When I was young I wanted to be good at Christianity. A good religious person works the system of Faith as prescribed. I understood that if you mark the right boxes on the to-do list and do them well then you’re a good Christian. I was overly self-confident and arrogant, relying on my own abilities and self-discipline to practice doing and being the person I thought would please God and bring success.
Thus far, I have tried to make God into a system or formula with some relationship in the mix. It wasn’t all false; I was really seeking him. And he continues to find me. Even while I’m lost and “doing it wrong”. In my own efforts, I figured if I practice the spiritual disciplines enough then I will get the results right. It’s sort of plug and play religious thinking. It’s an algebra problem. Solve for “X”. If you don’t get x right then figure out what you did wrong and try again.
Being a flawed human, there are endless possibilities of what I could have done wrong because I am imperfect. Plus the fact that my idea of what x should be is based on my own selfish, faulty assumptions and interpretations of the Bible and church life. X could mean success in the forms of prosperity, fame, comfort, book contracts, health, Christian converts, real estate, etc. If and when I achieve these things then I would assume I’m working the formula right and he is pleased with me.
But no, I’m too weak to run the entire gauntlet of steps needed to make the formula work. And so shame kicks in. There’s obviously something wrong with me. So maybe I should go into hiding until I get stronger and get the steps right. That’s what the greats do, right? They enter the desert, figure it out, God gives them strength and they emerge from their desert experience as Super Christian Heroes.
The truth is no one emerges from a real encounter with God wanting to be a Christian hero. Why? Because God is too much. Such an encounter usually involves a jarring life change. And so a real humility sets in. An overwhelming realization of my own limitations, inadequacies, and a painful awareness of my own deceitfulness and sin is burned into the soul, never to be forgotten. Since I cannot pretend anymore, the only option left is surrender. My own efforts and my own Christian algebra formula is an unsolvable equation.
“But he gives us more grace. That is why Scripture says: ‘God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.'”
James 4:6
I’m forced to have a relationship with God where I have no more games and nothing left to hide or prove. It’s a total sense of horror at my own deception and very freeing at the same time because he forgives me and loves me, knowing everything about me. It’s both terrible and wonderful at the same time. It’s a terrible blow to the pride and sense of self-sufficiency I used to have. However, I’m not alone in my struggles anymore.
I don’t really like it because I’m not in control. I don’t get to create my reality to suit my tastes and preferences. I do like it because he is here with all of his peace and presence to shepherd and take care of my needs one day at a time. Throughout the New Testament, Jesus calls someone and says, “Follow me”. His disciples dropped their fishing nets and other occupations and agendas and followed him. After that, they were no longer in control of their day to day lives.
Put simply, it’s transitioning from “I’m not very good at this” to “he is very good at this”. Thankfully, his grace is sufficient for me. It hurts my pride and comforts my soul. What a wonderful, uncomfortable thing to admit I’m not very good at Christianity.
“I have been crucified with Christ and 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.”
My anger towards God revealed my hidden, wounded self. He was hidden behind the performing perfectionist who can never be good enough.
“As we come to grips with our own selfishness and stupidity, we make friends with the impostor and accept that we are impoverished and broken and realize that, if we were not, we would be God. The art of gentleness toward ourselves leads to being gentle with others — and is a natural prerequisite for our presence to God in prayer.”
I dealt with my own weaknesses and inadequacies by creating an ideal image of myself. This would be the person I throw all of my energy into becoming. As a young athlete, I made it my goal to be a great basketball player. I poured hours of my life into developing skills and watching Michael Jordan. My approach to God was similar. I wanted to be a “great” Christian. My idea of this person I wanted to be did not always line up with Jesus’ definition of being great. Jesus calls for humility, putting others first, being a servant, and living sacrificially. My idea was to be all of those things and more with a lot of selfish motives mixed in.
From my perspective, the stars of the Christian game were pastors, speakers, musicians, and anyone who was on stage and could speak well into a microphone. They were the Christians who had “arrived” at the top. People admired them, talked about them, repeated what they said, bought their books and t-shirts, and tried to be like them. So, I figured that in order to be a great Christian, I needed to become one of them.
To be fair, many of these people are truly admirable, gifted leaders whom God has entrusted with a platform. As a kid, I didn’t realize that behind the scenes these people are regular human beings who have their own struggles. Sometimes they are living in terrible darkness that no one knows about. It was a different era before we knew phrases such as “mega-church” and “celebrity Christians”.
For example, the guy I quoted above, Brennan Manning was an incredibly gifted Christian writer and speaker who was in and out of treatment centers for alcoholism his entire life. His memoir, “All Is Grace“, was written on his deathbed and really shocked me at the time. I could easily accept that he “used to be an alcoholic”. You know, before he met Jesus. I assumed Jesus fixed him of course and he became a great Christian. In reality, Jesus walked with him in and out of treatment centers his whole life. These experiences helped him find the words that are so meaningful.
These days it’s rather common that a Christian leader is in the news for some kind of moral failing. I am grieved, but no longer shocked. Of course they are human. Of course they are broken. We’re all vulnerable, and we all need a healthy support system. No one has ever crossed the magic line into the realm of Christian perfection, nor will they.
Stumbling Home
From my early assumptions and expectations, I formed this idea of what a great Christian should be. What I ended up building as a result was quite a self-righteous, prideful, judgmental, critical, religious, angry and confused person. This is the fruit of someone who tries to make the outside look great while neglecting their internal brokenness. I don’t know that these qualities were/are completely obvious to those around me. But I’m sure they have been sensed in some way. Again, these attributes were the result of a constructed self that I presented to the world while desperately trying to hide the parts of me that are weak and wounded. This construction I find in myself continues to be replicated today just as it has throughout history. The hard part is, it’s almost impossible to help a self-righteous person see his own brokenness. Jesus spoke his harshest words for self-righteous people like me. Even so, he spoke out of love because he longs for hardened religious people to come out of hiding.
I could only fool myself for so long. And everything I wanted to be, I could not live up to. I tried to follow the Bible and do what everyone said I needed to do. It’s impossible. I have too many weaknesses, and my personal battles with anxiety and shame kept me from performing well. Thus, erupting into my current writing out of exhaustion and frustration. I have played the game as far as I could and failed. In the severe mercy of God, I find myself stumbling home. Jesus is responds most readily with great compassionate towards people who know they are broken like me.
The Divided Self Re-United
The shadowy, wounded self emerges. There he is, revealed in the light. Suspiciously I watch as he is embraced by the Father.
The change begins to invade my entire being. Like a virus slowly replicating. I find myself reintegrating. One self, the perfectionist performer. The other self, the shameful failure. A new sense of wholeness comes over me.
Return of the Prodigal Son by Rembrandt
Bringing the wounded and rejected self into the light is a kind of reunion. Now that I see you, I know who you are, and I know what I have done. You are me. I am learning to see you in the light of Jesus’ love. Without Jesus, I don’t know that I could love you or have the courage to go on this journey to find you.
In the light of his acceptance and forgiveness, I find the gentleness and grace to accept and forgive you. For being weak, broken. For having been born with the human condition. My high pressure career as a super Christian is over. What a relief to be given permission to be ordinary. Of course, no one is truly “ordinary”.
Here is a kind of beautiful and difficult reunion. My perfectionist, critical, judgmental self looks upon my imperfect, wounded, rejected self with a new kind of compassion. Along with compassion I am overcome with wonder and awe. This person is beautiful in his weakness. For in his weakness, there is a tender strength that I never appreciated before.
My formerly weak and rejected self looks back at the perfectionist performer who is critical and judgmental. I am leery of this ruthless performer I have created. Yet there is compassion growing for this person as well. This person tried to protect me and make life work for me. I have to learn to forgive him for being so hard on me.
The one self rejected. The other self manufactured in order to survive. They are both me. Both of them are walking into the light together. The work of reintegrating them is going to be a process. The challenges and pressures of life remain. And there are new challenges. I am used to living in my own deception. Coming into the light is a relief, and yet seeing myself more completely is rather shocking. Truth has set me free. With freedom comes new responsibility to continue growing. With the freedom of sobriety comes a process of recovery.
“When we are under the law- in our natural state- we feel that God is the enemy and that we get what we deserve. We naturally try to ‘earn’ life. We try to do whatever we think will get God to like us or whatever we think will solve our day-to-day problems. Thus, we are trying to ‘save ourselves’. We try to get God to not be mad, and we try by our own efforts to grow and resolve our issues. Yet (New Testament Apostle) Paul says that this way of living is the exact opposite of living according to faith and grace and that if we choose that law, we end up living out the law in real life. This is not just theology; it is exactly how people end up living out their real-life problems until they grasp the reality of grace.”
Thankfully, God is less of a haunting, critical presence and more of a friend who is also the King. His goodness and grace are the motivators that replace my fearful perceptions that used to drive me. It is time to learn what grace means for those of us who are in recovery.
Reader Questions: Feel free to respond to one or more of these in the comments section below. I look forward to any discussions.
What kind of identity have you created in order to deal with life and make yourself more presentable to the world around you?
What does the word grace mean to you?
“So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him, “Abba, Father.””
My anger towards God recently surfaced. I started writing out of this experience.
I never saw my shadow ’till I saw the light And now I need more light to drown it out I cannot bear that this should continue Nor can I bear that it should stop
The demands I place on myself are too much. Perfectionism tells me that no matter what I do, it’s never good enough. As a result, shame tells me there is something fundamentally wrong with me. When I agree, I project those beliefs onto God. He is constantly judging me. So I try to perform better to combat my own shame. And I project those beliefs onto people. They are constantly judging me. People, I can get away from temporarily. Myself, I cannot. God, I cannot.
I try to improve myself to combat my own shame. However irrational it sounds, somewhere along the way I have believed the lie that I must do the impossible in order to be acceptable: be perfect.
What takes over is a generalized and pervasive kind of performance anxiety. My behavior is dictated by my own perceptions of external influences. If I don’t measure up, God will hurt me. If I don’t measure up, people will hurt me. My own experience seems to confirm these ideas. Because it is impossible to meet my own and everyone else’s wants, needs, and expectations, I find myself being hard on myself when I fail. Why? Because I wonder what is wrong with me. I am ashamed of myself, I am afraid, and I don’t know how to fix my imperfections so that I am no longer afraid.
Shadow Boxing
In my developmental years, I dealt with this by creating a persona in order to play the role I had to fulfill. This isn’t my real self. He is someone I developed in order to successfully present myself to the world and to God. Everyone reaches this stage and to some degree creates their own character to deal with the challenges of life. Similar to creating a character in a video game, we choose our looks, weapons, and skills in order to create an identity that will survive and hopefully win. We intuitively know we are imperfect and that someone outside of ourselves will probably judge us and hurt us as soon as they find out. Every character we create is vulnerable.
One approach is to make myself acceptable to everyone as far as I am able. Another approach that is gaining traction in popular culture is to put myself out there and try to make everyone accept me as I am. Neither approach deals with the fundamental problem of a broken and wounded self. This is the self we encountered early in life when we began to experience disappointment and shame.
“It (self-hatred) begins by accepting the special value of the particular self called me; then, wounded in its pride to find that such a darling object should be so disappointing, it seeks revenge, first upon that self, then on all.”
The broken self gets dealt with in a number of ways, most of them ineffective at best and destructive at worst. For me, I put him in the background while I developed a more presentable person who, once perfected, will become successful and thrive in all areas where I am weak and enhance my strengths. It seemed like a worthwhile project at the time. Fake it ’til I make it? Sure, but what happens to the wounded self once I make it? How do I cope with the pressures of success? How do I cope with inevitable moments of failure? What do I do with that underlying fear that someday my weakness will surface and sabotage everything I have worked for?
Christian Disillusionment
Early in my childhood I became a Christian. With all of my normal human baggage I entered into a relationship with God through faith in Christ Jesus. I am grateful for that and still believe wholeheartedly. What needs to be unpacked is the way I have tried to use God in order to work on my pet project and enhance my public image. I wanted to not only be a good Christian, but I wanted to be good at Christianity in the same way I was good at basketball when I was younger. With lots of practice and focus, I would really do this well and gain some notoriety and favor from God and people. If I put in the work, God would enhance my ego, eliminate my weaknesses and really make me glow. Great plan!
And, with a little grooming from my church tradition, hyped up Christian youth camps, and the unique influence of Christian culture in the 90’s, I chose to believe that God would come through and make me something quite special. The result would finally be a comfortable life with enough money and acclaim to help me feel good about myself. These ideas became the “carrot on a stick” that I would chase for a long time. Again, my own ego and distorted perceptions are also responsible for misinterpreting my church experience.
I understand why people say Christianity doesn’t work for them. It doesn’t “work” for me either. What I mean is, whatever assumptions and expectations I had of myself and of God when I started this have not come to fruition quite the way I wanted. I couldn’t manipulate God or work the process to my selfish advantage. My Christianity was driven by self-centered motivations. I pursued a relationship with God with my own agenda, which really limits meaningful intimacy with God. Now, the difficult part is dealing with spiritual disillusionment and disorientation.
“The wrong asceticism torments the self: the right kind kills the selfness.”
The process of disillusionment over the years has been terribly painful. However, the more recent experience of seeing him work in me is rather surprising. It is still painful, but in a good way. The pursuit of a right relationship with God is now moving towards realizing what he wants from me, which takes priority over what I want from him. It is a kind of death to the self-centered orientation of my life. This movement actually helps me find compassion and healing towards my emerging shadow. Like the prodigal son, the wounded, angry, and rejected self is coming home to his loving heavenly Father.
“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him.”
A Heart Transforming 