False Self – words from wick

In reading Bob Goff’s “Love Does” to our children recently, I was reminded of his words urging us not to be “Stalkers” of Jesus. He points out that we often spend so much time personally, and even in our gatherings studying about Jesus/Holy Spirit/God. But how often are we focused on simply “being with” this Triune God? As a pastor, as a father, and especially as one who recognizes the power of God’s Love – I want to consciously spend time, and invite others into times, of being increasingly aware of the fullness of God’s Love & presence.

Recently there was a book published that contains an amazing amount of scientists, researchers, and history of people all wanting to do something similar. The main title is “How to Change Your Mind”, and a conversation with the author on NPR caught my attention. As someone who’s studied biblical Greek, I remembered that Jesus often called people to “repent” using the word “metanoia” which literally means “having a changed mind”. The unpopularity of this book in Christian circles might be caused by its subtitle, “What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence”. The awkwardness of my preconceptions of psychedelics pushed-aside, I went ahead and read it anyways.

Wow. The history of these substances and the opportunities for research beginning to resurface has a great deal to offer the brokenness of humanity. Researchers are just in the past 8 years, finally and slowly/clinically, beginning to proceed cautiously again. There are potentials in treating addictions, anxiety/depression, PTSD, and a great many of maladies in between. Unfortunately, many of these substances were misused/abused in unsafe ways/levels back around the ’60s, and so most of us have a cloudy understanding of all these things.

But most interesting to me were the accounts of the early scientists/philosophers/divinity students who experienced these substances simply as a way to experience an “altered state of consciousness”. Complete skeptics who viewed everything through a scientific lens came away skeptical of their own need to understand only that which is understandable. Religious people came away feeling as if they’d “finally” had an experience of the divine. There were so many great connections to those of us who are willing to see it, and I cannot process everything or share all the great quotes here. But one thing in particular screams to be noticed:

“What is striking about this whole line of clinical research is the premise that it is not the pharmacological effect of the drug itself but the kind of mental experience it occasions – involving the temporary dissolution of one’s ego – that may be the key to changing one’s mind.” Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

It doesn’t take a Bible scholar to see the connection here. Pick a verse! Look at Ephesians 4:22-24 if you need one. Scripture talks about “dying to self” in order to come alive with the New Life of Jesus Christ over and over again. Followers of Jesus since ancient times have wrestled with and expanded on what all of this involves.

What happens in story after story throughout Pollan’s book (the “good” trips at least) are individuals who carve out time and space purposefully for an “otherly” experience. They are talked to by a “guide” who comforts them, and reassures them of their presence. They close their eyes, turn on some music, and are guided verbally while the substance takes its effect. Once you shed some of the hallucinatory aspects, what often leads to transformation/healing in the individual is coming away from such an experience aware that an “other” way of existing is out there. An immediate realization of a unity that flows through all of creation, and the beauty of color, sound, etc.

“One of the things that commends travel, art, nature, work, and certain drugs to us is the way these experiences, at their best, block every mental path forward and back, immersing us in the flow of a present that is literally wonderful – wonder being the by-product of precisely the kind of unencumbered first sight…” Michael Pollan, How to Change Your Mind

This is not too far off from experiences we’ve heard of happening in worship. This is not too removed from experiences of “guided prayer” even I have helped lead others into/out from. It reminded me of another book I’d read recently, “Merton’s Palace of Nowhere“. Merton has written extensively on prayer, on dying to the “false self”, and on meditation. He was even around during many of these early “trials” in the 60’s, so I wondered his perspective of these things. In a letter from December 1965, he writes:

“..my impression is that they are probably not all they are cracked up to be. Theologically I suspect that the trouble with psychedelics is that we want to have interior experiences entirely on our own terms. This introduces an element of constraint and makes the freedom of pure grace impossible. Hence, religiously, I would say their value was pretty low. However, regarded merely psychologically, I am sure they have considerable interest.” Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground of Love

I find myself agreeing with Merton. The grace of God that arrives in our moments/lives of sacrifice and other-centered Love is not something we can carefully plan for/measure. They should not be contained in a moment or require the assistance of substances. Even the neuro-chemical responses of emotional worship experiences can be addictive in ways that make us desire more of those moments on terms we can manufacture.

“Only when we are able to ‘let go’ of everything within us, all desire to see, to know, to taste, and to experience the presence of God, do we truly become able to experience that presence with the overwhelming conviction and reality that revolutionize our entire inner life.” James Finley, Merton’s Palace of Nowhere

It’s not as simple as saying “Drugs are bad, mmkay?” But it is as simple as saying an authentic and sustainable experience of God that transforms and brings New Life is possible for anyone, anywhere, at any time. We live within a creation that proclaims the awe-inducing beauty and goodness of God,. We are surrounded by a fellow humanity that was created to bear the image of the Divine. God is not so far away as we often imagine. The divine invitation to repent, to “metanoia” (have a changed mind) is something we do not seek to control, but submit ourselves to by pausing. We offer ourselves in unceasing and moments of prayer, and a life with patterns of Sabbath.

To put it another way, we “come away/apart” or “retreat” to a solitary place as Jesus did, but also in moments joined together in relationship with others. We prayerfully and vulnerably confess our false selves and seek to live in ways that shed/deny that self for the sake of others. In living with these patterns, embracing people and moments with the precious validity of what could be (rather than what we assume will be), we position ourselves to receive the grace of a God-given Now.

On a closing note, I do believe these substances are able to “force individuals” into an awareness of the Divine (though not always). However, we don’t need a substance in order to reveal to us different ways of perceiving this world exist. What Jesus invites us to recognize is the power of compassion to accomplish even more. Compassion means literally “to suffer with”. When I choose to enter into the sufferings of another (person, people group, etc.), my vantage point enters into their own. When this happens, we experience a “metanoia” that empowered by the Holy Spirit can lead to freedom from the chains we’d previously been bound by. From a Christian perspective – when I “die to self” to come alive as Christ, I enter into a Holy Spirit-sourced compassionate life for those whom Jesus Loves (everyone…yes, even/especially them). Such a life is the arrival of New Creation, where former things (false self) have passed away and all things have become New. Not once, and not in a moment, but as a way of Life.

But beware. As anyone who’s traveled to a foreign country can affirm, a daily existence where everything is “New” can be incredibly exhausting both cognitively and physically. We may find ourselves depending on the power of God and needing to return to His presence…often…

…the Good News is, He is here.

In ministry to youth since my college years, there have been many psychologists, sociologists, neurologists, and even parents who have attested to the teenagers’ quest for “self” discovery. Throughout adolescence, floods of hormones and new/heightened neurological abilities for cognitive and social connections (the ability to “think” from anothers’ perspective) allows young people for the first time to be more fully aware of the self they not only are – but the self they are perceived as by others. The fact that the “self” perceived by others might be different from the “self” they believe themselves to be – becomes realized. (For more on this, here’s an awesome article you might be interested in.) This ability actually grows and deepens throughout adolescence, and combined with modern technology can become a labyrinth from which young people need – not rescue, but guidance. I’m also convinced that many of us “adults” (myself included) are sucked back into our adolescent years, in terms of the practices evoked by these opportunities.

This goes back to our very first presentations of a crafted “self-image”, as human beings. Today, we see it in the duck-faced 13-year-old girl or the 15-year-old male flexing in a mirror – both affixed as a “Profile Picture” or even just an update. The statement is implied by sharing (even if not understood), “This is the image I’ve chosen to represent the ‘self’ I’m curating for you to perceive me as.” This is not a new desire. Our first attempts at this are found in Genesis 3:7, as Adam and Eve sew fig leaves together out of a desire to cover up their true “self” which they’re shamefully aware has been marred. They want to be perceived without the humiliating nakedness and vulnerability, and so they put on leaves and say, “This is the image I’ve chosen to represent the ‘self’ I’m curating for you to perceive me as.”

To this, God responds with the hard truth about what has happened. He also replaces their garments of leaves which cost nothing, with garments of skin which we can assume cost the lives of animals. God seems to suggest, “You may cover up, as this level of vulnerability is a heavy burden. But it comes at a price also.” We see here a prophetic illustration, that the “wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Not as payment, but as a direct result – living in a way that chooses our own presentation of “self” above the “self” God has created us to be, will always lead to death – whether of relationships or literal. This is not something that weak people “fall into” as an activity, but rather something we are each born into as a state.

Thomas Merton wrestled with this same concept in thought & prayer: “To say I was born in sin is to say I came into the world with a false self. I was born in a mask. I came into existence under a sign of contradiction, being someone that I was never intended to be and therefore a denial of what I am supposed to be. And thus I came into existence and nonexistence at the same time because from the very start I was something that I was not.” (Merton’s Palace of Nowhere, 1978) (Note that “sin” here is less about morality and more about ontology.)

We are not left to struggle with this tendency toward the “false self”. We believe and proclaim that Christ has provided a New way of being (ontology again!). Galatians 2:20 declares that our “self” is “crucified with Christ” so that “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (NIV) Scripture reveals to us this Freedom is not only something offered to us, but invites us to understand that the very activity of sacrificing our “self” in order to receive the “self” that is alive in Christ is our act of worship! (Romans 12:1) It is in this New-Creation-living in the life of Jesus that we discover and move toward the “self” God has created us to be. (2 Corinthians 5:17)

So how do we guide young people, and how do we respond to a technology culture that constantly invites us to purposefully curate our own “self” for the sake of how we’re known by others?

Understand where the desire for “multiple-selving” comes from. A certain level is healthy and expected: What foods do I enjoy? What music/culture/comforts/fashions do I prefer? What art do I appreciate/contribute? During the adolescent years especially, our cognitive abilities develop in ways that allow us to “try on” variations of who we might become. Most of us even continue into adulthood with more than one “self”, and seek to balance these expressions of our identity.
Understand where the desire for a “false self” comes from. Scripture reminds us we are born into a state of sin that brings death (Romans 5:12). To deny this is our nature, and just try to “be good” or “be strong/successful/attractive”, etc. is to throw on fig leaves and hope for the best. We come to God, confessing our naked vulnerability, and accept the price He has paid-to reconcile us in relationship – offering a restored “True self” that exists in the Love of Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Offer every expression of our “self” to be an opportunity to worship God, not bring glory to our “self”. Whether on social media, in classrooms, in the living room, or wherever we find ourselves. “Offer your ‘self’ as a living sacrifice…” (Romans 12:1) This means daily (and a life of) prayer where we bring our whole “self” into the presence of God.
Pray. Together, and individually. In prayer, we enter into a redeemed time and space where we discover the Loving God whose image we were created to bear, and are shaped/empowered by His Spirit toward how that can happen today. Here we become less and less influenced by how we might be perceived by others, and in declaring Jesus as Lord – give weight to who God has declared we are becoming in Christ.
Love. Love God as the source of our True Self. Love others, not as the “selves” they might curate for better or for worse, or as the “false self” ascribed to them by others, but as the “True Self” they are in the light of Jesus Christ. Finally, love the True Self God has set you free to become – united with God in the Love and power of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Tag: False Self

On a Changed Mind…

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