Looking at my False Self has been one of the hardest things I have ever done. It is also one of the best things I have done and continue to do. It has brought more breakthroughs in my life than almost anything else, next to receiving Christ as my Savior…
The Imposter (False Self)
(From Wild at Heart – Eldridge)
From the place of our woundedness we construct a false self. We find a few gifts that work for us, and we try to live off them. Stuart found he was good at math and science. He shut down his heart and spent all his energies perfecting his “Spock” persona. There, in the academy, he was safe; he was also recognized and rewarded. “When I was eight,” confesses Brennan Manning, “the impostor, or false self, was born as a defense against pain. The impostor within whispered, ‘Brennan, don’t ever be your real self anymore because nobody likes you as you are. Invent a new self that everybody will admire and nobody will know.'” Notice the key phrase: “as a defense against pain,” as a way of saving himself. The impostor is our plan for salvation.
So God must take it all away. He thwarts our plan for salvation; he shatters the false self. Our plan for redemption is hard to let go of; it clings to our hearts like an octopus.
Why would God do something so terrible as to wound us in the place of our deepest wound? Jesus warned us that “whoever wants to save his life will lose it” (Luke 9:24). Christ is not using the word bios here; he’s not talking about our physical life. The passage is not about trying to save your skin by ducking martyrdom or something like that. The word Christ uses for “life” is the word psyche — the word for our soul, our inner self, our heart. He says that the things we do to save our psyche, our self, those plans to save and protect our inner life — those are the things that will actually destroy us. “There is a way that seems right to a man but in the end it leads to death,” says Proverbs 16:25. The false self, our plan for redemption, seems so right to us. It shields us from pain and secures us a little love and admiration. But the false self is a lie; the whole plan is built on pretense. It’s a deadly trap. God loves us too much to leave us there. So he thwarts us, in many, many different ways…
This is a very dangerous moment, when God seems set against everything that has meant life to us. Satan spies his opportunity, and leaps to accuse God in our hearts. You see, he says, God is angry with you. He’s disappointed in you. If he loved you he would make things smoother. He’s not out for your best, you know. The Enemy always tempts us back toward control, to recover and rebuild the false self. We must remember that it is out of love that God thwarts our impostor. As Hebrews reminds us, it is the son whom God disciplines, therefore do not lose heart (12:5–6).
God thwarts us to save us. We think it will destroy us, but the opposite is true — we must be saved from what really will destroy us. If we would walk with him in our journey of masculine initiation, we must walk away from the false self — set it down, give it up willingly. It feels crazy; it feels immensely vulnerable. We simply accept the invitation to leave all that we’ve relied on and venture out with God. We can choose to do it ourselves, or we can wait for God to bring it all down.
If you have no clue as to what your false self may be, then a starting point would be to ask those you live with and work with, “What is my effect on you? What am I like to live with (or work with)? What don’t you feel free to bring up with me?” In other words, you face your fears head-on. Drop the fig leaf; come out from hiding. For how long? Longer than you want to; long enough to raise the deeper issues, let the wound surface from beneath it all.
Losing the false self is painful; though it’s a mask, it’s one we’ve worn for years and losing it can feel like losing a close friend. Underneath the mask is all the hurt and fear we’ve been running from, hiding from. To let it come to the surface can shake us like an earthquake.
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