Dear friend,
I hope the last couple of weeks have been helpful, talking about the difference between spirit and soul. To be made in the image of God, we have said, means that we are spirit-beings. We are spirits who have a soul, but spirit is the location of our identity. Spirit is our identity.
Before being born-again, when your spirit was a member of Adam’s race, there was no life from God in your spirit. You were called “ungodly” (Rom 4:5). Un/god/ly = no/god/life. You were still made in the image of God as a spirit-being, but you had no divine life in your spirit. You were not yet a partaker of the divine nature (2 Pe 1:4).
Without the indwelling Holy Spirit, your mind was useless for godliness, and your heart was in a monologue. You had the potential to get bent over in any combination of hardness, callousness, greediness, pride, sexual brokenness and emotional toxicity (Rom 1:21-24; Eph 4:17-19).
What indirectly causes us to be bent and broken? Other people, usually. Other people create homes or school environments where we suffer Holes, Wounds and Rejections. We suffer emptiness, abandonment or isolation (Holes) from others. We get battered and bruised, criticized or made-fun-of (Wounds) by others. We are ignored or rejected, betrayed and cast away (Rejections) by others who promised to be there. These hurts and pains are the “real stuff” of our many hurtful memories.
What directly causes us to be bent and broken? It’s when we lie in bed at night and re-live these hurtful memories. We lie in the darkness and rehearse the damaging moments of the day when we suffered the Hole or the Wound or the Rejection. And we give these memories too much significance. We give them dark meanings.
We are “Meaning-Making-Magicians.”[1] We make up meanings. We make up in our minds new meanings about what happened to us. We rehearse our stories silently, and we make-up what these stories mean about us, about God, about life and about love. We make up these meanings as if our story had no relation to God.
Then, based on these meanings, we create a new identity also not from God. It’s an identity all our own, based on the Holes, the Wounds and our Rejections. It’s a sad, sad story, and we tell it to anybody, anyone who will listen.
It’s the story of an identity built around shame.
Then we spend twenty, forty, even sixty years agreeing with this shame-based identity. We might even come to know Christ as our savior and go to Bible studies, but we do not let our union with Him cancel out our secret, false identity. We might be born-again, but we keep these dark identities: I am Less Than-Not Enough; I am Pending Approval; I’m Unworthy; I’m Unloved; I am No One’s Priority; I’m Abandoned; I’m a Reject, or just a Dead Man Walking.
Now can you see? This identity affects your relationships, for it’s why you don’t love with a pure heart. You are suspicious and untrusting, so you manipulate and control. You play games with your spouse to get out of work, to get out of agreements, to get out of sex, or to get him before he gets you.
Here lies the tension of Christian discipleship and counseling. You must first be Aware of the flesh pattern-behaviors, before you can Beware of them. You must first be Aware of your shame, before you can Beware of it. You must first be Aware of your shame-based identity and how it controls you, before you can Beware of it’s control.
Did you notice in your discipleship classes a decade ago in the church, that we neglected to address your interior condition: your shame-based identity? It was never addressed, and so people gave up on you and merely branded you as worldly, weak or not worth the time. Then, who will help you see this?
In our counseling practice, do we merely help you practice new, healthier flesh patterns, to strong-arm your old, hurtful flesh patterns. No. Christ is not in the flesh management business. You do need new, healthy ways of relating to your husband, yes, but you also need to be led by the Spirit into the Awareness of why you use those old patterns in the first place against him, your mother, your children, and your old friends back in high school.
The tension in spiritual growth is this: your shame-based identity is the blind-spot out of which you often still operate; but no one has ever helped you see it. For you are dedicated to your shame with a commitment that rivals your devotion to Christ. Into this tension must step a spiritual guide. Someone must enter into your story, and bring the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus to bear against the false story of shame you keep telling yourself.
This is called the healing of hurtful memories. Making a change at the level of Identity.
-Carter
[1] This term is adapted from a similar phrase I learned from my friend, Steve T. Thank you, Steve.
Reprinted from August 2016