For if you let your life go for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, you will continually experience true life. Mark 8:35 (TPT)
The False Self – The Who Series – Part 2
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4
I say to my kids that they are:
Made of love, from love, for love.
God is love (1 John 4:8), and he made us in his image (Gen 1) Love is the ground of our being. Some would say that love IS the ground of being itself.
“Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God's will.” Frederick Buechner.
Love is who we really are.
And yes, I know how ‘woo woo' that sounds. But let it sink in for a minute. What other reason are we here for than to manifest the very essence of the Divine in our world through our unique personalities and ‘giftings?'
It’s easy to type and talk about how love is who we really are, it’s much harder to live that way. Just as we have a true self, we have, in a sense, a false self, too. It’s not inherently bad. It serves a purpose. It acts as a prop for our ego in such things like education, career, reputation, and more.
It gets us from A to B, but that's never far enough. It often poses, and thus substitutes, for the real thing. That's why we call it “false.” The false self is bogus more than bad; it pretends to be more than it is. It tends to live estranged from the revelation of love and seeks approval and belonging; it looks to achieve and accumulate and win its way to freedom. It’s what Jesus was talking about when he said:
“If you truly want to follow me, you should at once completely disown your own life. And you must be willing to share my cross and experience it as your own, as you continually surrender to my ways. For if you let your life go for my sake and for the sake of the gospel, you will continually experience true life. But if you choose to keep your life for yourself, you will forfeit what you try to keep. For what use is it to gain all the wealth and power of this world, with everything it could offer you, at the cost of your own life? And what could be more valuable to you than your own soul? So among the unfaithful and sinful people living today, if you are ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of you when he makes his appearance with his holy messengers in the glorious splendor of his Father!” (Mark 8:34-38 TPT).
It’s the destructive side of ego that Jesus wants us to let go of. The way to experience “true life” is to continually deny the false self – our destructive ego – the driver's seat, and trust the love of the Divine. That’s the tension. That’s the journey!
You can see that tension all over the place. The unrest and disruption all around us and within us are spurred on by every kind of false self there is. Power, control, abuse, manipulation, betrayal, greed, domination, violence – these things are more are perpetuated by us living estranged to the revelation of the love that God is, and that we are founded on and grounded in.
It’s not just the big things. The false self is where our own misgivings come from, too. From the small things like not sharing what we have, to the big things like cheating and stealing and lying. All of this serves our false self and eventually leads us further away from the truth of who we are.
There is so much for us to unlearn and un-become; to find ourselves hidden in Christ (Col 3:3). That’s why I like to talk about salvation as a homecoming, rather than a rescue. Jesus reminds us of who we are: beloved. And we spend our lives transforming more and more back to that foundational reality.
Go to Part 3 – Weave Goodness into the Details »
Written by Lizzy Milani
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