Christian maturity as explained by an onion

Reading the scriptures can often make me feel like I am an onion, because each time I make a conscious effort to be the person that God made me to be, I find I am forced to shed a layer of worldliness. I seem to comprise successive layers of worldliness, and the aim is to get to the core of fruit: the God-filled self.

     But the analogy goes further: as each layer of worldliness is removed, so the amount of ‘me’ remaining becomes progressively smaller. And the analogy goes further: as you get closer to the centre of the onion, you weep more bitterly in response to the action of removing the layers. The following poem may help: 

I feel like an onion

when I pray to the Lord

for the layers of selfishness

are shed and abhorred.

So after each prayer

I try to be peeled

removing the worldliness,

my sins to be healed.

And after unpeeling

It’s smaller what’s left

The ‘me’ that was there

is small and bereft.

But after removing

the layers of sin

entering my new clean self

without the skin

... I find that I’m weeping