The Voices in My Head Are Full of $#@!

by Dave Wenger

What others think has probably caused more joyful experiences to be stillborn than anything else. Fear of what others will think can fell a “good” Christian from one thousand feet. It’s a piety born of shame that can seize you while savoring a good cigar, a glass of fine wine, a good meal, laughter with friends or an expensive round of golf.

Here’s the real answer to the trick question of tell me who you really are: It doesn’t matter who you really are. What matters is what you get to be after you’ve stripped away all the voices, the self-image, the facades and ego. You get to be your beautiful, authentic, good self.

The irony is that True Self is better equipped than Ego to deal with harsh realities. When life gets hard Ego scrambles to come up with another tactic to cope. But even in the midst of chaos, True Self is at peace. If that’s the case, why do we ever choose Ego over True Self? Simply because ego is easier to access under stress. Ego is the psychic equivalent of junk food.

How we view God affects every aspect of our lives. If our perspective of God changes, the way we view ourselves and how we relate to others changes as well.

Dietrich Bonheoffer said in Life Together: In confession the break-through to community takes place. Sin demands to have a man by himself. It withdraws him from community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him, and the more deeply he becomes involved in it, disastrous is his isolation. Sin wants to remain unknown. It shuns the light. In the darkness of the unexpressed it poisons the whole being of a person.

Too often in my early life I aimed my efforts, intentions and hopes at being a good Christian instead of being myself – the person I was created to be. In various seasons of my life I’ve prostituted myself to religion. It gave me nothing but guilt, shame, and condemnation. Then it had the unmitigated gall to ask me for more. At some point I opened my mouth and told that story and sin began to lose its grip on me. Sin – the act of missing the mark of being my true self – demands to stay in the dark. It runs from the light. It covers itself with arrogance, bravado, self-depreciation or self-loathing. Finding a community in which to tell that story was an early step to breaking free. Being in that community helped me face how I’d sold myself short by trying to be something I knew deep in the quietness of my soul I really was not. My community helped me see the hopelessness of thinking I would ever fully experience love, acceptance, and praise by covering up my sin and denying my True Self. No more secrets. No more lies. Then came freedom.