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July 19, 2020 - July 14, 2023
Although I have always wanted to avoid being defined by my professional role, when asked to introduce myself, I am likely to resort to the common social practice of trotting out vocational designations. But, even more telling, if my self-esteem is threatened and I feel my identity to be a bit vulnerable, my almost automatic first response is to think of accomplishments or present and future projects.
So true
Christ presents a particularly poignant contrast to this. His identity was defined by his relationship to his Father.
His whole life flowed out from this.
What he did was not the basis of his identity but rather pointed to who he was: “The works my Father has given me to carry out, these same works of mine testify that the Father has sent me” (John 5:36).
Let this be!
Doing his Father’s will grew out of this relationship of love that was the basis of his identity.
Making this knowledge the foundation of our identity—or better, allowing our identity to be re-formed around this most basic fact of our existence—will also never happen instantly.
Every time I dare to meet God in the vulnerability of my sin and shame, this knowing is strengthened. Every time I fall back into a self-improvement mode and try to bring God my best self, it is weakened.
Ah so well put
Moving truths such as “God loves me” from our head to our heart is often difficult. It is possible, but only as we journey with others.
Deep knowing of self gives opportunity for deep knowing of God, just as deep knowing of God gives opportunity for deep knowing of self.
Allowing God to accept me just as I am helps me accept myself in the same way.
Self-acceptance and self-knowing are deeply interconnected. To truly know something about yourself, you must accept it. Even things about yourself that you most deeply want to change must first be accepted—even embraced.
Until we are willing to accept the unpleasant truths of our existence, we rationalize or deny responsibility for our behavior.
True
If God loves and accepts you as a sinner, how can you do less?
Scriptures seem clear enough about the importance of crucifying our sin nature (Romans 8:13). But attempts to eliminate things that we find in our self that we do not first accept as part of us rely on denial, not crucifixion. Crucifixion should be directed toward our sin nature. And we must first accept it as our nature, not simply human nature.
Freud noted that things about ourselves that we refuse to acknowledge are given increased power and influence by our failure to accept them.
Interesting
Self-acceptance always precedes genuine self-surrender and self-transformation.
We search for a missing spiritual key, but we tend to look for it outside of ourselves where it seems easiest to search. But the key is inside, in the dark.
The roots of our pretend self lie in our childhood discovery that we can secure love by presenting ourselves in the most flattering light.
A young boy denies his resentment after he fails to get something he desires. In so doing, he takes a step toward a loss of awareness of what he is really feeling.
So true
“There is no greater disaster in the spiritual life than to be immersed in unreality, for life is maintained and nourished in us by our vital relation with reality.”
The truly spiritual life is not an escape from reality but a total commitment to it.
Yes
This is the defense mechanism of reaction formation: some unacceptable feeling or impulse is eliminated from awareness by our expression of its opposite.
Recognizing these same things in ourselves is much more difficult. The penetration of our delusions is enormously challenging. It requires a relentless commitment to truth and a deep sense of freedom from fear of rejection. Nothing facilitates this like the knowledge of being deeply loved.
We have to learn to see—and accept—what is really there.
You are not simply a sinner; you are a deeply loved sinner.
If all we know about ourselves is the specific sins we commit, our self-understanding remains superficial.
Focusing on sins leads to what Dallas Willard describes as the gospel of sin management3—a resolve to avoid sin and strategies to deal with guilt when this inevitably proves unsuccessful.
Christian spiritual transformation is much more radical t...
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Discovering our core sin tendencies is helpful because it lets us deal with our problems at their root. But even more than this, it is helpful because discovery of our core sin tendencies will inevitably fill us with such despair and hopelessness that we will have no option but to turn to God.
Spiritual transformation does not result from fixing our problems. It results from turning to God in the midst of them and meeting God just as we are. Turning to God is the core of prayer. Turning to God in our sin and shame is the heart of spiritual transformation.
A complete knowing of our self in relation to God includes knowing three things: our self as deeply loved (dealt with in chapter three), our self as deeply sinful (the focus of this chapter), and our self as in a process of being redeemed and restored (which will be explored in chapter six).
Genuine self-knowledge is available to all who (1) genuinely desire it, (2) are willing to prayerfully reflect on their experience and (3) have the courage to meet themselves and God in solitude.
Some people have music on whenever they are alone. Others turn to their computer, television or their phone in ways that serve the same soul-numbing purposes. The possibilities for avoiding solitude are endless.
Self-knowledge is God’s gift, not the result of your introspection. Remember, this is not self-therapy. It is spending time with God and allowing God to meet you and help you know yourself as you are known.
we learn how to present our self in the best possible light—a light designed to create a favorable impression and maintain our self-esteem.
Ouch
the dark side of pretending is that what begins as a role becomes an identity.
Initially the masks we adopt reflect how we want others to see us. Over time, however, they come to refle...
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The core of the lie that Adam and Eve believed was that they could be like God without God.
Make sense
Adam and Eve got what they wanted—to be like God without God, likeness that was based on independence rather than surrender.
what we get when we choose a way of being that is separate from God is the life of the lie. It is a lie because the autonomy that it promises is an illusion.
Basil Pennington suggests that the core of the false self is the belief that my value depends on what I have, what I can do and what others think of me.
Attachments imprison us in falsity as we follow the flickering sirens of desire. Spiritually, attachments serve as idols: we invest in objects and experiences that should be invested only in God.
Ultimately, attachments are ways of coping with the feelings of vulnerability, shame and inadequacy that lie at the core of our false ways of being.
Like Adam and Eve, our first response to our awareness of nakedness is to grab whatever is closest and quickly cover our nakedness. We hide behind the fig leaves of our false self. This is the way we package our self to escape the painful awareness of our nakedness.
The problem with the false self is t...
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God’s deepest desire for us is to replace our fig leaves with garments of durability and beauty (Genesis 3:21).
If laziness in others is what really bothers me, there is a good chance that discipline and performance form a core part of the false self that I embrace with tenacity. If it is playfulness and spontaneity in others that I find most annoying, then seriousness may be a central part of the self I protect and seek to project. If it is moral disregard that is particularly irritating in others, my false self is probably built around moral rectitude and self-righteousness. And if emotionality in others is what I most despise, emotional control is probably central to the script I have chosen to live.
alright then...
The problem with compulsions is that they represent excessive attachments.
They often involve a good that is elevated to the status of the supreme good by the disproportionate importance we attach to it.
Securing love by generating accomplishments leaves one dependent on the potentially fickle response of others.
