am - is all poor theology at best, Greek ideology at worse. To just be - is to do and doing is being.