My Name Is Asher Lev-the struggle between who and what you are

A few months ago I read "My Name is Asher Lev" by Potok Chaim. Potok presents a young boy, Asher Lev, who is a kind of child prodigy artist. From a very young age, Asher Lev compulsively draws very profound pictures. His parents, who are Hasidic Jews, hope that their son will eventually give up his childish hobby and follow in the footsteps of his father.
As the story progresses, the son becomes more and more obssessed with art which fuels the tension between father and son. Asher, who loves his father, wants to please him, but also struggles with this gift that has taken him over.
Throughout the story, Potok sets up a dictomy between "who" and "what" Asher is.
As an Hasidic Jew, Asher is destined to carry out the traditions and bloodline of his family because this is WHO Asher is. But as an artist, Asher is obligated to paint the world as he sees it because this is WHAT Asher is.
Finally, one night Asher's father discovers drawings of Christ and naked women. Astonished, he questions his son about the blasphemous art. Asher responds,"Because I'm part of a tradition, Papa. Mastery of the art form of the nude is very important to that tradition. Every artist who ever lived drew or painted the nude. . . . "Idont want to sit in a room painting for myself. I want to communicate what I do. And I want critics to know I can do it." . . . "I respect you,Papa. But I cant respect your aesthetic blindness." Asher's father refutes his son by exclaiming that it is better to be aesthetically blind than morally.
For the last few months, I have been contemplating the complexity and application of this dictomy. It appears that many people develop this tension between who and what they are. But why is that some people are able to come to terms with it better than others? Perhaps because of the nature of extremes, some are able to blend who and what they are, while others have to chose.
An interesting point is that, while it is obvious that Asher's father is condemning his son's love for art from a moral framework, it seems that Asher also develops a kind of worldview from which he observes his surroundings.
Asher's teacher, a man who serves as a type of role model states, "I sculpt and paint to give permanence to my feelings about how terrible this world truly is. Nothing is real to me except my own feelings; nothing is true except my own feelings as I seem them all around me in my sculptures and paintings. I know these feelings are true, because if they are not true they would make art that is as terrible as the world."

For Asher's teacher, art becomes the only objective reality from which he views everything else. And so also for Asher, art takes the place of religion to justify his existence. "Listento me, Asher Lev. As an artist you are responsible to no one and to nothing,except to yourself and to the truth as you se it."
What does it come down to? What matters is which one the individual finds more meaning in: who or what they are. For Asher, art became his reality.

Interestingly, his father views his son choice as something that he should morally evolve beyond to chose against. Asher Lev's father states,"An animal can't help it, " my father said. "Do you understand me, Asher? The Ribbono Shel Olom gave every man a will. Every man is responsible for what he does, because he has a will and that will he directs his life. There is no such thing as a man who can't help it."

The "what" Asher is fighting against, in his father's opinion, gives the importance to "who" someone is. Part of the esoteric truth discovered in religion is the importance of sacrificing what you are individually for the collective "who".

His father's frustration is displayed when he states, "It's difficult for your father to hate something the world seems to value so much."
For the Lev family, who they are is everything the world isnt. But then it begs the question: is the moral claim Asher's father is making against the world valid? Is the "what" Asher's father is trying to save him from only destructive in the sense that it opposes his religion, or is it initally destructive in "itself?"

The reader is stuck with a dilemma: From the father's perspective, sacrificing "what" you are is the choice many people have to make in order to find the blessing in "who" they are. Unlike animals, people have free will to chose what is morally right against what is aesthically pleasing.
From Asher's perspective, he is chosing against his very existence if he stops drawing. Art is his fate leaving him with no choice. He concludes that he "would not be a whore to [his] own existence."

all shall be well

There is a place where the human fails, breaks down, turns to ashes. Hope has not a single foothold. In such an hour there is a perishing of everything unless the soul waits in silence for God only." - Amy Camichael
A few summers ago I read Amy Carmichael's biography by Elizabeth Elliot and retained this image in my mind of a strong Irish woman in the mist of Hindu temples saving children from prostitution (ie Devadasi). I remember reading this quote after so much had seem to go wrong and feeling overwhelmed with the ability to relate with those few times in my life where I have felt helpless and frozen in emotion.
Living overseas in a different culture has a way of stripping all securities away. When friends, families, and communities are thousands of miles from your new home, God has a way of making you come to terms with yourself in a very deep and profound way. Recently, I have realized that this intense vulnerability, which can be so painful, is one of God's mercies.
It is in trials of intense vulnerability that we must make a choice to indulge in our emotions, being overwhelmed by either anxiety or depressing, or harden ourselves to feeling at all. But if we have faith that God is working through these trials, that they are not just a series of misfortune events, but God's way of developing meaning and character in our lives.
Though the world is overwhelmed with despair, suffering, and darkness, our hope is in Christ and He is our victory. But we must always make the choice whether to give into our own self-pity, doubt, and pain, or have faith that, as Julian of Norwich famously wrote, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Or, as Thomas Merton ends his autobiography:

It was true. I was hidden in the secrecy of His protection. He was surrounding me constantly with the work of His love, His wisdom, and His mercy. And so it would be, day after day, year after year. Sometimes I would be preoccupied with problems that seemed to be difficult and seemed to be great, and yet when it was all over the answers that I worked out did not seem to matter much anyway, because all the while, beyond my range of vision and comprehension, God had silently and imperceptibly worked the whole thing out for me, and had presented me with the solution. To say it better, He had worked the solution into the very tissue of my own life and substance and existence by the wise incomprehensible weaving of His Providence.