Psycho Babble

The psycho babble of self-esteem-worth-image etc. is in my opinion dealing primarily with ones soul and has nothing to do with one’s true identity in Christ.
It seems more the rule than the exception that so much misunderstanding or view of the Christian does just that, it revolves around our soulishness, the ying and yang, bio rhythms, personality temperaments flavours etc.

I love this quote and how it ties in with my observations of the co-mingled gospel that has permeated so much of what it means to be a Christian, similar to Jesus’ warning of, “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.”

“The quest to establish an identity on the basis of our own self-sufficiency displaces the real thing in both people and churches. It is nothing less than identity theft.”

Appearances and behaviour have often been that which supposedly defined ones identity, in others it seems to be defined in a healthy sense of person hood derived from an abundance of possessions, social position, or individual achievement.

Our life (identity) does not come about because the abundance one has or the lack thereof!

Rich

The Tail Shaking the Dog

Those who are led of the spirit are the sons of God, scripture says, but what does this look, feel, sound like in the real, nasty-now-and-now world I live in? Somebody, please give me the definitive template whereby I will never be uncertain or mistaken again regarding the choices and decisions I must make - being someone in, but not of, this world system of thinking!

Much, if not most of our continued learning (as we grow in the grace and true knowledge of the one who has invaded us with his alien life) is inseparable from our unlearning, and that, my friends, is a costly given, and it has nothing to do with it being unpleasant to our fleshly, carnal feel-good cravings.
Maybe this is all about learning to deny ourselves, and that self we’re denying is the one that came into existence at the fall in the garden. As my friend Bill Landon has so succinctly put it, “the independent self is a mutilated version of the self that has NO permanent place in the Father’s design for His creation.”

That self is very much operative in each of us and the spirit that constantly appeals to it is the father of religion and lies, whispering, “You can be your own god.”
Prior to being re-birthed, and long after in most cases, we continue living as soulish, carnal beings, almost a knee-jerk default reaction to all that we feel and sense. This is not an indictment, just the sad reality of what is.
As I am prone to reiterate fondly, ‘it’s a revelation, not a seminar’ we’re needing, and this revelation is a constant flow of experiential intuitive learning that will, most often, be at cross purposes with our fixation for the ‘feel good’ mentality we still crave so badly.

Somehow within the Christian mindset, there is a pervasive, unfounded certainty that Jesus, the son of God, operated in this fallen dark world out of an unparalleled overflow of ecstatic, emotional bliss. We assume that his being led (by the same spirit available to us) had nothing to do with learning to “defer” to His Father in the daily crucible of living! It was, of course, a mere cakewalk for him, and yet somehow we continue to flounder trying our best to emulate this one who had extra assistance and “powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men” (to quote the line from the TV version of ‘Superman’.

Learning to defer to the One who is our only life in life’s unfoldings is never done without great personal cost and suffering to a self that demands to be its own god.

Rich