Vol.

1:2
A F o r u m f o r A u t h e n t i c Tr a n s f o r m a t i o n

Vo l u m e 1 : 2 Fall 2003

True Self /
False Self
Are You Stuck?

Conversations: A Forum for Authentic Transformation

CONTRIBUTORS:

JEANNETTE A. BAKKE

DAVID G. BENNER

JULIET BENNER

KENNETH BOA

LARRY CRABB

TREVOR HUDSON

a v i o r re
JAN JOHNSON

GORDON MACDONALD
e h l at
GARY W. MOON b

io
M. BASIL PENNINGTON

nsh
ECKMAN C. TAM

emotion
GRAY TEMPLE
Rembrandt: Return of the Prodigal Son

ip
True Self / False Self

int

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g tio
tho u
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Conversations: A Forum for
Authentic Transformation provides
spiritual accompaniment and honest
dialogue for those who long for radical
transformation in Christ. It stimulates
hunger and illuminates the path by
drawing on classical wisdom and
practice, exploring the vital role of
community, and illustrating the journey
with realism and hope. Conversations
is published bi-annually, in the Spring
and the Fall. Comments, questions,
subscription requests, and advertisement
inquiries may be directed to Managing
Editor, Heidi Bolton at 1-888-924-6774,
ext. 399; conversations@psy.edu; or
Conversations, McCarty Building,
2055 Mount Paran Rd. NW, Atlanta,
GA 30327.
The target audience for Conversations
is purposefully broadall thoughful,
seeking followers of Christ who long for
a complete transformation of soul and
full restoration of His image within. It is
the intent of the editors to produce
words that will inspire both those who
seek help themselves and those who
are helping others. The audience is also
envisioned as being international,
ecumenical, and interdenominational.
At present Conversations does not accept
unsolicited manuscripts.
A F o r u m f o r A u t h e n t i c Tr a n s f o r m a t i o n
EXECUTIVE EDITORS
DAVID G. BENNER Psychological Studies Institute
LARRY CRABB Colorado Christian University
GARY W. MOON Psychological Studies Institute
MANAGING EDITOR
HEIDI BOLTON
ART DIRECTOR
BOBBY STRICKLAND
PUBLISHERS
HENRY HENEGAR Psychological Studies Institute
PAUL L. WALKER Church of God
E D I T O R I A L C O N S U LTA N T S
DALLAS WILLARD University of Southern California
RICHARD FOSTER Renovare
EDITORIAL BOARD
DONALD S. AULTMAN Church of God School of Ministry
KENNETH BOA Reflections Ministries
MARGARET GUENTHER The General Theological Seminary
JAMES HOUSTON Regent College
TREVOR A. HUDSON Methodist Church of Southern Africa
SELWYN HUGHES Crusade for World Revival (England)
SIMON YIU-CHUEN LEE Alliance Biblical Seminary (Hong Kong)
GORDON MacDONALD Leadership Journal
JOHN ORTBERG Menlo Park Presbyterian Church
M. BASIL PENNINGTON, O.C.S.O. Abbey of Blessed Mary of St. Joseph
FATHER F. GREGORY ROGERS Saint Catherines Orthodox Church
ROBERT SOLOMON The Methodist Church of Singapore
JANICE STRENGTH Fuller Theological Seminary
SIANG-YANG TAN Fuller Theological Seminary
CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
JUDY ALLISON Ashland Theological Seminary
JEANNETTE BAKKE Spiritual Formation Consultant
JULIET BENNER Institute for Psychospiritual Health
DAVID COOPER Mount Paran Church of God
TOM CORRELL Bethel Theological Seminary
LARRY DONNITHORNE Colorado Christian University
LELAND ELIASON Bethel Theological Seminary
FRED FINKS Ashland Theological Seminary
ALICE W. FRYLING Spiritual Director
ROBERT A. FRYLING InterVarsity Press
WES GARDNER Kiokee Baptist Church
WINSTON GOODEN Fuller Theological Seminary
PAM GUNERATNAM Calvary Life Ministries (Malaysia)
FLYNN JOHNSON Atlanta Metropolitan Cathedral
REG JOHNSON Asbury Theological Seminary
IKE REIGHARD Northstar Church
J. D. WALT Asbury Theological Seminary
CAM YATES Carey Theological Seminary
 Contents
4
Front Page
We Can Become Who We Are
Larry Crabb

HONESTY ABOUT THE

LIFE TOGETHER:
J O U R N E Y:

DARK NIGHTS AND BRIGHT MORNINGS FRIENDSHIP AND DIRECTION

6 20
Misery Loves Company: Letting Go in Love:
What Im Learning About My Struggles Trevor Hudson
Larry Crabb
24
10 The Gift of Being Yourself

o r
Soul Talk David G. Benner

v i re
A Conversation with a Soul Friend

a
Larry Crabb with James Trip Moore

l
26

e h16
at Through a Glass Darkly:
Spiritual Direction and the Quest for

b
Knockouts Authenticity
Gordon MacDonald Jeannette A. Bakke
io

nsh
emotion

In keeping with the idea of the soul as a unique representation of unity and
diversity, the format of Conversations will include five continuing themes, each
ip in

representing an enduring aspect of the soulthought, emotion, behavior,

relationship, and intention.
te

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T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A L STREAMS OF CLASSICAL SPIRITUAL
T H E O L O G Y: L I V I N G W AT E R : EXERCISES:

FORMING THE SOUL WISDOM AND ENERGY HABITS THAT TRANSFORM

FOR THE SOUL
31 59
Forming an Authentic Self 48 O Taste and See:
in an Inauthentic World Touched by an Author A Meditation on Rembrandts
Kenneth Boa An Interactive Review of Return of the Prodigal Son
True Self/False Self: Unmasking Juliet Benner
37 the Spirit Within
Interview with Gray David G. Benner with 67
Temple M. Basil Pennington What Happens in Solitude?
Gary W. Moon Jan Johnson
52
44 Becoming Real: 71
Two TreesTwo Selves Thomas Merton and the Back Page
Gary W. Moon True Self Living in Truth
and Dialogue with David Benner David G. Benner
Eckman C. Tam

3
 We
Can
BECOME
Who
We
Are
ACTUALIZING

THE T RUE S ELF

 F R
Think what it
would mean if
followers of Jesus
became who we
already are.
Things would be
a lot different.
S
So many of our decisions are car-
ried along by deep undercurrents
in the soul that move us away
from our true identity. Perhaps
the strongest one is the fear of
how other people might react to
us, the terror that well be left
alone, cut off from the community
we need, disapproved, rejected,
unwanted. That fear arouses a
sense of indignation that we mis-
take as moral and use to justify a
demand for personal satisfaction.
We then live with no higher con-
cern than our own well-being and
become who we were never
meant to be, autonomous narcis-
sists who measure what is good
by how it impacts us in the
moment. We become who we are
not.
When we discover who we
most truly are, created by a giving
community of radically good per-
sons and re-created by radical for-
giveness that implants a non-self-
focused nature in our inmost
being, fear no longer controls us.
Neither does the longing for satis-
faction. We become God-
obsessed and eventually God-like.
God, not our neediness, fills our
center, and the satisfaction we
seek follows closely on the heels
of sacrificing our demand for satis-
faction on the altar of satisfying
someone else, which is what we
most want to do.
O N T P A G
It shouldnt be this way, but its
not an easy thing to discover who
we really are. But then, nothing is
quite the way its supposed to be.
Were disfigured, but the gospel
refigures us, by a long, slow, sure
process.
Think what the obstacles are.
Were naturally self-obsessed, not
God-obsessed. Were committed
to foolish independence, aware of
an unquenchable desire for satis-
faction and determined to slake
that thirst by any means available.
Were so busy looking out for our
own well-being that looking out for
someone elses becomes an
unreachable and condemning
ideal.
From our earliest days, we
intuitively know that we cant
become true lovers until someone
first loves us, perfectly. We quickly
discover no one does. Not par-
ents, not mates, not friends.
Terror and aloneness and the
demand for a substitute for love,
something that provides a coun-
terfeit of what only love can do for
us, become the prime energy dri-
ving what we do. The only escape
is receiving perfect love. And that
means abandoning ourselves to
God. Hes the only source of per-
fect love.
But our souls are like tightly
sealed jars. Nothing can be
poured into them until theyre bro-
ken. And then whatever is poured
spills out on everything around us.
If what we receive is Gods love,
the supply is limitless. Theres
plenty to fill the innermost center
of our being and then to flow into
others without emptying us.
Discovering our true selves
requires that we discover Gods
love. And that requires facing how
many things our false self clings to
as more valuable than God. If we
learn to be quiet in the Spirits
presence, we realize thats what
hes doing. Hes robbing us of
peace from every source other
5
E
than God. Hes shutting us up to
grace. And we fight it. So the
process is slow and sometimes
painful, for ourselves and for those
around us.
Until brokenness reduces us to
glad surrender, we remain willfully
committed to using people to our
advantage and protecting our-
selves from those who dont line
up with our agenda. The result is a
world full of false selves, people
trying to make life work without
radical dependence on God.
But life isnt working, and it
wont until a counterculture of
people who are discovering who
they truly are show the way, peo-
ple who know in their depths that
God loves them, people who rest
in Christs forgiveness so fully that
they happily give up autonomy and
relax in dependence, people who
experience the Spirit as a river
within, cleansing them from self-
determination and transforming
them into lovers of God who
therefore love others.
We are already loved; we are
already forgiven; we are already
new creations, participants in the
divine nature. Think what it would
mean if followers of Jesus
became who we already are, if we
became our true selves and aban-
doned everything false.
It shouldnt be this way, but its
not an easy thing to discover who
we really are. Thanks to the
gospel, however, it can be done.
As a matter of fact, its already
happening. Look inside. Look
around. The Spirit is quietly at
work changing us from fearful,
demanding self-obsessives into
trusting, humble people who are
obsessed with God.
We hope this issue of
Conversations shines light on the
process.
Larry Crabb
 Honesty About
Dark Nights and Bright Mornings
behavior

the Journey:

Misery Larry
Crabb
intention

Loves
What Im Learning
About My Struggles

Company
thought
relationship

Im struggling as I write this.Some would say

Im in a bad mood. Others might simply think
Im down. I see it differently. I see my struggle
as a difficult opportunity to take the next step in
discovering and releasing who I really am.
emotion

I
Id rather be up. I like feeling
happy, and I often do. I was made
to feel good. But Im realizing
something: its easy to miss joy in
my pursuit of happiness. If I
devote my energy and spend my
time arranging things as best I can
so that I feel up, I never discover
myself. I never realize who I
uniquely am because of Christ.
And I never discover life, at least
not the real thing. I never discover
the life I was designed to live, the
life that is resilient enough to
weather any storm and survive
with hope of better days ahead. I
never discover the life of Jesus in
me that finds its deepest joy in
loving. I remain caved in on
myself, satisfied (sort of) with a
kind of happiness that never
releases radical love.
Its taken me a while, but Ive
noticed something. When Im up,
when I feel good, Im often further
removed from joy than when Im
miserable. Im easier to be with,
but Im less likely to discover my
capacity to be present with you.
Struggles that leave me empty
and hopeless tend to drive me to
look even more deeply into my
being to find the supernatural
resources I need just to stay
human, not to surrender to basic
animal drives, and to keep diaboli-
cal urgesrevenge, power, self-
pity, and the likein check.
And when Im desperate, when
my soul feels dead, when nothing I
can easily envision brings hope,
Im confronted with the final exis-

6
tential choicebelieve the gospel
or give up. Its then that I feel
empowered to take the ultimate
risk, to surrender to God and
hope in his goodness no matter
what I see going on around me or
in me.
Desperation is my friend, one I
dont enjoy very much, but never-
theless a friend. It sets in motion a
process that lets me see that my
true self is neither beastly nor
demonic. If it werent for Jesus, Id
be both. But thanks to Jesus, Im
neither.
To be sure, desperation puts me
in touch with how much of the
predatory beast and the scheming
devil remain within mewhen I
hurt, I can justify the worst of
sinsand it helps me identify
what is within me that still requires
restraint.
But I also see that the path to
discovering my true self has less
to do with restraint and more with
release. Legalism is swept away
by the gentle breeze of freedom. I
can be me and still be good. And
accountability gives way to cele-
bration, but only when the Spirit
moves. I cant control his move-
ment, but I can wait for it. And
when it comes, we can party
W
together and enjoy clean fun, the
best kind.
Its gospel. Its good news.
The exact center of me is now
eager, ready, and willing to love. I
have an appetite for holiness thats
stronger than my lust for sin. The
real me, my true self, is the prod-
uct of grace, a creation of the
Spirit by the power of the cross
for the glory of the Father.
Thats the good news. Heres
the bad: theres more hope of dis-
covering my true self when Im
miserable than when Im happy.
Hosea quoted God as saying,
In their misery they will earnestly
seek me (Hosea 5:15, NIV).
Of course that cuts both ways.
Misery makes me either more
self-centered, isolated, protective,
manipulative, and grumpy or des-
perate enough to look for God on
his terms, to let his light reveal all
that is false in me, all my self-
absorption in its thousand disguis-
es, and to sit still while his love
slowly burns it away. The process
takes a lifetime. As David Benner
wisely says, The self that
embarks on the journey is not the
self that arrives. The journey
requires seemingly endless cycles
of misery and release, but its a
soul-restoring process.
Theres
more hope of
discovering my
true self when
Im miserable
than when
Im happy.
When Im feeling good, when my
key relationships are going well
and my body is functioning
decently and Ive got enough
money to pay my bills, Im just not
as interested in honest self-
assessment as when Im feeling
bad. During good times, its easier
to be selfish and not see it. Gods
doing his job, youre doing yours,
and Im happy. Does something
else matter? Things are pretty
much as they should be. And all
the while, my false self, that set of
proud motives and independent
choices designed to keep me safe
and happy without full surrender,
continues to masquerade as me.
The imposter lives.
I look as if Im loving, but Im
7
not. Only joy releases love.
Happiness never does. Happiness,
that pleasant feeling generated by
favorable circumstances, is self-
focused. It releases only the
demand for more favor. The
process required for me to discov-
er the God-dependent me who is
joyful because of God, whatever
he does, can be miserable.
Happiness disappears, even
when blessings continue. Its a
mark of maturity, not depression,
to identify a core emptiness in my
soul that no pleasure on earth can
fill. Its a good thing, a sign of dis-
cernment, to feel hunger even
after a trip to the worlds buffet,
and then to retreat to the desert
where no food but God himself is
available.
Thats what the spiritual masters
called detachment. It involves a
holy indifference to all that is good
other than God, and a content-
ment in Christ that is unshakable
by tragedy, injustice, or rejection.
Paul talked about the secret of
contentment, and he talked about
it from prison. He was tasting God
in the dungeon, and salivating over
the coming banquet.
My false self can do a decent job
of keeping me happy, sometimes
for a long season. I can make rea-
sonable choices consistent with
my autonomous spirit of entitle-
ment, and, if Im lucky, I can live
with no sense of conscious threat
to my well-being. I can dull the
taste buds of my soul to the point
where I actually think Im getting
everything I want, or could get it if
only someone would treat me bet-
ter and a few breaks would fall my
way. And I can socialize both my
animal desires and my devilish
urges to look acceptable, even
religious, then live for their satis-
faction and deceive myself to think
Im living for God.
But when I do, I never love. I
may be nice; I may be patient to a
point, I may even sacrifice myself
for another with a pragmatic eye
to my eventual benefit, but I will
never love. I will never become the
me Jesus died to create, that his
Spirit longs to form and release.
Im learning that to find me (an
enterprise which Jesus warned is
dangerous, one that is successful
only when I give it up), I must relin-
quish my lust for happiness from
any source apart from God. Im
not wrong for wanting happiness. I
cant stop wanting it. But I must
relinquish all requirement that
things go my way, that I get what I
want from you, and I must do so in
the hope that I want something
deeply which only God can pro-
vide and is providing right at this
moment.
And I must crucify the hellish
spirit of entitlement within me that
can smell so heavenly. Not only do
I want something from you, but
youre wrong, youre really wrong,
if you dont give it to me. You
should respond to me this way,
not that. If youre married, reflect
on your attitude toward your
spouse when he or she fails to
give you what you legitimately
want. Youll see what I mean.
When you dont give me what I
so reasonably want, it hurts,
sometimes so badly that it feels
like death. But its not death. You
dont have the power to kill my
soul. What must die is my pride,
my arrogance which believes its
moral for me to demand that you
treat me properly. Of course I
want you to treat me well, and I
hurt when you dont. But either
way, Im alive in Christ. And that
means Im indestructibly alive; my
true self lives, and Im able to love,
just like Jesus. Its then I discover
that true morality is loving as God
does; its the freedom to love peo-
ple I think I have reason to hate.
And I must surrender all hopes
of joy to the mercy and kindness
of God. Its a severe but kind
mercy when we find ourselves in a
place where we simply will not
True morality
is loving as
God does;
its the
freedom to
love people
I think I
have reason
to hate.
make it if God isnt who he says
he is, if he is neither present nor
good. When were there, were
terrified with a fear only perfect
love can soothe. Were empty
with a void only union with the
divine can fill. And were desper-
ate with a very real despair that
only hope in the next world can
release.
T
Things are stacked against any
of us discovering our true selves.
If the Spirit within me were not
greater than all that opposes me,
Id give up. Id have to. The pres-
sure to keep living out of my false
self is enormous. Only a handful of
people are willing to stay with me
during the process of discovering
my true self. Most people just
wish Id be happy, easier to be
with, more satisfied with all the
blessings Ive been given, and less
desperate to experience God in
deeper ways.
Let me list, then briefly describe,
three pressures I often face that
work to keep me false. I list them
for two reasons: one, you face
them too; two, like me, you may
be putting these pressures on oth-
ers. And you really dont want to.
8
1. Other peoples agendas
for me
I was invited to join the faculty of a
seminary. The invitation came at a
time when Gods call on my life
was taking shape. In the spirit of
honesty, I told the inviting commit-
tee in a lengthy letter that I sensed
no calling from God to devote my
priority energy to the mission of
the seminary. I stated that I
respected the seminarys purpose
and believed I could pursue my
calling within its framework, but I
could not see my way clear to
accept normal faculty responsibili-
ties beyond the classroom, things
like committee appointments and
student advising. I therefore sug-
gested that I was not a good can-
didate for an academic position
and recommended the invitation
be withdrawn.
They warmly agreed to my stipu-
lations, I agreed to come, and
within several months, tensions
arose. I was assigned to several
committees. I reminded them of
my letter and said I would not
serve. The dean responded, We
felt that once you were here,
youd get on board with our mis-
sion.
My mission so easily feels more
important than yours. I think I
know best how to deploy your
gifts, and if your unique gifting
would further my call from God, I
am stunned if you dont get on
board.
Under that kind of pressure, the
temptation to comply is enormous.
It can seem that the only way to
resist is to get angry. Even in min-
istry, sometimes especially in min-
istry, the conflict makes us miser-
able. But the misery is an opportu-
nity to dig deep, and to hear God
say, This is who I made you. This
is what I want you to do. And we
catch a glimpse of our true selves.
2. A friends desire to
be helpful
Best friends are sometimes the
most difficult people in our lives.
They want to help us. I most want
to help the people I love the most.
Recently, I was sharing with a
good friend about my unmanage-
able life. Its all so complicated.
So many threads are pulling at me
that Im having a hard time know-
ing which thread is the Spirit.He
replied, Maybe you just need to
get away for a while, where you
can be free of all the demands on
your life and just listen to God. I
immediately went to work to han-
dle the moment, with more than a
trace of impatience.
Hear the difference between my
friends sentence, which I irritably
scrambled to handle, and a sen-
tence that would have helped free
me to discover my true self, such
as this: Whats keeping you from
getting away for a while to hear
from God? Are you sensing the
Spirit leading you to a time for
reflection? And if so, whats get-
ting in the way?
What my friend said involved
empathic advice. My reflexive
thought was, I have thought of
that, you know. If you knew my
life, youd realize how naive and
simplistic your counsel feels.
What he might have said would
have moved toward me with tran-
scendent curiosity. I would have
felt respected, enticed, and encour-
aged to explore my inner world.
Empathy and advice can easily
provoke defenses. Transcendent
curiosity more often encourages a
clear look at what the Spirit is say-
ing to our souls and how were
cooperating or resisting.
3. The ever-present risk
of judgment
The desire to help is the parent of
judgment. Here, let me help you.
What? You wont do what I say?
Well, why not? Do you think Im
wrong? Or are you just stubborn?
Hidden beneath the most confi-
dent exterior is an insatiable desire
to be liked, and its counterpart,
the fear of rejection or criticism.
I feel entirely safe with no one.
Except for God (and sometimes I
faithlessly have my doubts about
his love), I live with the fear that
everyone might turn on me. Theyll
find fault and want to back away
from me. So I keep my distance. I LARRY CRABB is
find it difficult to live from my cen- a psychologist, author,
ter as the beloved of God in a spiritual director, and
community of unsafe people. Founder and Director
But every community is unsafe, of New Way Ministries.
at least to some degree. And
when I face that fact, I feel misery.
But that misery loves company; it
loves the company of a safe com-
munity. In my misery, I find the
compelling desire to seek out the
only safe community I know, the
community of God, the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.
The biggest challenge I face in
my longing to become who I am is
to know and enjoy each member
of the Trinity to such an extent
that I can remain centered in them
when Im with others. When Im
centered in God, alive to the
Spirits rhythm, aware of the Sons
grace, and basking in the Fathers
love, I no longer fear anothers
judgment. It can hurt, but it cannot
destroy. Its then that I more fully
discover my true self, and Im
empowered to enter relationships
with real love.
* * *
9
 A Conversation With A Soul Friend

SoulTalkby Larry Crabb with James Trip Moore

A
Ask a hundred people to indicate if
they have friends, and ninety-five
will likely raise their hands. Some
will do so with a casual indignation
that says, Of course I have
friends.
Then ask the same group a fol-
low-up question. Okay, now raise
your hands only if you have really
good friends, you know, a few
special people with whom you can
be yourself, folks with whom you
feel meaningfully and comfortably
close. Facial expressions
throughout the room will shift from
casually indignant to thoughtful.
Some folks, maybe a dozen, will
smile and lift their hands with
grateful confidence. Another forty
or fifty will lift theirs with a tenta-
tive slowness that says, I think
so. The rest will keep their hands
on their laps, with either a sad or
an angry face.
Press things a bit further and
ask a third question.Raise your
hands this time if you are certain
that you have at least one soul
friend, one person whom you trust
so deeply that their betrayal would
devastate you, someone who
knows you well enough to speak
with life-arousing power into your
inmost being, and someone who
would say both these things about
you.
If question one Do you have
friends?is met with a shoulder-
shrugging Of course!and if ques-
tion twoDo you have good
friends?provokes thoughtful
reflection that leads to mixed reac-
tions, then question threeDo
you have soul friends?will most
probably furrow brows and gener-
ate confusion. What do you
mean? Can you ask the question a
different way?
So you respond, Do you
have friends with whom you have
no secrets, people you love being
with because somehow they stir
your appetite for God no matter
whats going on in your life, people
that make you feel as if you can
be yourself, with no pretense or
effort, people that respond more
with curiosity than solutions when
you share your struggles?
By this time, most folks in the
room will be quiet, quieted by a
yearning for something they cant
fully understand or articulate, but
something they know they want. A
few would slip their hands into the
air to indicate, Im not sure how it
happened, but yes, I have a soul
friend, and Im grateful beyond
words. Just thinking about that
person makes me feel safely alive;
my heart is warmed, and a hope is
deepened that someday Ill enjoy
all that I was created for.
I am among the favored few
whose hand would rise. When I
ask the third question of myself,
one of the folks who comes imme-
diately to mind is Trip Moore. Over
the twenty-five years we have
known each other, he has let me
see through his persona to his
person. And I have done the same
with him.
I am fully authentic with no one.
I dont know how to be, partly
because Ive not yet trusted any-
ones love enough to cast out all my

Do you have friends with whom you have no secrets, people you love being with
because somehow they stir your appetite for God no matter whats going on in your life, people
that make you feel as if you can be yourself, with no pretense or effort, people that respond more
with curiosity than solutions when you share your struggles?

10
fear, partly because I never, even
after all these years, know exactly
who I am at any given moment.
But I come close with Trip,
and he with me. It gets awkward
sometimes; occasionally we feel
tension between us; a couple
times the tension has erupted into
intense conflictwe once yelled
at each other for ten minutes on a
downtown Chicago street on our
way back to the hotel. And yet we
sense little need to play it safe.
We dont posture or pontificate
when were together, and we feel
no neurotic need to please or take
care of each other.
Who I am meets who he is.
Our true selves, who we really are
because of Jesus, connect, never
fully, but substantially, not always,
but often.
Soul friends, what David
Benner calls sacred compan-
ions, meet each other at the level
of their souls, their inmost being,
what is most real and alive within
them. Foibles, weaknesses, crazi-
ness, inexcusable selfishness and
pridethey are all visible.
But not central. Whats central
is the center. Trip and I take the
considerable risk (that I take with
only a handful of people) of nearly
authentic relating. I think its
because we actually believe the
gospel. We believe that our truest
selves are not foibled, weak,
crazy, or bad.
Thanks to Christs blood and
his Spirit, we literally believe that
each others center is indestruc-
tibly alive, spotlessly clean, and in
sync with the Spirits rhythm. I
cant destroy him, and he cant
destroy meso were not afraid
of each other. When we have a
conversation, one agenda swal-
lows up all otherswe long to
speak from our center and to
access and feed the center of the
other.
It requires concentration and
intentionality. But its not work.
When it happens, when our cen-
ters meet, it feels more like
release than a reward for disci-
pline.
Im learning that it takes a life-
time to discover our true selves, a
lifetime of discovering Gods heart,
of seeing Jesus and what hes up
to more clearly, of surrendering to
a divine love the Spirit helps us
believe is real. And it takes a life-
time of relating with increasing
authenticity and hope-driven bro-
kenness to a few soul friends.
When Gary, David, and I
decided to devote this issue of
Conversations to the theme of
false self/true self, I thought it
might be good if I interviewed Trip.
In keeping with the passion behind
this journal, what Ive come up
with is more of a conversation
than an interview, a dialogue
between two soul friends.
I do not hold up our relation-
ship as a model to imitateart
cannot be imitated, only created
but I do offer this conversation as
one example of what nearly three
decades of risky relating can pro-
duce between two floundering pil-
grims who take Jesus seriously as
we move into each others lives.
LC: Maybe a little history
would be a good place to start.
For the sake of our readers,
tell how we first got acquinted.
TM: We first met back in the
fall of 1979, when Judy and I flew
from Canada to Florida for a week
of counseling. At that point, we
had been married for a year and a
half, and separated for the last six
months. We had read your book,
Effective Biblical Counseling, and in a
last-ditch effort, we had contacted
you to see if you could meet with
us.
Our marriage had been tense
from day one. Starting on the hon-
eymoon, I had shut down internally
toward Judy; my internal struggles
11
had gone from bad to worse with
each passing month. And when
Judy started reacting to my dis-
tance, the tension turned into hos-
tility, until we came to a point
where we figured that separating
until we could find some help
would be the best idea.
In those days,Christian coun-
seling was a new thought and
most people doing it were into the
point to the Bible verse and
exhort changemethod. God
knows how much I tried to
changeI even saw a Freudian
psychiatrist weekly for a year, but
all to no avail.
By the time Judy and I went to
see you in Florida, both of us were
pretty convinced there was no
hope for our marriage, but as
Christians who really didnt want a
divorce, we figured one last effort
couldnt hurt. We saw you for a
total of four hours that week in
Florida, and God used that time to
begin a major transformation in me
especially and in our marriage.
Upon returning home, we rented a
new apartment together, and, in
many ways, the marriage finally
really began. A few months later,
we adopted our first daughter.
Apart from two more one-
week visits to Florida for counsel-
ing over the next two years, you
and I didnt see each other again
until I showed up for the M.A. pro-
gram in counseling at Grace
Seminary in 1984. I remember
your surprise at seeing us when
we first ran into you at church one
Sunday, just before classes
began.
LC: I guess I was surprised
our time had made a real differ-
ence. So much for my confidence,
at least then, in the power of the
Spirit. I like to think Ive grown
since then. Whatever growth has
been happening in me has some-
thing to do with our friendship.
Since that first week, when I
counseled you, our relationship has
clearly moved from counselor-client
to a friendship of mutuality. Ive said
more than once that I receive as
much spiritual direction from you as
from anyone else. In your mind,
how important is mutuality in the
development of our friendship, and
how has it happened?
TM: Until mutuality became a
reality in our relationship, I dont
think either one of us would have
referred to the other as a friend.
And I dont believe that began to
happen until the last half of my sec-
ond year in the counseling pro-
gram. You had certainly been very
instrumental in my growth up to
that point, but it was all very one-
way.
Im not really too sure what hap-
pened that allowed me to start
being there for you on occa-
sions. I know there was a real
intimidation factor for most of us
students that kept us at a certain
distance. After all, how could any of
us ever be helpful to you? You did
come across then as pretty darned
self-sufficient.
There was one particular
moment that I remember very
clearly when, during a supervision
time, you used my way of relating
to you as an example of what you
saw me doing with the client. I think
I felt a little of your loneliness. That
event led to my becoming deeply
gripped by how I was failing you in
our relationship, and led, ironically,
to my being able to be not just a
receiver with you, but also a giver.
I say ironically because I
wouldnt be surprised to learn that
most real soul friendships begin by
one person moving into the life of
the other in life-changing ways,
which, in turn, frees the other per-
son to relate differently. The result
is the potential for a real friendship.
I believe thats what happened with
us.
LC: I sometimes wish I still felt
self-sufficient. Intimidation is a
great protective device. And you
walked right through it. Thanks, I
guess. When I think of your
impact on me, two things come
quickly to mind: your relentless
self-awareness that has taken you
into the pits, and your sense of
inner buoyancy, your realization
that you are indestructibly alive,
even when you feel dead. What
do you see as the relationship
(causal? correlational?) between
self-awareness and a sense of
spiritual life?
TM: Its kind of nice when
something that positively impacts
a friend is something you havent
had to work hard to make happen.
If I am self-aware I truly see it as
a fruit of Gods having peeled
away my best efforts to avoid fac-
ing the reality of life. Facing pain
has a way of revealing the futility
of the false selfit just isnt pro-
viding real answers.
To answer your question, I do
believe there is a correlation
between my self-awareness and
the inner buoyancy you talk about.
I dont believe I ever would have
begun to discover a spiritual life
that is indestructible had I not
been forced down a difficult path
by the struggles that my self-
awareness has required me to
face. Some people talk as if self-
awareness is liberating. For me,
it is quite the opposite. I find
myself in a world I have no idea
how to handle or fix. I find myself
with a heart that is easily wayward
and hard. Self-awareness is nec-
essary and good, but it feels more
like death than liberation.
LC: And you recommend it?
Do you see it as a predictable
route to finding your true self?
Does resurrection reliably follow
death?
12
TM: To be quite honest, the
discovery of the true buoyancy of
my relationship with God has
always come as a surprise to me,
as opposed to some predictable
next step in the Christian walk,
perhaps because it has almost
always followed moments and
events that had forced me to cry
out, Alas, all is lost! When you
think youre going down under the
water, and something suddenly
pulls you back up to the surface,
youre surprised. The fact that a
life-preserver truly functions
doesnt really excite you until you
find yourself floating miles from
shore in very deep water. That
somewhat describes my discovery
of buoyancy.
I find myself asking,why is it
always such a surprise to me
when God finally does what hes
said he will do over and over again
in the Scriptures? I think maybe
its because Ive become so famil-
iar with the truth of who he is
and what he says he does, that
Im somewhat content just with
the idea. But to do that, Ive had
to learn to be comfortable with the
dichotomy between the truth I
read and the life I live. Its as if Ive
learned to survive on the idea,
without there being much practical
experience of the reality, and then
calling it living by faith.
So when God, in the middle of
the insurmountable turmoil of life,
touches me in a way that lets me
see his presence as life-giving,
and rekindles my heart for him and
those around me, it is one glorious
surprise, over and over. The expe-
rience feels a lot like what I read in
Psalm 116:7: Be at rest once
more, O my soul, for the Lord has
been good to you(NIV).
LC: I think Im getting the pic-
ture that the process of coming
alive is mysterious. But youre not
saying its completely beyond
description. How does the Spirit
remind you that youre alive when
youre down?
TM: Sometimes its through a
friend who hasnt become blind to
who I really am in Christ, even
when Ive totally lost sight of that
reality. Thats one of the things that
Ive learned from our friendship and
that get me really excited. We can
truly be used of God to see each
others hearts stirred and rekindled.
There have been so many times
when I felt like I was floating aim-
lessly at sea, and you have said a
few sentences that resulted in my
putting my foot down and touching
the solid bottom.
I
I know its possible to play a similar
role in anothers life. Part of my
frustration is that I dont feel like I
do that very often with my friends.
But Im trusting the Lord desires to
see me become freer and freer, to
represent him in that way in peo-
ples lives.
The other way the Spirit
reminds me Im alive requires a lit-
tle more from me. It happens when
Im brought to a point where I real-
ize Im only going to sink lower and
lower if I dont do what Ive spent a
good part of my life avoiding doing
(even as a Christian), and that is
approaching the throne of grace to
find help in my time of need.
Im baffled by the fact that Ive
known the verse in Hebrews that
talks about this opportunity for thir-
ty-odd years, yet Ive somehow
found a way to get around having
to do it. Sure, I would often pray,
but Im talking about something dif-
ferent from what I used to call
prayer. Somehow, I had learned to
pray without its being relational. It
was like e-mailing a list of needs to
someone as opposed to walking in
and sitting down in the presence of
another person and pouring out my
heart and experiencing his.
Several years ago, I began
noticing how terrified I was to look
to another person for something I
needed, how I had learned to sur-
vive on my own and avoid all the
dangers of depending on others.
And Gods name was at the top of
my list of people not to depend
on.
It has taken my getting totally
cornered to start thinking in terms
of actually counting on God for
something I cant live without. And
now, rather than being a scary
experience, the desperateness my
self-awareness provokes stirs an
excitement deep within me,
because Im a little more familiar
with where it can lead me, and I
know refreshment and perspective
await me there.
Also, your PAPA prayer has
become a tool that Ive really
grown to appreciate in this regard.
It helps me move into the pres-
ence of God in a way that feels
very alive and real.
LC: Thanks for the plug. Let
me shamelessly seize it by men-
tioning that I describe what I call
the PAPA prayer in my book, The
Pressures Off: P present yourself
honestly before God; A attend
to where you experience his pres-
ence or absence; P purge your-
self through confession of whatev-
er you become aware is blocking
the Spirits access to your soul;
A approach him with the willing-
ness of full surrender, anticipating
a joy in fellowship with the Father
that exceeds all other joys. Now,
let me keep on my self-serving
roll. Ive heard you say that God
has used me to move you to good
places you otherwise might not
have gone. I dont think its my
degrees or cleverness that God
has used. What has he used in
our relationship to impact your
soul?
TM: It used to be your clever-
ness, back in the days of the M.A.
program, when I was still looking
13
for someone who was going to be
able to help get my act together.
Today, its very different.
There are many things I could
say in response to your question.
Let me mention two.
First, there is something about
your brutal honesty that has
robbed me of being able to use
the accoutrements of the Christian
life to stay above the real fray. I
have seen you refuse to pretend,
and as a result, discover God in
ways that make my mouth water.
In a sense, youve stolen the
glossy image of a victorious
Christian life and replaced it with a
much more demanding mandate,
one that requires me to discover a
God who is truly there and truly
cares, or I simply wont survive.
I have to admit that at one
level, I really dont like that defini-
tion of the Christian life, but deep
down inside, it stirs and thrills me
because its a perspective that
seems to fit so much better with
what it took for us to be able to
walk with God down herea
bloody cross. I watch you walk
that path that requires you to lose
your life, and Ive seen you find
real life as a result.
There is a quote by G.K.
Chesterton that says well what Im
trying to communicate here: The
Christian life has not been tried
and found wanting. It has been
found difficult and left untried.
You are a person who has truly
tried the Christian life, and you
have indeed found it diffucult. But
youve also found the One who
not only makes living it possible,
but makes following that path
worth the effort. Otherwise, why
would anyone do it? Without you, I
doubt very seriously I would be on
that path.
The second aspect is related.
More recently, I have been struck
by how you are caught up with the
glory of God. Its sad that such a
phrase can actually become anoth-
er easily repeated mantra that
holds very little gripping meaning
for most of us Christians.
Because, for some reason,
you are deeply gripped by the
importance of God being truly glo-
rified, not just in our creeds and
doctrines but also in our conversa-
tions and relationships, I sense
God is again taking me into territo-
ry I would not have discovered
had you not been my friend.
What excites me most is that
Im starting to get a glimpe of how
important this theme really isthe
most important! Not just one more
doctrine among others, but the
very cornerstone of all the rest.
Gods pleasure is what it is all
about.
Im not sure where this new
discovery is going to take me, but
I do know one thing: it wont be
superficial. Just a statement Ive
heard you repeat several times in
the last year or so expresses what
I mean: Gods goal in our lives is
to stir up a desire for him that sur-
passes any other desire. Im
starting to believe that is how radi-
cal it must be if I truly want to live
in a way that pleases and honors
God.
LC: We recently sat on stools
in front of four hundred people at
a SoulCare conference to have
this kind of conversation live. You
said then that you were more in
touch with a pervasive emptiness
in your soul than ever before. And
you called that emptiness a gift.
What did you mean?
TM: I have a difficult time
understanding how God can truly
mean very much to me if my per-
ception of life is that it pretty much
supplies me with what I need to
be happy. Sure, when things are
going along fairly well, Im glad
Gods around, and I praise him logical adjustment.
for doing such a good job, but he
never becomes what I call vitally
necessary, in the sense that I
really cant make it without know-
ing him better.
If that is true, then any involve-
ment on his part is an amazing gift
if it results in my discovery that my
heart needs much more than a life
that is working fairly well. Thats
why I see my growing emptiness
as one of the best things he can
do for me.
As he continues his renewing
work in my life, the survival strate-
gies I learned to use as a kid in
order to make it, to maintain the
illusion that life was going fairly
well, have become less and less
effective. As a result, I am increas-
ingly aware of the unpleasant
aspects of life, both in the world
around me and the world inside
me. Consequently, my life has
become much more difficult to
live. Im more and more conscious
of how God intended things to be,
in contrast with how they really
are... not just in relationships with
others, but in myself. And this
raises some really hard questions
about what life is all about, and the
role God is supposed to play in all
of it.
Most people seem to think
that the reality Im talking about
here sounds terrible, like its
something to avoid, something to
get rid of, but to be honest, this
reality has become one of my best
friends.
I also see my emptiness as a
gift since I really want to be used
as someone who can walk along
the path of life with other people in
ways that can bring them into
more of what God truly has for
them. If my own happiness is
based on my life working well,
then I wont offer people much
more than help to make their lives
work better, or maybe to mask
their reality with religion or psycho-
Only people who are truly hun-
gry are driven to seek food pas-
14
sionately. I love the verse in Hosea
where God says, I will lead her
[my peope] into the desert and
speak tenderly to her. That is a
gift.
LC: Someone came to you
after that conference with tips on
overcoming your emptiness. You
werent drawn to talk further with
that person. Why?
TM: Its funny, because when I
spoke of my struggle with empti-
ness that day, I wasnt seeing it as
an obstacle to be gotten rid of, but
rather as the result of Gods faith-
ful involvement in my life. But
most Christians dont seem to see
it that way. Thats really not what
we want and expect God to do in
our lives. So when a person starts
talking about something that might
be painful, we instantly see it as
a problem, and try to help the per-
son get past it.
I remember your saying years
ago, during a course in the coun-
seling program, that Christians are
the only people who can really
afford to be truly honest in life, in
the sense of facing reality as it
truly isno denial, no blinders, no
positive spin to make it look better
than it is. Not only do I now
believe that we, as Christians, can
afford to live that way; I dont think
well really become the people
God wants us to be or discover
what he has for us if we dont.
Its only as I see things as they
really are that the depth of my
need for God can become a living,
vital reality, as opposed to a nice
theory. God forbid that anyone
should take that away from me!
LC: How have our conflicts
impacted our friendship (beyond
my praying more that youd admit
they were all your fault)?
TM: Ill never forget our
screaming match as we walked
along a street in downtown
Chicago a few years ago. I look
back on that event with fondness,
because it was the proof, for me,
that our relationship was strong
and stable. Through the whole
thing, I never once felt any fear
that our relationship was some-
how in jeopardy.
Our first real conflict, which
took place at Glen Eyre in 1984,
several years before Chicago, was
different. It was the first time I felt
that in order really to love you, I
was going to have to present
myself in ways that would be very
uncomfortable. I remember toss-
ing and turning the night before,
knowing I was going talk to you
the next morning. I think, at that
point, I was aware that the morn-
ings conversation could be the
beginning of the end of our rela-
tionship.
What is ironic is that this par-
ticular event became a sort of
turning point in our relationship, in
that it drew us closer together as
friends. Your willingness to face
humbly and honestly the impact
you had had on me turned a
painful episode into one of my first
tastes of seeing conflict lead to a
deeper relationship.
I also tend to think that the fact
I was willing actually to confront
you, at that point, became a key
factor in your respecting me. Not
too many people were willing to
risk challenging the head of the
program. That was among the first
steps, on my part, toward mutuality.
LC: Have they had any impact
on the degree to which you feel a
need to hide behind a false self in
our relationship?
TM: Quite to the contrary. I
believe the fact that true conflicts
have been a part of our friendship
has freed me to feel more at ease
to be who I really am with you
(and I hope youd say the same
from your side). Because, in one
sense, weve faced the worst
together and survived, I feel more
at rest and free as a result. Its as
if our relationship has faced the
test of conflict and has come out
stronger for having done so.
LC: Weve both experienced
close friendships that have ended
in conflict. Any fears ours might
come to a sad ending?
TM: As you ask that, a wave
of dread passes through me,
which seems to imply that the
answer to the question has to be
Yes, at least at some level.
Yet I think the fear has less to
do with anything about our particu-
lar relationship and more to do
with my own history. When you
have a mom who was married five
times, you come to the conclusion
that conflicts result in separation.
And more recent losses of good
friends have had even more
impact on me today, I think, than
the family history.
When so few things work out
the way God intended in this fallen
world, you can never say it cant
or wont happen. However,
because of the way you and I have
lived the friendship up to now, I
would be very surprised if some
event or difference could result in
our friendship ending. At least I
want very much to believe that,
and I know youd say the same
thing.
LC: Speak for a minute to
people without a soul friend. Any
thoughts?
TM: Having learned to survive
in life without significant relation-
ships, I didnt feel much pain over
the fact I didnt have close friends.
In view of that fact, I think Id start
by saying, Let your loneliness
become a present, painful reality.
Or, at least, (because Im not sure
15
how one goes about doing that),
ask God to help you get in touch
with that part of your soul, the part
that was designed to enjoy this
kind of relationship.
Then, as you begin to get a
passionate sense of what you
desire and what you are missing,
find someone to whom you can
offer that very thing. Like my
friendship with Larry, the relation-
ship began when Larry simply
moved into my life and loved me
well. So ask God to teach you
how to move into some persons
life in a way that will awaken their
deepest thirst for relationship.
Sometimes, the result will be
two individuals becoming true
friends. Sometimes not. But in any
case, no one will be able to rob
you of the joy of having loved
another.
And maybe the soul you have
awakened will, by the very fact it
is more thirsty, be more likely to
be driven to God to find the only
true Living Water that can satisfy.
As a result, I think God will be glo-
rified. In other words, I think that
will make him very happy.
TRIP MOORE (pictured with
Larry Crabb) lives in Quebec City
with his wife Judy, and three
daughters. Through Editions la
Clairiere he publishes Christian
books in French to nourish the
church in the French-speaking
world. He can be contacted at
edclair@clic.net.
 Knock
Gordon
MacDonald
Outs
I
Im not a big-time boxing fan,
butlike most people I am
familiar with a few well-known
fighters. Their careers are simply
assessed: fights won, lost, or
drawn. There is also the knockout
record: how many knockouts
achieved or experienced.
I was musing on such deep
things the other night, and I won-
dered what it means to a fighter to
be knocked out. What a devastat-
ing experience to lie there, dazed
on the canvas while the crowd
cheers the winner.
Former heavy weight champion
Floyd Patterson confessed that
when he fought, he brought a bag
of disguises with him wigs,
moustaches, big sunglassesto
effect a private getaway should he
lose. So knockouts must generate
more than just a pain in the jaw.
When I rehearse my spiritual
journey, I often think about knock-
outs. Not the ones I might have
scored, but rather the ones Ive
experienced. I hit the canvas well.
In terms of this coarsened
metaphor, I figure Ive been
knocked cold at least five times.
Of course, Ive been down on
the canvas a number of other
times, but on those occasions I
managed to get up. And there
have been a few occasions when I
felt as if I were out on my feet,
and I didnt have the sense to fall
down and take the count.
But my spiritual fighting
record includes at least five per-
sonal knockouts when getting up
was not guaranteed. Five humiliat-
ing experiences (all my responsibil-
ity) changed me and became
important markers in my life of fol-
lowing Jesus.
Lets say it right up front. All of
us (well, most of us, anyway) will
be knocked out sooner or later.
But not all of us will respond to
the experience the same way. Ive
lived long enough to know some
men and women who have been
knocked out and have never got-
ten up. They simply could not han-
dle the disgrace or the defeat. Ive
known a person or two whose
heart was so broken by a knock-
out that they simply quit or died.
When a young man, I never
planned on being knocked out.
16
Does anybody? I assumed I could
learn by other peoples experi-
ences. And I guess I figured that I
was smart enough, clever enough,
that while I might lose a few close
ones, I could always stay on my
feet and avoid the roundhouse
right that might otherwise send
me to the floor.
But this was a foolish confi-
dence.
My first knockout came in the
earliest days of my aspirations to
be a pastor. I had been invited to
join a ministry staff and handle the
responsibilities of youth work. My
wife, Gail, and I had just returned
from our honeymoon, and we
were ambitious to enter ministry
while I made my way through sem-
inary.
The first year of youth ministry
seemed an amazing success. The
young people and their parents
actually seemed to love us
(although I secretly suspected
they loved Gail and liked me). The
decisions I made about youth pro-
gramming were lauded. My rela-
tionships with teens seemed
smooth as glass. In short, I had
one good year. One! Year two was
a disaster.
Im still not sure what I did
wrong, but my influence simply
wore out. Suddenly I was the tar-
get of criticism everywhere I
turned. Decisions, once good,
seemed poor. Teens who had
loved (or liked) me now found me
boring. Programs formerly suc-
cessful now sputtered. I tried
shouting, spraying guilt, whining.
Nothing worked.
Then one day I found a piece of
paper on which someone had writ-
ten a note. It read, If MacDonald
doesnt get out of here soon, this
whole youth program will go down
the toilet. The note was the
knockout blow.
W
Within the hour, I was at my type-
writer arranging a letter of resigna-
tion. I quit! Only twenty-four years
old, a future of anticipated ministry
ahead of me, and I was already a
loser. I was down for the count.
Years later, a distant member of
my mothers family would say to
me at the time of my mothers
death, You know, you come from
a long line of quitters. When
things got tough in your mothers
family, they drank, got bitter, or
simply lay down and died. A com-
ment like that gets ones attention.
The remark was a revelation of
my behavior when Id quit so
impulsively in earlier years. And I
was quick to see other, more
recent times when I had wanted to
quit in the face of opposition,
severe critique, or failure.
I wondered if there was a quit-
ters gene in me. Would I have to
face it down for the rest of my
life? Was I the kind who would
I wondered if there was a quitters gene in me.
Would I have to face it down for the rest of my life?
throw in the towel every time
there was an adverse moment?
This was where I caught on to
the discipline of resolve. Let us
run the race with perseverance...
the biblical writer had exhorted
knocked-out Christians. And I had
to learn to master this idea.
A few years later came another
knockout blow. A person with
whom I had a working relationship
broke promises that I thought
were solid between us. Looking
back from the perspective of many
years, I find my behavior to be silly
and immature. But at the time it
seemed to me as if the sky had
fallen.
I found myself gripped with a
spirit of resentment, possessed of
a hateful force Id never known
before in my life. I was obsessed
over what I perceived the other
person had done. In bed at night, I
would awaken and imagine
vengeance and retribution. Every
idle moment was overwhelmed
with vindictive feelings. In time, I
could smell hate. And it crippled
my spirit.
Whenever anyone tells me
about his or her inability to shake
a habit or an addiction, I recover
the memory of that knockout
because it is as close as I have
ever come to my mind getting fully
out of control. I simply could not
manage my thought life! For all
practical purposes, I was knocked
out.
One Friday afternoon, I was fly-
ing to a distant part of the country
where I was to preach for the
weekend. I was seated at the rear
of a nearly empty plane, and my
thoughts were full of rage. Yet
and here was the irony I had to
17
preach that weekend to several
hundred people. And what would I
say to them? How could I refresh
their lives when mine was flooded
with bitterness?
Was this too a family trait? I
wondered. Was I patterned to be
an angry man who kept a list of
my enemies and plotted their
demise in my fantasies?
We will be landing in thirty min-
utes, the pilot suddenly
announced, intruding on my dark
reverie. And I knew at once that I
could not enter the weekend with
such a toxic spirit. If I could have
gotten on my knees, I would have.
But planes do not have kneelers,
so I sat, belted in, begging God
for relief.
And the message came:
Forgive! Impossible! Another mes-
sage perhaps? But the word
returned again and again until, in a
burst of almost embarrassing
emotion, I begged God (out loud)
to provide me the power to for-
give.
In an experience I reluctantly
describe, I had a vision of God
cutting a hole in my chest. Inky,
thick fluid began to ooze from my
heart. And it bled on until we had
landed. When I got off that plane I
felt spiritual weight lossthe bit-
terness was gone.
This is an important knockout
story for two reasons. First,
because it taught me that I could
never again in life allow the root of
bitterness to grow in my heart.
And secondly, because I went on
to preach at a church that week-
end with a level of power that Id
never known before. It resulted in
an unexpected conversation with
the church leadership before I left.
Youre a very young man, the
people said, but you have quali-
ties we need in a pastor. Would
you consider....?
Sixty days later, I became the
spiritual leader of that congrega-
tion. Could it have happened if Id
arrived that weekend representing
Jesus out of a heart hardened
with hatred? The answer is, as
they say, a no-brainer.
This second knockout experi-
ence enforced one of lifes most
important lessons: Be tender-
hearted, forgiving one another
(Ephesians 4.32, KJV).
A
A few years later (actually my thir-
ty-second year), I was knocked
out a third time.
I had spent several weeks
working nonstop. I had presided at
two terribly sad funerals, attended
several board meetings which had
been tension-filled, preached or
taught so many times I was tired
of myself and my words, and visit-
ed with people who all seemed to
have unsolvable problems. Add to
this my reading of a theology book
which subverted virtually every-
thing I believed in. It had been a
24/7 lifestyle packed with frustra-
tion and adversity.
The knockout came on a
Saturday morning when Gail greet-
ed me at the breakfast table with
an innocent (and accurate) com-
ment: You havent spent much
time with the children lately. The
ten-count began.
As the words sank in, I began
to cry. And I mean cry! Wrenching,
painful sobs which would not stop
for more than four hours. Was I
losing my mind? This had never
happened before (or since). So
what had happened?
I was to learn from that
Saturday knockout experience that
I had finally reached the bottom of
an empty soul. For the first years
of my ministry, I had been content
to glide along on natural energy,
talent, and charm to serve Jesus.
And it wasnt going to work any
longer. St. Paul wrote that the
weapons of our warfare are spiri-
tual (2 Corinthians 10:4). And I
was lacking spiritual weaponry.
While Ive come close a few
times, I have never gone back to
that day again. The dreadfulness
of an empty soul is too real to me
some thirty-plus years later. That
was the day I began to take spiri-
tual discipline seriously: not a dis-
cipline that guarantees against fur-
ther failure or defeat, but a life of
devotion that builds the souls
resilience.
That knockout taught me the
power in the words, Live in
Christ, rooted and built up in him
(Colossians: 2.6,7, NIV).
Some years later, I found myself
on the canvas again, this time
through personal disillusionment.
The time had come for some
strategic changes in my ministry
life, and I thought (no, I was con-
vinced!) I knew something about
the will of God and how it worked.
But I was naive. When the
moment of truth of what was to be
next came, it was a different sce-
nario than Id anticipated, and I felt
as if my lights had been punched
out. Where I had expected a yes,
there was instead a no. The easy
assumption? God had tricked me,
made a fool of me, proved himself
untrustworthy.
Frankly, there was no one I felt I
could talk to. There was no one to
provide perspective. I hadnt built
the friendships I enjoy now.
Result: I fell to the canvas with a
thud. I was angry with God (oh,
the impudence!), and it would
have been very satisfying to con-
front him and tell him off. After all,
Id given him twenty-five good
years, andso it seemedhe had
found a new and crafty way to
make a fool of me.
The effect of the knockout last-
18
ed for a longer time than it should
have. But slowly, a healing of spirit
took place, and I learned some of
the most valuable lessons I would
ever learn from any experience.
First, in retrospect, I now know
that God steered me away from
certain failure. Second, I learned
never again to presume on God
which was exactly what Id been
doing. And, third, it was the
launching of a new Gordona qui-
eter, less ambitious, more content-
ed man.
This fourth knockout taught me
the power of the words, In his
heart a man plans his course, but
the Lord determines his steps
(Proverbs 16.9, NIV).
The fifth knock-out was the
most painful, the most dramatic,
the most public of them all. In my
mid-forties, I succumbed to a
temptation that Id sworn would
never get me.
Satan could never get me to
betray my loved ones, Id said
rather condescendingly to a man
whod asked me one day if I had
any weaknesses in my spiritual
armor. Imagine such a question!
Imagine such an answer!
But in a moment when thought
and conviction had been disrupt-
ed, when self-deceit had laid a
smokescreen, I failed my wife and
my marriage. And because I
hoped that what Id done would
simply become a buried matter, I
began to live with a secret that
ruthlessly nagged at my spirit.
There were hours in the middle of
the night when I had to deal with
unspeakable guilt and shame, and
I told myself that death would be
preferable. Only a kindness from
God kept me going so that when I
was in public, I was able to func-
tion. But the chaos in my interior
life was next to unbearable. I kept
telling myself, Wait out the torture;
perhaps it will go away.
I came to see with a hideous
clarity how capable is the mind of
playing tricks upon itself. One part
of the mind will actually manufac-
ture a logic and rationale that will
justify an event that, if seen in the
light of day, would be unthinkable.
Another part of the mind will cre-
ate the ability to maintain a publicly
impressive persona while the heart
within is breaking.
In those days, people would
approach me after a talk or a
meeting where I had been a leader
and say, You speak with a new
softness and humility, and we
sense your openness to God.
And I would respond, Thats
because Ive seen myself as a sin-
ner. I suspect they left me think-
ing that I was an unusually humble
man.
And I? I would go away saying, If
those people had any idea of whats
surging in my heart, they would
despise me. And when the day
came that my secret became public
knowledge, some despised me.
In the dark days (as Gail and
I often refer to them) which fol-
lowed, we came to know a combi-
nation of sadness and grace that
will never be put into words. It was
a bittersweet time of lifethose
days of the fifth knockoutwhen
we faced up to the hideousness of
sin and the depth of Gods grace.
You will one day look back on
these moments, a godly man
said in those dark days, and you
will say, Those were some of the
most important days of my life.
Speaking of knockouts! I would
have liked to knocked him out for
saying such a thing. But years
later, I learned he was right. This
was a knockout which I can never
afford to gloss over or glamorize,
but I will confess this: In those
moments God spoke things into
my life (and into Gails) that we
cant imagine wed have ever
heard under any other circum-
stances. Let others debate what
Ive just said, but this section of
Conversations is about honesty, and
I became a
significantly freer
man, a person no
longer bound by so
many of the empty
shibboleths and
traditions that have
bound our Christian
world and
threatened it with
obsolescence and
ineffectiveness
Ive been encouraged to speak out
of my own experience.
I came to a deeper, more accu-
rate, more humbling awareness of
my deeper self than I would have
ever reached under other circum-
stances. I learned about the mag-
nificence of Gods kindness. I
learned the importance of personal
communitysacred friendship
with other brothers and sisters. I
came to realize just how far and
wide is the brokenness of many,
many people who sit in our
churches every week and live in
the fear that their secrets will be
exposed and judged without
mercy.
I became a significantly freer
man, a person no longer bound by
so many of the empty shibboleths
and traditions that have bound our
Christian world and threatened it
with obsolescence and ineffective-
ness as a witness of Gods saving
19
love. And, by the way, I found a
new dimension of marriage with
Gail, whom I dearly love and admire
today more than words can tell.
This fifth (and, please God, may
it be the last) knockout taught me
the power of the words, I was
shown mercy so that in me...Christ
Jesus might display his unlimited
patience (I Timothy 1:16, NIV).
The burdensome thing to me as
I recount these knockouts (and
Ive done it before) is that they are
safe to talk about in some commu-
nities only after they are years and
years old. Were I to be experienc-
ing one of them right now (any of
these five) my audience would
likely recoil. More than a few peo-
ple would not want to hear me
out. They would feel uncomfort-
able not knowing how to respond.
Theres something wrong with
this picture. Because with knock-
outs there is the possibility of
grace and growth. These are pos-
sible if a person is ready to repent,
willing to listen, prepared to be
humbled. All that is needed then is
a supportive community that
desires to restore (Gal. 6:1).
I have seen the beaten fighter
face down on the canvas. The ref-
eree counts. The crowd cheers.
The winner raises his gloves in
exhilaration. There is no mercy in
that ring. It is an unspeakably
harsh moment. Will the fighter get
up? Can he?
My journey has known five
such occasions. And each time,
Jesus climbed into the ring and
pulled me to my feet.
Gordon
MacDonald
is a best-selling
author, speaker, and
Senior-Fellow of the
Washington-based
Trinity Forum. He is
the author of Ordering
Your Private World and serves as
Editor-at-Large for Leadership Journal
and Chairman of the Board for World
Relief.
 Life Together: Friendship and Direction
behavior

Letting
intention

Go
Trevor Hudson

A Love
A few months ago, I watched my
thought

eighteen-year-old daughter walk

away from me through the depar-

in
ture lounge of the Johannesburg
Airport. She was on her way to
board a South African Airways
plane bound for London. She had
been planning this trip for several
years and saving every cent she
could. It was going to be a two-
relationship

month holiday during which she

hoped to listen to her favourite
punk bands, visit some art gal-
leries, and experience life in anoth-
er country. It was also her first
time away from home for any
length of time.
As she turned to wave good-
bye, I felt conflicting emotions. On
the one hand, I was happy for her.
She was growing up, leaving my lap and uncritically take in doing. I knew that she was going
everything I said. Those times, to face some difficult challenges
emotion

behind her childhood dependen-

cies and beginning to explore life
on her own. I wanted her to know
that she was going with my full
blessing. In spoken and unspoken
ways, in the days prior to her leav-
ing, I had tried to convey the mes-
sage, I love you; I trust you; I am
proud of you and send you off
freely. You are my deeply beloved
daughter, and I delight in you.
But on the other hand, I was not
finding it easy to let go. While I
knew with my head that it was
important to start giving her free-
dom, a part of me longed for
those days when she would sit on
however, were long gone. I knew
that I needed to put behind me the
way I used to relate to her. I knew
I needed to learn to connect with
my daughter in a new way that
would give her more space and
allow her the freedom to become
more of the person she wanted to
be.
I found those first few days of
separation very difficult. At night I
would toss and turn in bed, unable
to sleep. I experienced levels of
anxiety that I had not known
before, wondering how she was,
where she was, what she was
that come with looking after your-
self in a strange land, not knowing
a soul. She would need to make
her own choices, find her own
way, and deal with life on her own.
The fact that some of my friends
thought I was crazy to allow this
trip didnt help to reduce the high
levels of my worry!
So why did I encourage this
trip? My answer can be summa-
rized in one sentence: I wanted my
daughter to grow up into a greater
freedom. Freedom to find herself.
Freedom to make her own deci-
sions. Freedom to experience the

20
consequences of those decisions.
Freedom to become more mature,
not only within herself, but also in
her relationships with God and
others. Such freedom she would
not experience unless I was willing
to let her go.
In the remainder of this article, I
want to explore more deeply this
experience of letting go. It is a
complex action, fraught with both
opportunity and danger.
Sometimes it seems far easier
just to hold on to our children.
Then we feel that we are in control
of what happens. In contrast, let-
ting go invites us to relate more
freely, to risk, to trust. No longer
do we then call the shots. Instead,
we enter that scary space where
things beyond our control may
happen. What, then, is this letting
go all about?
Letting Go
I
If we want our children to become
their true selves, we must learn to
let them go in a balanced and
healthy way. Obviously, the ways
in which we do this need to be
appropriate to the age of our chil-
dren. We can begin this process
of letting our children go in small
ways: letting them out of our arms
to take their first steps, allowing
them to play with a friend, giving
permission to cycle down the
road, and so on. During adoles-
cence and early adulthood this let-
ting go becomes more difficult and
complex. Certainly it wont be
smooth and untroubled. I have
often been comforted by the crisis
that Joseph and Mary went
through when Jesus began to
show the independence of a
teenager. But they got through it.
For them, as much as it is for us,
letting go is essential to the
growth of our children into a
greater freedom.
We find a wonderful model for
letting go in the relationship that
God has with each one of us.
Have you noticed how free we are
in relation to God? I cannot speak
for you, but I have never personal-
ly experienced the divine presence
forcing itself on me. Nor have I
ever known God to coerce or
pressurse me into a particular
course of action. The gift of Gods
personal love is freely offered, and
we are free to respond in our own
way. We can decide to go Gods
way, or we can go on our own.
There always seems to be a divine
respect for our freedom to choose
what kind of people we want to be.
In the same way that God
relates to us, we need also to
relate to our children. On the one
hand, we really want to be able to
express our love and care for
them. On the other hand, we
should do this without holding on
to them. We need to learn gradu-
ally how to take our hands off their
lives. This is what it means to let
them go. In effect, when we let
them go, we are saying to them
something like this:
I believe that you were created
to live freely.
I place your life into the loving hands
of your Creator.
I let go of my clinging hold on your life.
I am willing for you to begin making
your own choices.
I no longer want to play God
in your life.
I will not believe that I always know
what is best for your life.
I want you to live your own life
according to your best
understanding and light.
I respect the image of God in you.
I want to learn to love you with
open hands.
I love you, and I bless you.
I have confidence in you and
always will.
21
Letting our children go in this
way can also deepen our own
relationship with God. Those who
are more mature on the spiritual
path constantly remind us that, if
we want to grow closer to God,
we must learn to let go. Intimacy
with God, they tell us, is all about
yielding, surrendering, and trust-
ing. However, these kinds of let-
ting go experiences cannot hap-
pen in a vacuum. They are not
abstract or theoretical. We need
real life situations in which we can
actually experience letting go in a
personal way. As I have tried to
describe from my own experience,
the parenting experience provides
us with ample opportunity to do this.
One further word about this
action of letting go. It really does
not mean a passive acceptance of
all that comes our way. For exam-
ple, if we are rejected by a
teenage child we love, we do not
just give in. We try to overcome
the rejection with all our strength,
wisdom, and love. Sometimes we
need to fight for our friendships
and relationships. There is a cru-
cial difference between a gospel-
shaped letting go and fatalism. We
must always be careful not to just
accept too quickly a setback or a
problem in our relationships.
Jacob, you may remember, wres-
tled all night. Only after a night-
long struggle did he give in, know-
ing now that it was God he was
fighting against. Then he let go
and surrendered.
Readying
Ourselves
Since we cannot simply manufac-
ture or create these letting-go
moments at will, we need to be
ready for them when they come.
Otherwise, we could miss them,
and so rob our children of their
potential to help them become
their true selves. I believe that we
as parents can cultivate a genuine
readiness to let go in several
ways. Here are a few that I am
discovering:
We can pay attention to the
ways in which we exercise our
parental authority. There is a clear
biblical command that parents
should exercise authority and that
children should subject them-
selves to it. But there is also a
gospel-way in which we are called
to do thisa way of courtesy and
respect and nonviolence. While it
is true that we may sometimes
have to force our will onto our chil-
dren when they are small, when
they reach adolescence and older,
our style needs to change. The
question I often ask myself now is,
How can I exercise authority in
such a way that, together with my
children, I can grow up into a
mature freedom and selfhood?1
We can learn ways of honestly
sharing what we think and feel
about certain issues, and then
respect the right of our children to
see things differently. At the time
of writing these words, American
forces have invaded Iraq. Our chil-
dren have strongand different
views about this. They express
them forcibly. Together, as a fami-
ly, we are learning to listen to each
other. We are learning to honour
each others perspectives even
when they differ radically. Having a
safe space to put into words what
W
we truthfully think and feel always
helps us to develop a clearer
sense of who we are and what we
stand for.
We can reflect regularly on the
simple truth that our children are
not really ours. They are given to
us, on loan, for a brief time, and
we are asked to be their mothers
and fathers, their teachers, men-
tors, and guides. Perhaps also
friends. But they never actually
How can I
exercise authority
in such a way that,
together with my
children, I can
grow up into a
mature freedom
and selfhood?
belong to us. They always belong
to God and to themselves more
than they belong to us. As Ronald
Rolheiser has pointed out, there is
both a deep challenge and a deep
consolation in understanding and
accepting this truth. The challenge
is for us not to act as owners, or
to manipulate our children for our
own needs, but to love, cajole,
challenge, and correct even while
giving them their freedom. The
consolation, when we realise that
our children are not our own pos-
sessions, is coming to realise that
God is the real parent, and Gods
love, care, aid to our children is
always in excess of our own.2
We can surrender ourselves and
our children to God each time we
pray. Recently I have been learning
a simple way in which to do this.
Whenever I pray, I cup hands as if
to drink water from a stream.
Imaginatively I put each of my fam-
ilyDebbie, my partner in mar-
riage, and each of our two chil-
dreninto Gods hands, one at a
time. I lift them up and relinquish
them into Gods loving care, with
all my love and longings for them.
Its my childlike way of reminding
myself that, when it comes to the
lives of my loved ones, I seldom
22
really know what is best for them
and for their future growth. Lastly I
place myself in my cupped hands
and offer myself to God with the
words, Abba, into your hands I
place my life.3
We can pray about the feelings
of anxiety we have about our chil-
dren so that they can draw us into
a closer relationship with God.
Here is part of a prayer that I
wrote out in my journal the morn-
ing after my daughter had left for
overseas: Dear God, I come to
you this morning feeling really anx-
ious about Joni. I couldnt sleep
last night. I was worried about her
accommodation, whether she was
going to be warm enough,
whether she would cope on her
own. Please draw me, Lord,
through my anxiety, into a deeper
trust in you. Help me to know that
you care for her more than I will
ever know and that you watch
over her, even now. Whatever
happens, please keep her safe in
your love. Praying my anxious
feelings like this helped me to con-
nect with God in spite of my inner
feelings of turmoil and worry.
We can come together with
other parents and encourage each
other in our parenting responsibili-
ties. The biblical witness makes it
clear that we are not meant to
deal with life alone. Gospel life is
life together. When we meet
together as parents, share our
troubles and learnings, celebrate a
common grace, we help each
other fulfill our parental calling.
Most of the insights shared in this
article have come from conversa-
tions with sisters and brothers in
the faith who are also seeking to
bring up their children in the spirit
of Christ.
Closing Word
It was wonderful to sit down with
our daughter when she returned
from London. We spent hours lis-
tening to her recount her many
experiences. She had made some
difficult and painful discoveries.
Life can sometimes be tough.
People can be uncaring.
Loneliness can be a terrible thing.
But there had also been some
wonderful times. She had made
new friends. She had developed
her ability to make her own deci-
sions. She had stood on her own
two feet. As we chatted away, her TREVOR HUDSON
face radiating a new aliveness and Trevor is married to Debbie and
zest for life, some words that I had together they are the parents of
read many years ago floated back Joni and Mark. He lives in Benoni,
into my mind. Somehow I could South Africa, where he pastors a
understand them now at greater local Methodist congregation. He
depth. They were written by the also travels widely leading retreats
poet Cecil Day-Lewis when his and teaching in the area of spiritu-
son was growing up. The scene al formation. In 2002 Paulist Press
was a sporting event at the boys published his book Journey of the
school during which the son Spirit in the USA.
turned away from his father, and
went off with his friends. In his
poem titled, Walking Away
Lewis wrote,

I have had worse partings,

but none that so
Gnaws my mind still.
Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone
could perfectly show
How selfhood begins with
a walking away,
And love is proved
in the letting go. 4

This, I believe, is what parent-

hood is all aboutletting our chil-
dren go in love so that they can
become free and whole.

ENDNOTES
1
Petersen, Eugene. Like Dew Your Youth:
Growing Up with Your Teenager, Grand
Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1994.
2
Rolheiser, Ronald. Against an Infinite
Horison. New York: Crossroads, 2001.
3
Miller, Keith. The Secret Life of the Soul.
Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1997.
4
Day-Lewis, Cecil. Walking Away.
In The Complete Poems. London: Sinclair
Stevenson, 1992.

23
I
In all of creation, identity is a chal-
lenge only for humans. A tulip
knows exactly what it is. It is
never tempted by false ways of
being. Nor does it face complicat-
ed decisions in the process of
The
being what they pretend to be, but
rather being precisely what they
pretend not to be. With a little
reflection, most of us can become
aware of masks that we first
adopted as strategies to avoid

Gift
becoming. So too it is with dogs, feelings of vulnerability, but which
rocks, trees, stars, amoebas, elec- have become parts of our social
trons, and all other things. All give self. Tragically, we settle so easily

glory to God by being exactly what for pretense and a truly authentic
they are. For in being what God self often seems elusive.
means them to be, they are obey- There is, however, a way of
ing him. being for each of us that is as

of Being
Humans, however, face a more natural and deeply
challenging existence. We think. congruent as the
We consider options. We decide. life of the
We act. We doubt. Simple being tulip.
is tremendously difficult to
achieve, and fully authentic being
is extremely rare.
Body and soul contain thou-
sands of possibilities out of which

you can build many identities. But
in only one of these will you find
your true self that has been hidden
in Christ from all eternity. Only in
one will you discover your voca-
tion and deepest fulfillment. But,
..
as noted by Dag Hammarskjold,
you will never find this until you
have excluded all those superficial
and fleeting possibilities of being
and doing with which you toy out
of curiosity or wonder or greed,
and which hinder you from casting
anchor in the experience of the
mystery of life, and the conscious-
ness of the talent entrusted to you
which is your I.1
We all live life searching for that
one possible way of being that
carries with it the gift of authentici-
ty. We are often most conscious
of this search for identity during
adolescence, when it takes front
stage for most people. At this
stage of life we try on identities
like clothing, looking for a style of
being that fits with how we want
to be seen. But, long after adoles-
cence has passed, most adults
know the occasional feeling of
being a frauda sense of not
Yourself
Beneath the roles and masks lies
a possibility of a self that is as dis-
tinctive as a snowflake. It is an
originality that has existed since
God first loved us into existence.
Our true self-in-Christ is the only
self that will support authenticity. It
and it alone provides an identity
that is eternal.
Becoming
Your True Self
Being yourself would not make
any spiritual sense if your unique-
ness were not of immense value
to God. But each person is exactly
thatof inestimable value to God.
Nor should we ever be tempted to
think that growth in Christlikeness
reduces this originality. While
some Christian visions of the spiri-
*
David G. Benner
tual life imply that as we become
more like Christ, we look more
and more like each other, this cul-
tic expectation of the loss of indi-
viduality has nothing in common
with genuine Christian spirituality.
Paradoxically, as we become more
and more like Christ, we become
more our own true self.
There are many false ways of
achieving originality. These all
result from attempts to create a
self rather than receive the gift of
my self-in-Christ. But the unique-
ness that comes from being our
true self is not of our own making.
Identity is never simply a creation.
It is always a discovery. True iden-
tity is always a gift of God.
Being most deeply yourself is
something that God desires

* Taken from The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self Discovery by David G. Benner.. Forthcoming February 2004. Used by permission of
InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com

24
because your true self is grounded
in Christ. God created you in
uniqueness and seeks to restore
you to that uniqueness in Christ.
Finding and living out your true self
is fulfilling your destiny.
The true self is who, in reality,
you are and who you are becom-
ing. It is not something you need
to construct through a process of
self-improvement nor deconstruct
by means of psychological analy-
sis. It is not an object to be
grasped. Nor is it an archetype to
be actualized. It is not even some
inner, hidden part of you. Rather, it
is your total self as you are creat-
ed by God and as you are being
redeemed in Christ. It is the image
of God that you arethe distinc-
tive face of God that has been set
aside from eternity for you.
We do not find our true self by
seeking it. Rather, we find it by
seeking God. For it is in finding
God that we find our truest and
deepest self. The anthropological
question (Who am I?) and the
theological question (Who is
God?) are fundamentally insepa-
rable.2 It is by losing our self in
God that we discover our true
identity.
Fulfilling Our
Calling
W
We are all called to live the truth
of our uniqueness. Divine creativi-
ty has never involved a production
assembly line. The results of
Gods creative acts are never less
than original works of art. You and
I are no exception.
God meets us in our individuali-
ty because he wants to fulfill that
individuality. God wants us to fol-
low and serve in and through that
individuality. God doesnt seek to
annihilate our uniqueness as we
follow Christ. Rather, Christ-fol-
lowing leads us to our truest self.
The spiritual life of one person
should never be a carbon copy of
anothers. Peter and John had
quite different personalities and
quite different transformational
journeys as they followed Jesus.
Mary and Martha, two sisters
whom Jesus loved deeply, each
expressed her love for him differ-
ently. And he received both, not
discouraging Martha from busying
herself in service, simply encour-
aging her not to fret in doing so
(Luke 10:3842).
Gods will for us is that we live
out the harmonious expression of
our gifts, temperaments, passions,
and vocations in truthful depen-
dence on God. Nothing less than
this is worthy of being called our
true self. Nothing less than this
will allow us to show the unique
face of Christ to the world that we
have been called from eternity to
show. And nothing less than this
will lead to our deepest fulfillment.
But Christs way to self-fulfill-
ment is not like any way we could
ever have imagined. His way
involves losing our life so that we
might find it, dying so that we
might live. His way is always the
way of the cross. Death always
precedes new life.
Fulfillment is a blessing that
comes from surrender to the lov-
ing will of God. It is idolatrous if
pursued directly. Gods call to our
fulfillment is always a call to take
our place in his grand restoration
agenda of making all things new in
Christ. Our vocation is grounded
in the self that from eternity God
has willed that we be. Our calling
is, therefore, to become that self
and then to serve God and our fel-
low humans in the distinctive ways
that will represent the fulfillment of
that self. Our identity is not simply
a possession. It is a calling.
Paradoxically, our fulfillment lies
in the death of our own agendas
of fulfillment. It also lies in the cru-
cifixion of all our ego-centered
25
ways of living life apart from com-
plete surrender to God. It does
not lie, therefore, in any of the
places we would expect to find it.
Christs way always turns our
ways upside down. But it is only in
the upside-down world of Christs
Kingdom that we will ever find the
self we were called from eternity
to be and the God we were creat-
ed to serve. In God alone is the
truth of our being.
The mystery of the Christian
gospel is that our deepest, truest
self is not what we think of as our
own self, but the self that is one
with the Risen and Deathless
Christ in whom all are fulfilled.3 In
Christian spiritual transformation,
the self that embarks on the jour-
ney is not the self that arrives. The
self that begins the spiritual jour-
ney is the self of our own creation,
the self we thought ourselves to
be. This is the self that dies on the
journey. The self that arrives is the
self that was loved into existence
by Divine Love. This is the person
we were destined from eternity to
becomethe I that is hidden in
the I AM.
ENDNOTES
1 Hamsershold, Dag. Markings .
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
2 Tam, Ekman. Message to the Wounded
World: Unmask the True SelfZen and
Merton. Religious Studies and Theology, 17, p.
71- 84, 1998.
3 Finley, James. Mertons Palace of Nowhere : A
Search for God Through Awareness of the True
Self. Bloomington: Ave Marie Press, 1978.
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
David G. Benner is a
clinical psychologist, spir-
itual director and retreat
director who currently
serves as Distinguished
Professor of Psychology
and Spirituality at
Psychological Studies Institute in Atlanta.
Author or editor of 20 books on psychology
and spirituality, he and his wife maintain
their home in Hamilton (Canada) but spend
most of their year leading retreats, writing
and lecturing in Atlanta (USA), Mexico, and
South East Asia.
 Through a
Jeannette A. Bakke

Glass Darkly
Spiritual Direction and the Quest for Authenticity
Tell all the truth but tell it slant
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truths superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind
Emily Dickinson1

T
The true self is something we best
notice with a sideways glance
out of the corner of our eye. It can
be like observing our reflection as
we pass a store window and being
surprised by what we see. It is
hard to perceive accurately when
we look directly at ourselves. Our
defensiveness may be high even
when we desire transformation
and maybe then most of all. The
false self is so loud and sure, bla-
tantly shaping our thoughts,
words, and ways that we wonder
at the true selfs more modest
sensibilities. And yet we yearn to
live out of an authenticity where
God and we are deepest friends
not blurred by our enculturation
and not fearful how well appear to
anyone, even ourselves.
One of the gifts of spiritual
direction is that it enables us to
present ourselves willingly to God
and to Gods dreams for us. We
enter spiritual direction, often hop-
ing to give up illusory facades, to
let go of judging and be willing to
notice whatever arises. We realize
how mixed we are inside and out,
but we desire to be open to grace.
We even acknowledge our fears
that some of the real truth could
leak out past our best efforts to
appear wise, decent, loving,
kindeven godly.
Lets listen in on a spiritual
direction conversation:
In spiritual direction conversations,
directors intentionally turn their
attention and heart, their hopes
and thoughts toward God and
invite God to be present and to
serve as the director. Their first
ear is open toward God-
a way of listening prayer.
They listen to directees out of
this place of prayerfulness.
Directees also open themselves
to God and invite the Spirit.
Jeannette A. Bakke,
Holy Invitations

26
Directee: It was one of those
days. Busyness from leaping out of
bed until the end. And it felt good.
Everything hummed. Efficiency,
competency, accomplishment. It
felt as if everything was under con-
trol like I had it all and was flying.
Yes! God and I were in full swing. I
got a lot done. I received terrific
feedback from my coworkers and
learned that Ill get a bonus, so we
can buy the DVD player weve
been considering.
Two days later, I awakened with
a different sort of awareness.
I found myself singing, worshiping,
quiet, grateful, actually resting in
God. It was so completenothing
I brought about. It seemed that it
was gently given, and I moved
through the day with a freedom
that surprised me. Comparing the
two days and how they began and
developed, I asked myself, Who
lives in this body anyway? Will the
real me please stand up? What do
I think is important? What does
God value in this life?
Director: Sounds fascinating.
Could you say more?
Directee: Maybe. Im not sure.
I can try...but I think Id have a bet-
ter chance at it from a different
place.
Director: What do you mean?
Directee: Well, my In-Charge-
Me came through the door to talk
with you after a tightly scheduled
morning, and even though we
started with prayer, Im still racing
inside. If we could have a few
more minutes of silence, Id like to
invite God to help me let go of my
surface clatter. Im in such high
gear.
Director: That sounds good.
When youre ready to talk, you
can begin.
(We hear the directee desiring
to be in a centered place, a recol-
lected space, where she thinks
she might have a chance at notic-
ing more.)
Directee: Thanks for the quiet.
I needed that. Now I feel more
able to pay attention to our con-
versation.
I find that my perceptions are
different when I begin in God attuned to my culture, not so con-
when Ive made some intentional
turn toward inviting God to be
near, be present, come in. There
is something going on here about
God respecting my boundaries. It
feels as if Im acknowledging that I
am not sufficient alone and that I
want to be open, willing, and avail-
able to God, with God. When Im
feeling especially courageous, I
may pray something like, God
beyond the God I know and have
words for, please be with me, the
person beyond whom I know and
have words for.
Director: And today?
Directee: Well, today Id like to
explore a little.
Director: Would you like to talk
about the two days you began
describing?
Directee: Yes. I guess Im less
sure about the goodness of the
first day when I thought that God
and I were accomplishing a lot.
Director: Why is that? It seems
that some days we are intensely
involved with being Gods people
in the world, and other days we
are more aware of just being
Gods.
Directee: I agree with you. But
Im aware that the qualities of my
heart were different on the two
days. In retrospect, it felt as if
something was missing on the first
day. Ive had the most peculiar
27
sensation that I was missing, that I
was functioning like some kind of
machine. Even though it felt good
to get so much done, I began
questioning my criteria for evaluat-
ing my days. I heard myself valuing
my life because of what I did, what
other people thought of my perfor-
mance, and what I could buy.
That sounded off-key, very
gruent with my faith.
Director: What does that sug-
gest to you?
Directee: First of all, Im glad
God showed me that stuff in such
a gentle way.
It didnt feel as if God was say-
ing, Youre a bad person. It was
more like, I love you, Little One.
How are things going? In prayer I
began to pay attention to the dri-
ven quality of my life during the
early part of the week, and my
heart and the questions that
arose. (Tapers off into silence
which lasts for several minutes):
Director: And how does that
seem now?
Directee: Hopeful. Ive begun
to experiment with my prayers,
asking for grace to recognize
more of how God calls me to be
as I plan my days, not just at the
beginning of already scheduled
days. Id like to have more aware-
ness that the real me is
engaged. I dont just mean that
about busyness or not. Its
more about my seeing that I fre-
quently function out of cultural
stereotypesfilling roles. I know
whats called for and just settle
right into a pattern. That troubles
me.
Director: Why ?
Directee: Because I think God
desires me to experience more
fullness, delight, joy in authentic
living. Sometimes the reality I
most need to see is just out
beyond the edges of my con-
scious awareness. Once again, I
see I have to trust God that what-
ever I truly need to recognize will
be shown me in Gods good time
and way. Ugh! Theres a part of
me that argues with that. I do like
to be in charge. Id be grateful if
that driving control stuff could be
put to final rest. I get impatient.
Do you hear me, God?
T
The already but not yet is often
apparent in spiritual direction con-
versations. When we continue to
seek a deepening relationship with
God, we may notice our struggle
for authenticity. We discover our
particular mix of mask and truth
and become more familiar with the
interplay between our taking con-
trol and our being willingly avail-
able to Godbetween our willing-
ness and our willfulness. But even
with this growing awareness, there
will always be much that remains
hidden.
When teaching a group of peo-
ple who knew very little about spir-
itual direction, one director said:
It was really hard to describe
all of this to people. It all seemed
so counter-cultural. To live in
Gods presence meant to focus on
who you are more than what you
do, on listening rather than speak-
ing out, on being drawn to things
rather than pushing to make things
happen, on letting go rather than
seizing control. It was radical and
freeing. Just as Jesus is radical
and freeing. And I also noticed
that the more I took time to fill up
with Gods presence, the more
effective I became at emptying
myself out into service.2
A man who has participated in
spiritual direction for five years
says, I thought Id be in better
shape by now after being a person
of faith almost all my life and being
The primary relationship
in spiritual direction . . .
is between God and the
directee. The director is a
helpful, prayerful listener
and is last in importance
God, directee, director.
Jeannette A. Bakke
Holy Invitations: Exploring
Spiritual Direction
the true self thrives in cooperation
involved in spiritual direction for a
few years. But I find that as I con-
tinue to be intentional about nur-
turing my relationship with God,
Im changing and being changed in
ways that surprise me.
Teasing apart manifestations of
true and false selves within our
own personalities is often more
subtle than this brief spiritual
direction conversation might sug-
gest. But the way that it occurs is
not. It is when we are open to the
whisperings of the Holy Spirit,
blissfully off guard, that we are
more likely to recognize our own
ploys and facades.
Shaping our questions can help
us in our process:
What in my thinking and behavior
seems to draw me toward God?
Toward listening for Gods inten-
tions and nudges, calling me to
question my ways of being and
relating in the world?
When am I likely to notice my
own false-self behaviors so that I
have the opportunity to explore
them with God and ask for the
transformation I desire?
What relationships encourage me
to live more congruently with the
thoughts and behaviors that did
true self? How do I make space
for these?
28
The true self is shy.
How do I encourage a shy person?
How do I make space for the shy
one who dwells in me?
Authentic self is about free-
domfreedom to hear and follow
God. We can support and encour-
age this freedom by paying atten-
tion in the midst of daily life and
through times set aside for spiritu-
al practices such as prayer, soli-
tude, and spiritual direction.
Following the Spirits invitations,
with God. When we live respon-
sively with God, we accomplish
some different thingsand some
things differently than we would
have chosen without Gods guid-
ance. Our attunement with the
Holy Spirits presence carries us
along a life path that is more satis-
fying, fulfilling, and worthwhile than
anything we could envision or
choose alone. Our true self recog-
nizes that God who created us in
the divine image is present with us
and invites life-giving and trans-
forming thoughts, choices, and
behaviors.
Many spiritual direction conver-
sations revolve around perceived
changes:
Directee: Ive been thinking
about who I want to be.
Director: Sounds like a big pro-
ject.
Directee: Yes and no. Ive
spent years focusing on who I
want to be.
Now I seem to be thinking
more often about who God wants
me to be.
That shifts my perspective
somewhat, but its still a lot the
same. I was reflecting on my
not line up with Scripture. Id try to
modify my behavior at least to
look like a better Christian. But I
find thats changingI mean the
way I do it is changing. (Pauses
and looks out the window.)
Director: (After a long silence)
Where are you going with that?
Directee: I guess its more
about how Im going with that,
rather than where.
Director: Oh.
Directee: Much more gently.
Im more aware that Im not in
charge, and there are lots of
changes Id like to make in my
personality that dont happen
when I address them head on. Its
as if something in me digs in,
fights to remain. Sometimes it
simply goes underground and
seems to have disappeared, to my
relief. But later I learn that was not
the end of it.
Director: Any ideas about why
this is so?
Directee: Even though I say I
want what God wants, I am aware
that another part of me feels like
its fighting for survival. Im getting
a better view of my own
dividednessnot pretty. For a
long time, I think I lived with the
illusion that I was different from
other people. Perhaps they couldnt
or werent willing to change, but I
was and would do it. NOW.
Director: It sounds as if you
are tasting your own resistance.
Directee: Thats a good way to
put it. Sometimes I get scared by
the ferocity of my holding on, even
when it seems quite civilized and
subtle. It is an enormously strong
current in me. And Im not quite
sure where to go from here.
Director: How does this show
up in your prayer?
Directee: Im pretty tentative.
First, because Im embarrassed to
see myself. I guess Ive been
avoiding parts of it...maybe trying
to deny or hide it...sounds like
Adam doesnt it? I knew my
nakedness and so I hid myself. I
thought I was past that, but I seem
to find new ways to hide.
Director: I hear some sadness
in what you say.
Directee: Yes, along with dis-
appointment, discouragement,
anger. Gods ways often puzzle
me. I figure God would like to be
done with this as much as I would,
so why are we still here? I guess
Im not going to get an answer to
that, but at least Im getting a
clearer idea of what here looks
like. Its like one of those diagrams
in shopping malls with a big X.
This is where you are.
Director: That sounds like
grace. Maybe not the one you
would have chosen, but seeing
clearly is an enormous step for-
ward. Now that you see in this
D
way, is there anything that seems
like Gods invitation or encourage-
ment?
Directee: Good question. I
think I need some alone time with
God.
Id like to write in my journal
about what Im hearing and
seeing. Id like some extended
quiet solitude to open my heart
with God and pray about my
mixed ways. It feels like an empty
space, but an empty space where
God might be with me if Id take
the time. That feels hopeful.
Whenever I do that, I may not be
able to figure out exactly what I
thought I came for, but I am likely
to be willing to listen to whatever
God brings to my attention. It
29
might even include some self
carelike getting enough sleep.
(Directee laughs)
Most often when I take time
with God, I come away with a
deeper sense of I am with you. I
experience more freedom to trust
that whatever transformation God
desires is taking place when I let
go of myself as my own project
speaking honestly to God about
what I see and then leaving the
rest to Godtrusting that when
there are things I need to do, God
will show me.
Director: It sounds as if you
are on the right track.
Directee: Thanks for trusting
me and God in me. Im grateful
that you send me back to God
rather than prescribing three easy
things to do.
Director: It looks as if were at
the end of our time today. Would
you like to pray aloud? Do you
want me to pray? Shall we both
pray? Or would you prefer silent
shared prayer?
Directees who are working on true
self/false self issues do not
always use this language. But they
are sensitive to Scripture and to
Christ, and open to the Holy
Spirit. Twenty-twenty hindsight can
be one of the ways of discovering
how we hide from ourselves and
teach us about our inner false
self/true self dialogues and dis-
cernment. Looking in a rearview
mirror can be helpful. Revealing
insights appear unexpectedly, and
we may not welcome them at first.
It can be troubling to recognize
our own blindness. We can be
embarrassed by our responses
and try to cover or deny what we
see.
At times, our inclinations toward
true self can become a self-man-

Only love is capable of genuine
transformation. Willpower is
inadequate. Even spiritual
effort is not up to the
task...Thomas Merton reminds
us that the root of Christian
love is not the will to love but
the faith to believe that one is
deeply loved by God.
Returning to that great love
a love that was there for us
before we experienced any
rejection and that will be
there for us after all other
rejections take place is our
true spiritual work.
agement project which hinders our
perceptions and possibilities. But
when we persist with
God, we become more able to
recognize and respond to the
Spirits promptings. No matter
what words we use, God is the
one who brings about personal
transformation little by little as we
choose to be awake and intention-
alchoosing God, listening for the
Spirits promptings, and respond-
ing. God is the one we depend
upon.
The intention of spiritual direc-
tion is to pay attention to our
deepening relationship with God
and how God continues to invite
us to intimate companionship, to
be and become Gods people in
the world. Although our culture,
including Christian subcultures,
sometimes instructs us to think
that God wants most to use our
talents and competencies in the
world, when we turn to Scripture
we discover that the Great
Commandment sums up how God
sees authenticity and the values of
the true self:
You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your strength, and
with all your mind; and your neighbor
as yourself. ( Luke 10:27, NASB)
Authenticity is embodied in lov-
ing relationships, not ownership or
performance, or appearances. We
are cherished by God and invited
to cherish others. All we have to
offer God is our yearning and will-
ingness to be Gods beloved
Self-rejection is the
greatest enemy of the spiritual
life because it contradicts
the sacred voice that calls
us Beloved. Being the
Beloved express the core
truth of our existence.
Henri Nouwen
Life of the Beloved
friends. When we are intentional
about continuing to encourage and
support our desires and relation-
ship with God, we grow in free-
dom to live more and more out of
our true self.
Our greatest hope of being
and becoming our authentic
selves is our becoming like Christ.
Scripture affirms our hope and its
realization:
Dear friends, now we are children of
God, and what we will be has not yet
been made known. But we know that
when he appears, we shall be like him,
for we shall see him as he is. (I John
3:2, NIV).
This is the authentic self.
ENDNOTES
1 Dickenson, Emily. In Good Poems. New
York: Viking. 2002.
2 Vicha Jessie Jessie Vichas Witness
Christos Alumni Network News, February,
2003.
30
ADDITIONAL READINGS:
Bakke, Jeannette A. Holy
Invitations: Exploring Spiritual
Direction. BakerBooks, Grand
Rapids, MI, 2000.
Benner, David G. Sacred
Companions: The Gift of Spiritual
Friendship and Direction. Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002.
Finley. James. Mertons Place of
Nowhere: A Search for God through
Awareness of the True Self.
Bloomington: Ave Maria Press,
1978.
Hougen, Judith. Transformed into
Fire: An Invitation to Life in the True
Self. Grand Rapids: Kregel
Publications, 2002.
Manning, Brennan. Abbas Child.
Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002
AUTHORS NOTE
Dr. Jeannette A. Bakke is the
author of Holy Invitations: Exploring
Spiritual Direction. She teaches
spiritual direction in seminaries,
retreats, and training programs
and is part of a cross-denomina-
tional group that is exploring the
role of contemplative prayer in
seminary education. Jeannette
was involved in developing and
teaching a training course in
spiritual formation for Navy,
Marine, and Coast Guard
chaplains.
emotion relationship
Transformational Theology:
Forming the Soul
Forming Kenneth Boa:
an Authentic Self in
an InauthenticWorld
S
Simon, son of John, do you love Me
more than these? (John 21:15, NASB)
In recent days, I have been haunt-
ed by this penetrating question.
Perhaps thesereferred to the
boon of fish, symbolizing the joy of
successful work. Or Jesus may
have meant the other disciples,
alluding to the pleasures of friend-
ship with like-minded people. Our
Lord could even have been asking
Peter whether his love for Him
exceeded the other disciples love
for Him. Regardless of the refer-
ent, however, the piercing point of
the question remains the same.
As we substitute our names for
Simon, son of John we sense
the voice of Jesus as His eyes
gaze into our souls, inviting us to a
ruthless examination of what we
may love more than Him. There in
the wellspring of the soul we find
the conflicted desires of our true
and false selves.
There is little doubt that when
Peter saw the charcoal fire on the
shore of the Sea of Tiberias (John
21:9), the pain associated with his
triple denial of the Lord before
another charcoal fire (John 18:18)
returned to him with searing heat.
In Lukes account, Peters third
denial was immediately followed
by the crowing of a rooster and
the worst moment of his life: The
Lord turned and looked at Peter
thought
(Luke 22:61, NASB). That pene-
trating gaze caused him to go out
weeping bitterly, and it was upon
him once again as Jesus took him
aside to confront, heal, and rein-
state him with renewed purpose
and mission (John 21:1519). The
three commissions in this text,
corresponding to and superseding
the three denials, illustrate the pro-
found and unique biblical truth that
where sin increased, grace
abounded all the more (Romans
5:20, NASB).
The harsh reality is that the
sometimes wrenching journey
from the false self toward the
wholeness of the true self is
replete with our own denials of the
Lord when we turn to our own
way instead of His way. We deny
Jesus rightful rule when we crave
pride-driven autonomy rather than
the humility of radical trust and
abandonment to divine provi-
dence.
The false self, engendered and
nourished by the quest for having,
being, and doing on our own
terms, can choke the life of the
new self that has been implanted
in the heart of the believer. The
illusory persona is inherently
biased to follow false compasses
because of our pursuit of need
gratification. Given the power of
continually reinforced cultural
31
intention behavior
cues, it is little wonder that people
who wish to follow Jesus often
end up following the fantasies of
this present darkness. The cor-
rupting effect of invalid role mod-
els and the erosion of our knowl-
edge of goodness, truth, and
beauty through the accelerating
process of relativism conspire
against the formation of meaning-
ful identity in this world.
As films like Memento, The Bourne
Identity, and The Man Without a Past
vividly portray, the prospect of liv-
ing in this world without a coher-
ent identity can be terrifying. We
are driven to cobble together
some sense of past and of place,
of possession and position, in an
attempt to authenticate our being
and assure our trajectory. The sea
is wide, and our boats are small
and frail, and we are desperate to
think we are on course, though
few people have a clue as to their
real destination. Without a tran-
scendent source of meaning and
identity, people will cling to the
detritus of myths that happen to
be floating about: myths of power
and fantasy, myths of success,
coming-of-age myths, travel
myths. Our ambient world system
promotes and rewards a funda-
mental desire to succeed in the
false self that naturally outstrips
the desires of the true self.
 In spite of its shortcomings, the
recent film Bruce Almighty well illus-
trates the quest for the godlike
power to reshape the world
according to our liking. Bruce
Nolan, a television reporter in
Buffalo, New York, is unhappy
with his life. At the end of a terri-
ble day, Bruce rants and raves
against God, who responds by
challenging him to see if he can do
a better job. Temporarily endowed
with divine abilities, Bruce is giddy
with power, using it selfishly and
foolishly with unintended conse-
quences. To cope with millions of
prayer requests, he answers them
all with a blanket Yesthus, for
instance, 400,000 people win the
lottery and then are outraged to
discover that they have won only
$17.00 apiece! As the plot pro-
gresses, Bruce begins to discover
a fundamental biblical truth in
which God in effect tells us all, I
am God, and you are not....You
cannot be Me, and you wouldnt
want to be Me.
Scripture clearly teaches that
we were never meant to be
autonomous individuals who make
our own way in this world apart
from God. We cannot even know
ourselves without knowing the
One through whom and for whom
we were created. We can find and
nurture the true self only by aban-
doning our illusions of control and
committing ourselves to the
boundless goodness and grace of
the living Lord of all. It has been
rightly affirmed that our service to
The false self will always worship and serve the
created order through the idolatry of possessions,
positions, and people. These idols are cruel taskmasters,
and their service is burdensome.
him is perfect freedom.
The false self will always wor-
ship and serve the created order
through the idolatry of posses-
sions, positions, and people.
These idols are cruel taskmasters,
and their service is burdensome.
The true self, embraced by dying
to the idolatrous quest of the false
self, revels in the fact that nothing
less than God will satisfy the rest-
less heart.
The Old and the
New Self in
Pauls Thought
All who are born in this world
receive the gift of bios, or biological
life, but the greater gift of zoe, or
spiritual life, is a product of the
second birth. This zoe is a radically
new form of life, because it is the
life of Christ in us (Galatians 2:20;
Colossians 1:27). Since we were
formerly dead, blind, and bound
(Ephesians 2:1; 2 Corinthians 4:4;
2 Timothy 2:26), the new self is
more than a resuscitation of the
old self; it is a new entity before
God (2 Corinthians 5:17;
Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10).
I see the new self as the life of
Gods Son within us, uniquely
expressed through the prism of
each believers personality. This
new self must be perfect before
God, or we could not have inti-
mate communion with the holy
32
Father of lights.
On the other hand, I would
not equate the new self with the
imago Dei, since the image of God
in its various dimensions (e.g., our
soul, relationality, God-given
authority, and spiritual capacity)
was distorted, but not eradicated
in the Fall. The new or true self,
which is our inner life in Christ
(Ephesians 3:16; Romans 7:22),
impinges on and progressively
transforms our thinking, character,
and actions in such a way that the
imago Dei is gradually being puri-
fied, though never fully or perfectly
in this earthly life.
I associate the false or old self
with the way Paul uses sarx (the
flesh) in texts like Galatians 5:13-
24 and Romans 7:18, 25. When
God implanted His zoe in our
regeneration, He did not erase the
old memories, false scripts, and
inauthentic ways of having, being,
and doing. In this life of progres-
sive but often fitful growth in sanc-
tification, we are fully capable of
thinking, speaking, and acting in
ways that express the deeds of
the flesh instead of the life of the
Spirit within us. False patterns of
beliefs and behaviors can be mani-
fested in the hidden self (avoiding
God and others), the unseen self
(not perceived until illuminated by
grace), and the masked self (the
false images we act out before
others).
The radical contrast between
what we actually were, when
stripped of our pretense and pos-
turing, and what we are now called
to be in Christ is evident in Pauls
exhortations to the Colossians:
Therefore, consider the members of
your earthly body as dead to immorali-
ty, impurity, passion, evil desire, and
greed, which amounts to idolatry. For it
F
is because of these things that the wrath
of God will come upon the sons of dis-
obedience, and in them you also once
walked, when you were living in them.
But now you also, put them all aside:
anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abu-
sive speech from your mouth. Do not lie
to one another, since you laid aside the
old self with its evil practices, and have
put on the new self who is being renewed
to a true knowledge according to the
image of the One who created him
(Colossians 3:510, NASB).
Theimage of the One who cre-
ated him is the very image of
Gods Son, and it is Gods ulti-
mate intention that we become
conformed to His image (Romans
8:29). The marred imago Dei is now
being restored by the redemptive
power of the new creation in
Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). The
world does not now see us as we
will be, but our Lord already sees
us as we truly are in the depths of
our being in Him. Because we
have been purchased by His blood
and metamorphosed into new
creatures, we have died, and our
new life is hidden with Christ in
God; when He is revealed, then
we will also be revealed with Him
in glory (Colossians 3:34). This is
proleptic lifeliving in anticipation
of the age to come and manifest-
ing the presence and power of the
kingdom in this passing age.
Spiritual formation involves living
the not-yet in the midst of the now,
the life of the new creation in the
context of the old, and the splen-
dor of the eternal in the sphere of
the temporal.
Progressing
Toward the
True Self
For this to be a viable process, we
need access to incarnational
truthvalid and palpable role mod-
els that distinguishably manifest
the immediacy of Christ in the the-
ater of human endeavor. Such
agents of kingdom life are visible
compasses that help us discern
the authentic in a world of image,
posing, and externalism. But they
are in short supply in this fallen
world, as is evident from the shal-
lowness and hypocrisy that is so
often associated with Christendom.
I just heard about someone who
was wearing a T-shirt with the
words, Jesus, save me from Your
followers. It is generally easier to
see the beauty, order, and creativi-
ty of God in nature than it is in
people. Nevertheless, God has
chosen to use imperfect people as
agents and mediators of His
grace, and the paradoxical tension
is that we cannot become authen-
tic selves without being embedded
in community. A both/and problem
requires a both/and solution; God
is concerned about both the per-
sonal and the corporate expres-
sions of following His Son. This is
why the historic disciplines of the
faith are both personal (e.g., medi-
tation, prayer, fasting, simplicity,
solitude, and study) and corporate
(e.g., confession, worship, guid-
ance, celebration, submission, and
service).
As Kierkegaard observed, the
great task of becoming an authen-
tic self requires the overthrow of
the illusory and sensate self that
was forged in the personal and
social milieu of youth.1 Most peo-
ple successfully resist this ardu-
ous process by embracing avoid-
33
ance strategies to guard them
from reflection, ambiguity, and
pain. Pascal predicted that distrac-
tion and indifference would charac-
terize the age of modernity, since
these are powerful means of living
in immediacy without ultimacy.
Behold, I have found only this,
that God made men upright, but
they have sought out many
devices (Ecclesiastes 7:29,
NASB). We use multifarious
devices to sidestep Gods claims
on our lives because they chal-
lenge our attempts at autonomy,
our selfish pride, and our illusions
of control.
Yet God has multifarious means
of getting our attention. Recall C.
S. Lewis insight in The Problem of
Pain : God whispers to us in our
pleasures, speaks in our con-
science, but shouts in our pains: it
is His megaphone to rouse a deaf
world. The Greek playwright
Aeschylus made this poignant
observation: Even in our sleep,
pain that cannot forget falls drop
by drop upon the heart, and in our
own despair, against our will,
comes wisdom through the awful
grace of God. It is the awful
grace of God that drives the
false self to the point of despair
through affliction, disappoint-
ments, adversity, and failure. The
defining moment in the parable of
the Prodigal Son was when he
came to his senses and said, I
will get up and go to my father
(Luke 15:1718, NASB). Without
the experience of radical despera-
tion, he would never have reached
this defining moment. Grace drove
him to it, and grace drew him
through it to the fathers house.
It has been observed that the
doctrines of grace elevate us with-
out inflating us and humble us
without degrading us. The eleva-
tion of Romans 6, the humbling of
Romans 7, and the empowering
and glorification of Romans 8 por-
tray the counterpoint of grace. In
this harmonious dance, God takes
the lead, and the soul follows His
lead in glorious submission to the
music and majesty of His loving
embrace.
The true dynamics of human
depravity and dignity and of divine
holiness and grace are not learned
from culture, but from Scripture.
The empirical and rational ways of
knowing must be suffused with the
light of revelation, the third way of
knowing. If God had not revealed
His powers, perfections, will, and
ways through the prophets and
apostles, and most decisively
through the person and work of
His Son, we could never hope to
arrive at answers to the fundamen-
tal issues of origin, purpose, and
destiny. Only in Scripture do we
find definitive answers to the ques-
tions, Where did we come from?
Why are we here? and Where are
we going? Without these answers,
we cannot arrive at authentic iden-
tity, because an understanding of
the true self must be shaped by
the truth of our condition.
Cultivating
an Eternal
Perspective
in a Temporal
Arena
The problem is that the world is
always ready to define us by
defaultdo nothing, and it will
readily tell us who we are, what to
want, and what to do by means of
the ubiquitous carriers of our
increasingly secularized, pluralistic,
and privatized culture. While the
world defines us by default, the
Word will define us only by disci-
pline. This requires the repeated
choices of habituated intention to
energize the ongoing renewal of
the mind through the infusion of
Scripture in the soul. To be trans-
formed by the renewing of your
mind (Romans 12:2, NIV) is to
engage in the process of develop-
ing an eternal perspective in a tem-
poral arena, and this steadily
moves us away from conformity to
the world system toward welcom-
ing the good, acceptable, and per-
fect will of God.
There is no permanent change
in our lives without a change in our
perspective. Thomas Keating in
Intimacy with God refers to this spir-
itual orientation as the intention of
consenting to Gods presence and
action within us.2 This active inten-
tion requires self-surrender and
trust, so that we freely and boldly
welcome Gods presence and
action in our inward being. As we
do this, we learn to live from the
center, engaging in the inward-to-
outward process of loving the Lord
our God with all our heart, and with
all our soul, and with all our mind,
and with all our strength (Mark
12:30).
Through the new covenant mira-
cle of redemption and justification,
God has given us a new heart and
a new life (Jeremiah 31:33; Ezekiel
36:26,27; Matthew 26:28; Romans
6:311; 8:917; 2 Corinthians 5:17,
21; Colossians 1:27; Hebrews 9).
I N F O R M AT I O N A L R E A D I N G
Seeks to cover as much as possible
A linear process
Seeks to master the text
The text as an object to use
Analytical, critical, and judgmental
approach
Problem-solving mentality
34
Our deepest identity and thus our
true self in Christ has been created
in the likeness of God in righteous-
ness and holiness of the truth
(Ephesians 4:24) and is being
renewed to a true knowledge
according to the image of Christ
(Colossians 3:10). Our new inward
identity with God as His regenerat-
ed, justified, and adopted children
is unchanging, but our outward
practice is one of fitful growth and
gradual transformation in the
painful and joyful journey of sancti-
fication. The process of formation
and maturation involves growth in
trust and dependence, movement
from the new being on the inside
to its manifestation on the outside,
and releasing the power of the
Spirit through the episodic broken-
ness of self-renunciation.
All the classical spiritual exercis-
es relate to and enhance one anoth-
er (see the section on Disciplined
Spirituality in my book, Conformed to
His Image 3), but some of them are
particularly suited to the formation
and maturation of the true self. Here
are eight, but bear in mind that disci-
plines such as solitude and silence
pervade all of them.
1 . F O R M AT I O N A L R E A D I N G
In Shaped by the Word, M. Robert
Mulholland, Jr. contrasts two
approaches to Scripture: 4
F O R M AT I O N A L R E A D I N G
Focuses on small portions
An in-depth process
Allows the text to master us
The text as a subject that shapes us
Humble, submissive, willing, loving
approach
Openness to mystery
There is an important place for
informational reading of Scripture
and for exegetical and topical
methods of Bible study. But those
who approach Scripture only in this
way often overlook the formational
approach that centers on speaking
to the heart more than informing
the mind. The Bible is not merely
an object, but a divinely inspired
oracle that is living and active
(Hebrews 4:12, NIV) and has the
power to transform those who
receive it in humility and obedience
(James 1:21,22). The true self is
nurtured by the formative power of
revealed truth as we come to love
God through His Word.
2. RECOLLECTION
T
The discipline of recollection
relates to the practice of the pres-
ence of God and can be habitual
or actual. Habitual recollection is
analogous to a mans or a womans
love for a spouse or children, and
does not require an ongoing con-
sciousness. Just as we can form a
habitual identity as being a hus-
band, a wife, or a parent, so we
can ask for the grace to form a
habitual state of mind as a follower
of Jesus Christ. Actual recollec-
tion involves the developing habit
of turning to God at regular times
throughout the course of the day.
This is more along the lines of
what Brother Lawrence, Frank
Laubach, and Thomas Kelly pur-
sued in their quest for a more con-
scious awareness of God in the
routines of everyday life.
3. SETTING THE MIND
The apostle Paul urged his readers
to set their minds on the things of
the Spirit (Romans 8:5,6), to keep
seeking the things above where
Christ is (Colossians 3:1,2), to
walk by the Spirit (Galatians 5:16,
25), and to rejoice always, pray
without ceasing, and in everything
give thanks (1 Thessalonians
5:1618). As we set our minds on
Jesus, we will abide in Him, and
His words will abide in us (John
15:47). By fixing the eyes of our
heart on Him, we will run with
endurance the race that is set
before us (Hebrews 12:1,2).
4. REFLECTION
The spiritual exercise of reflection
at the end of the day on the
events and conversations that
transpired can reveal patterns of
attitudes and behaviors that
emerge from the false self. We
can also profit from answering
diagnostic questions like those of
A. W. Tozers Seven Rules for Self-
Discovery.
What do we want most out of
life?
What do we think about most in
this life?
How do we use our money?
What do we do with our leisure
time?
Who is the company that we
enjoy?
Whom and what do we admire?
What do we laugh at?
5 . D I S C E R N I N G P R AY E R
Because we have deep impulses
of which we are not fully con-
scious, it is good for us to invite
the Spirit of God to search us and
reveal any hurtful ways in us
(Psalm 139:23,24). (For this disci-
pline, I recommend the particular
and general examinations of con-
science in the first week of the
Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.5)
6. PERSONAL AND COR-
P O R AT E T H A N K S G I V I N G
AND PRAISE
Since the heart becomes steadily
conformed to what it most
admires, the practice of gratitude
and of delighting in His beauty,
goodness, and glory makes the
soul increasingly responsive to His
gracious initiatives. As said by
William Temple, For to worship is
to quicken the conscience by the
35
holiness of God, to feed the mind
with the truth of God, to purge the
imagination by the beauty of God,
to open up the heart to the love of
God, to devote the will to the pur-
pose of God.
7 . C O R P O R AT E E X A M P L E ,
E X H O R TAT I O N , A N D S O U L
CARE
The discipline of meeting together
to stimulate one another to love
and good deeds and to encour-
age one another day after day
(Hebrews 10:24,25; 3:13, NASB)
is essential to the formation of an
authentic self in an inauthentic
world.
8. THE DISCIPLINE OF
G R AT I T U D E
Nothing ages more quickly than
gratitude. As we take the many
blessings of our lives for granted,
the grace of God degenerates into
entitlement. As my friend Ed
Dudley used to put it, if we were
born on third base, we wake up
believing we just hit a triple. If we
are wise, we will not leave grati-
tude to spontaneous moments,
but cultivate a spirit of thanksgiv-
ing for all God has done in our
past (Deuteronomy 8:2,3, 1118),
contentment with what He is doing
in our present (1 Thessalonians
5:1618), and joyful hope for what
He has promised for our future in
Christ (1 Peter 1:3-4; 5:10). A
heart of gratitude enhances the
true self because it reminds us
that all we are and have comes
from the hand of God.
By Gods grace and power, may
we grow in the true knowledge of
Him, in love of Him, in trust and
obedience to Him, and in likeness
to Him. In this way we will experi-
ence the truth, beauty, goodness,
love, joy, and peace of becoming
the true selves God always intend-
ed us to be, increasingly con-
formed to the glorious image of
His beloved Son.
AUTHOR NOTE Kenneth Boa. Conformed to His Image.
3

Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001.

4
Robert M. Mulholland, Jr. Shaped by the
Word: The Power of Scripture in Spiritual
Formation. Nashville: Upper Room, 1985,
p. 49-58.

5
St. Ignatius of Loyola. The Spiritual
Exercises of St. Ignatius. Garden City, NY:
Image Books, 1964, p. 48-53.

Kenneth Boa is engaged in a min-

istry of relational evangelism and
discipleship, teaching, writing, and
speaking. He holds a B.S. from
Case Institute of Technology, a
Th.M. from Dallas Theological
Seminary, a Ph.D. from New York
University, and a D.Phil. from the
University of Oxford in England.
Dr. Boa is the president of
Reflections Ministries, an organi-
zation that seeks to encourage,
teach, and equip people to know
Christ, follow Him, become pro-
gressively conformed to His
image, and reproduce His life in
others.
Kenneth Boa also writes a free
monthly teaching letter called
Reflections. If you would like to be
on the mailing list, visit
http://www.reflectionsministries.org
or call 800-DRAW NEAR (800-
372-9632).

1
Soren Kierkegaard. Either/Or. 2 Volumes.
Translated by David F. Swenson, Lillian
Marvin Swenson, and Walter Lowrie.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1944, 1959. Concluding
Unscientific Postscript. Translated by David
F. Swenson and Walter Lawrie. Princeton,
New Jersey: Princeton University Press,
1941.

2
Thomas Keating. Intimacy with God. NY:
Crossroad Publishing Company, 1994, p.
35, 59

36

G R AY T E M P L E
is a remarkable man.
Hes lived for over six
decades but has the ideals of a
teenager. Hes an Episcopal
priest and the son of a former
bishop, but openly identifies
himself as a tongues-speaking
Charismatic. He proudly refers
to himself as a liberal, but often
hangs out with conservatives
and has a view of Scripture so
high it would best be described
as reverential. But perhaps most
surprisingly, he speaks with a
beautiful southern accent, yet
never mentions college football.
Gray was asked for an
interview because of his
remarkable book, The Molten
Soul: Dangers and
Opportunities in Religious
Conversion, and because hes a
fun person to talk with.
Keeping the Soul Molten
Interview with
GrayTemple
GM: Gray, I remember meeting
you for the first time over ten
years ago. I was putting together a
cluster of classes in Christian spir-
ituality for mental health profes-
sionals and was searching for
someone to teach the dynamics of
spiritual direction. A mutual friend
told me about you. She described
you as a Charismatic Episcopal
priest from Atlanta, Georgia. I
was intrigued and assumed from
the Charismatic adjective that
you were a theological conserva-
tivewhich would be the pre-
ferred stripe for most of the stu-
dents. I flew down and met with
you over lunch, had a wonderful
time, and was excited when you
agreed to do the class.
Several months later I intro-
duced you to a group, and Ill
never forget the first thing you
said, because it made me swallow
my tongue. You began, He forgot
to tell you that Im also a liberal
and Ill probably be saying some
stuff that will peel the wallpaper in
this room. You can take me on if
you want to, but I warn you, I aint
no virgin.
So, with that shared history, is
there anything youd like to get off
your chest before we begin this
interview?
37
Gary W. Moon
GT: Well, maybe, Bless me,
Father, for I have sinned; and since
my last confession (of faith)... Is it
okay to start that way?
GM: Yes, and it was okay to
start the way you did with that
class too. I think in the end you
got rave reviews from all the stu-
dents. Honesty usually does.
GT: As a sort of conditioned
reflex, I call myself a liberal
when Im around Evangelicals. It
invites disapproval, but it does
save time. To some Evangelicals I
know thats tantamount to saying,
I dont believe [in] the Bible. But
if they hang in with the discus-
sionlike those students did
they may at some point discover,
and perhaps even acknowledge,
my knowledge and love of the
Bible.
Essentially, in claiming to be a
theological liberal, Im confessing
to being a classical Anglican/
Episcopalianone who lives an
engagement with Scripture inter-
preted by reason (a far warmer
concept of old than today) in the
light of tradition. I often notice that
references to reason and tradition
make Evangelicals nervous, caus-
ing them to mutter about liberal-
ism. So, in the strictest Christian
charity, I like to save them the
trouble.
GM: You are a considerate fel-
low, Gray; now on to matters at
hand. Your latest book, Molten Soul:
Dangers and Opportunities in Religious
Conversion, was close to amazing.
You grabbed me with the first few
paragraphs of the introduction,
and I knew I would finish it cover
to cover when I read the question
that produced the book: Why is
American Christianity so divided
against itself? How would you
answer that question if asked
while standing in line at
McDonalds?
GT: I would likely say something
to the effect that the Church is
inescapably part of the world. The
slice of the world Americans know
best is Americaa nation more
divided today than during the
Vietnam War. Our theological divi-
sions reflect our political divisions.
That realization invites us to won-
der if our adopted religious opin-
ions are Christian trappings fes-
tooned onto our economic and
political yearnings.
GM: You must eat at McDonalds
only after your Mensa meetings,
Gray. I was hoping you were
going to say something about
Christianity being so divided
because its so difficult to keep
our souls molten.
GT: How could I miss that pitch?
So let me take advantage of your
offer of a second shot. James
Fowler says that when people
reach stage five in faith develop-
ment, they no longer need to
define their own positions in
opposition to alternative under-
standings. The divided state of
American Christianity shows that
those making the noise have yet
to reach stage five. Also, David M.
You see yourself as
though for the first
time with absolute
objectivity yet
without psychological
annihilation
because the Other
holds you safe
and precious. . . .
Schnarch, Ph.D., in Passionate
Couples describes intimacy not as
constant agreement but as the
ability to hang in with another per-
son when the two of you are not
in sync, without abandoning your-
self. That requires a higher level of
personal differentiation than we
see or hear on our national reli-
gious stage.
GM: Oh, no. Youre not going
to use Fowlers stage five as
another name for liberal, are
you?
GT: As long as you spell liberal
with a lower-case l, the answer
is yes. Before our politicians
ruined the word, liberal used to
mean generous, just as conserva-
tive used to mean stingy and self-
ishly cautious. Generosity is more
characteristic of stage five than
stinginess is. But I have been
blessed to know any number of
theologically conservative souls
who occupied stage five and
indeed stage six. Those souls
were/are so filled with the love of
God that they are no longer mad
38
at anybody or impatient with peo-
ple who see things differently. That
attitude is not under patent to
folks who vote Democrat.
Actually, Id be tempted to
equate Fowlers stage five with a
high level of differentiation or per-
sonal maturity, since it involves a
tolerance for paradox and episte-
mological untidiness. Is that the
same as liberal? Todays
Doonsberry suggests as much,
but maybe thats not the least
biased source.
GM: Fair enough. Gray, your
description of an encounter with
God that leaves the soul molten
is beautiful, and seems to cut
across many of the categories
that divide Christians. You used
these words:
Y
You may become aware of an
energetic warmth progressively
covering you like poured oil, bring-
ing heightened awareness and
vitality.... Gradually you become
aware that you are in the
Presence of a PersonOne of
unquestionable authority and
boundless affection and goodwill
directed at you. You see yourself
as though for the first time with
absolute objectivityyet without
psychological annihilation
because the Other holds you safe
and precious.... Any worry you
were experiencing feels eradicat-
ed.... Any sense of enmity
towards another is swallowed up
in forgiveness and understanding;
you feel little concern about any
future harm from him. Generous
courage seems your natural state.
Perhaps for the first time in your
life, you feel normal.... During such
an encounter real life feels some-
how permanent, invulnerable to
death. You sense that who you
are at this precise moment is your
true eternal self [italics added]. You
anticipate a future of facing every
person and vicissitude with affec-
tionate, wise serenity.... The uni-
verse itself seems momentarily
coherent, intelligible, and deeply
goodfriendly, perhaps even jolly.
This is a beautiful description, one
I would think would resonate with
experience in worship by devout
Quakers, Baptists, Pentecostals,
or contemplative monks.
GT: You are quite right that such
occurrences transcend denomina-
tional boundaries. And they are
repeatable. But they themselves
are not the end-point. The subse-
quent openness to life they enable
would be the point. Such encoun-
tersor the recollection of
themoffer us courage. Unlike
physical growth that requires more
patience than courage, we cannot
grow spiritually or psychologically
without being brave. Spiritual and
emotional growth require that we
follow our pains, resentments,
fears, humiliations down to the
bottom like so many pearl-divers
until we find the pearls that, inac-
cessible to remote dredging, await
us there. The melting encounter
with Gods love can offer us that
courage if we will draw on it.
GM: Such moments provide us
with courageI like that. In addi-
tion to relating a courage-giving,
unitive encounter with God, Gray,
do you believe this [your descrip-
tion of a molten soul] is also a
description of the highest ideal of
what it feels like to be living out of
ones true self?
GT: I wish. More likely the
description is of the permanent
quality of life that awaits us in
heaven.
In this life the true self emerges
when and as we abandon false
selves. We construct false selves
to protect ourselves against pain.
C.G. Jung taught that all neurotic
pain is the result of refusing to
face into authentic pain. As the
Spirit gives us courage to plunge
into those zones within ourselves
were scared of, and as Jesus
accompanies us there, false
selves start to be a solution thats
more trouble than the problem. So
we drop them. Then we begin liv-
ing primarily out of our truth.
GM: These molten experiences,
you are saying, confirm our suspi-
Im permanent
because God loves
me. So maybe I can
risk the potential
destructiveness
of honesty.
cions that there is another way to
live and perceive, and stimulate
our desire to develop enough trust
in God to let go of the reins and
live out of our true self more
moments each day?
GT: Yes. Its a matter of
courage. Such encounters tell me,
among other things, that Im per-
manent because God loves me.
So maybe I can risk the potential
destructiveness of honesty.
GM: And honesty can cause the
false self to melt like a salted slug.
Sorry. What I meant to say was,
How would you define the true
and false self?
GT: The psychiatrist Eric Berne,
the originator of Transactional
Analysis, described people who
are at the moment living out of a
false self: he called them jerks.
What we instantly sense in jerks is
39
that they are retailing to us a self
that theyve crafted to get a
desired response from us. That
describes many car sales folk
and at least a few evangelists.
What drives me to develop false
selves is my fear of pain. My false
selves are self-protective. The true
self is exploratory.
GM: Careful, Ive gone way out
on a limb to include you in this
issue.
GT: Sorry! The true self is sim-
ply that: true. It is grounded in
meditative access to a zone of
perception in which All will be
well. It is able to stay in relational
connection with others without
insisting that everyone always be
in sync.
GM: It contains a settled hope
for the future that breeds toler-
ance in relationships.
Do you believe it is fair to say
that Paul used the phrases new
self and old self with similar mean-
ing to how true self and false self
are used by many devotion writers
today?
GT: That seems to have been
his ideal. But I think Paul was
more of a realist than to assume
that everyone who is born
again, or, to use his own term, is
in Christ, is being a true self at
the moment, though they bear
new identities as Christians. The
first verses of 1 Corinthians are
filled with love and congratulations
to people he names as saints
and then proceeds to scold for the
rest of the letter. If they were not
new creations, he wouldnt have
congratulated them as saints; if
some of them werent being false
selves, he wouldnt have fussed at
them.
GM: Would you mind saying a
bit more, and then contrast Pauls
use of old and new person with
your use of false and true self?
GT: I think Paul had a deep con-
fidence in the power of the Spirit
at work in the Christian communi-
ty: if you stayed in the community
long enough, you would mature.
(Similarly, the pagan partner in a
mixed marriage would eventually
be unable to resist sanctification.)
So there is an element of institu-
tional membership in Pauls refer-
ences to old and new which do
not always correspond to ones
level of individual development.
GM: Whats the main path of
maturing, the practical ways by
which you stay molten?
GT: Prayer, primarilythe sort
of prayer where I listen more than
I talk. In prayer my soul can
become supple and pliable. In this
prayer its important to let God
drive me down the path of my dis-
satisfactions, resentments, fears,
guilts, and everything else I like to
keep at arms length. I need to
stay on that path with our Lord
until he has shown me the root
system of my unhappiness and
pulled it up.
GM: What causes the soul to
congeal?
GT: We quit prayingat least,
we abandon the ways of prayer
that God offered us in our closest
encounters, allowing our prayer
lives to be shaped by our teach-
ers. In Bernes term, we become
jerks.
Theres a wonderful story of an
Anglican bishop touring the South
In this prayer its important to let God drive me down
the path of my dissatisfactions, resentments, fears, guilts, and
everything else I like to keep at arms length.
Seas on a sailing vessel. In one
harbor he came on three native
men wearing crude crosses. Are
you Christians? he asked.
Yessir! they replied happily. So
how do you pray to God? asked
the prelate. We say, You are
Three and we are three; O Lord
have mercy on me! Oh dear,
no, no! remonstrated the Bishop.
You should say, Our Father,
which art in Heaven, hallowed be
Thy Name.... The three received
his teaching gratefully.
Some months later, the bish-
ops ship returned to that island
late in the evening and rode at
anchor. Out on the deck before
retiring to his berth, the bishop
saw what appeared to be three
lanterns bobbing across the water
coming towards the ship. Looking
over the side, he saw his three
students standing upon the waters
they had just traversed on foot.
They shouted, Bishop, we have
forgot the words to the prayer you
taught us! The bishop replied,
When you pray, you say, You are
Three and we are three; O Lord
have mercy on me!
GM: Thats a wonderful story.
And it reminds me of the insightful
job you did contrasting religion
(as a way to control God) and
righteousness (intimate relation-
ship) in Molten Soul. Talk about
how religion can get in the way of
righteousness.
GT: There is a perpetual, uneasy
dialectic relationship between spiri-
tual awakening and religious insti-
tutionalization. Spiritually awak-
ened individuals gather with others
of like experienceand then, nec-
40
essarily, all the dynamics of social
psychology, sociology, and eventu-
ally political science kick in willy-
nilly. And on the other hand, even
in the deadest, most stultifying
religious establishment, every now
and then someone pays attention
to the actual words she is recit-
ingand finds her way Home.
The word religion itself comes
from a Latin term for bondage.
Religion is about control: control-
ling God by our correct behavior
and beliefs, and controlling others
by constraint. Politicians from
Constantine to George W. Bush
have resorted to religion to forge
political unity, and those whose
relation to religion is not based on
actual experience of God normally
go along with it.
GM: You dont do very many
interviews for Fox News do you?
GT: It has been a while since
Fox called, now that you mention
it. Id wondered....
I dont think I need say more
about religion, betting that your
readers already know or at least
sense all that. The real surprise is
to discover what the biblical writ-
ers meant by righteousness. In
the Bible, righteousness always
refers to the quality of a relationship.
It is behavioral or moral to the
extent that my being in a righteous
relationship with my mother allows
you to predict that I wont steal
and hock her jewelry. But my late
mother would never have described
our relationship by saying,That
Grayhes a good boy; he
doesnt steal my stuff.
U
Unless we understand righteous-
ness that way, the many biblical
references to Gods own righteous-
ness will never entirely make
sense. If righteousness means
good only behavior, to call God
righteous verges on lese majeste.
But if it means faithfulness to
another through thick and thin
then, its news.
GM: Say more about that:
Righteousness is enjoying fellow-
ship with God the First Person of
the Trinity.
GT: Jesus purpose and mes-
sage was to bring people back
into personal relationship (righteous-
ness) with the One he called
Father. In our churches our
prayers are addressed to that
Person of the Trinitythrough
Jesus. The service of the Lords
Supper in all our churches, that
most intimate concentration on
Jesus, is always addressed direct-
ly to God the Father. So fellowship
with the Father is the clear object.
Whats fun is to reflect on the
enjoyment of it. If I love you, I
enjoy you. If I quit enjoying you for
whatever reason, Ill eventually
have to use some other word than
love to characterize our relation-
shipeven if Im supposed to assumes that the children already
love you. When I profess that God
loves me, do I dare imagine that
God enjoys me? And when I say I
love God, am I describing a rela-
tionship in which pleasure is an
element?
When I can truthfully say, I am
at this moment enjoying fellowship
with the Father, you have reason
to believe that at that moment my
true self is at least nearby and that
my dealings with God and people
will likely be more righteous than
religious.
GM: Do you believe that enjoy-
ing fellowship with God the Father
is the best diagnostic question for
determining if a persons true self
is alive and well?
GT: Not necessarily. There are
true selves out there who manifest
little interest in God or in the
things of God. Maybe we could
quibble and insist that their resolu-
tion to live authentically is a kind
of work of the Spirit, but thats dis-
respectful of their self-descrip-
tions. One thinks of, say, Albert
Camus. If true selfhood is con-
fined to Christian cults, it is a reli-
gious illusion. The power of the
Christian gospel is manifested in
its mediating its adherents into a
state of authenticity that shows up
apart from the Gospel. A God
confined to Christianity is not
divine. And the allegiance of a true
self to God must be a deliberate
free choice, not a necessity.
GM: What is the curriculum you
have in place at your church for
maximizing the enjoyment of God?
GT: We start in the nursery,
delighting in and praying over
every child delivered to our care.
Then the children enter a pro-
gram called The Catechesis of
the Good Shepherd, a
Montessori-like curriculum that
species of our desire for self-
know God and allows them to
express that knowledge. Visitors
to our classrooms come away
awestruck at the spiritual serenity
they sense among the children in
that setting.
We then move the emerging
adolescents into a curriculum called
Rite 13 which will usher them
into the Journey to Adulthood.
This allows the young people to
integrate their relationship with God
into their dealing with each other,
into their burgeoning identity rum-
blings and their emergent
sexuality all led by adults they
cant shock, and encouraged by
the adult congregation.
41
Adults are invited to lodge their
lives into a rhythm of corporate
Worship, leading to intimate
Fellowship with fellow-worshipers,
and to engage jointly in Ministry in
the church and in the world
bringing the fruits and scars of
those ministries each week back
to worship.
Two evidences confirm the
effectiveness of those curricula.
First, our congregation shows
some of the highest per capita giv-
ing in the Episcopal Churchand
the Episcopal Church, believe it or
not, often leads the pack in giving.
Second, our congregation pro-
duces more applicants to the
ordained ministry per capita than
any other congregation I know of.
GM: Your excitement for what is
happening in your congregation is
contagious. It makes me regret
needing to transition to another
question. But Im also struck by
your discussion about the dread of
God. You say that far from enjoy-
ing God, it is common for people
to fear him, dread being around
him. How does the dread of God
and desire for self-preservation
effect the formation of a false self?
GT: The dread of God is a sub-
preservation. Ironically, its separa-
tion from God that makes the
desire for self-preservation so
urgent. A false self emerges from
that lash-up along three vectors.
First, we retail a phony self to
Godpraying for world peace
when we ought to be praying
about our hatred of the next-door
neighbors. Second, when gather-
ing with the Church, we retail a
false self to other believersoften
in the form of an unmeant bon-
homie. Third, self-preservation
means presenting ourselves to the
world in some form that promises
social viability.
GM: How does the cross relate
to and inform our battle with the
false self?
GT: Well, one of the forms the
false self assumes is respectabili-
ty. A friend of mine once
remarked, Jesus said everything
he intends to say about
respectability on the cross.
The gospel narratives of the
crucifixion show how the cross
X-rays each person in his or her
truest expression: Peter, Pilate,
Pilates wife, Herod, the
Sanhedrin, the various Marys, the
centurion, the two thieves, Judas,
the Ten, the beloved disciple,
Joseph of Arimathea, and
Nicodemusfor a moment we
see all of them for who they are
most deeply. Jesus had said
something to the effect that gaz-
ing on him as he was lifted up
would do us as much good as
gazing at the bronze serpent did
the snake-bitten Israelites at Sinai.
Part of that benefit is that we drop
pretenses.
GM: As you talk, Im reminded
that you have a deep appreciation
for Ernst Becker. What do you
think his ideas concerning our
denial of death (and in a sense,
our resistance to a personal
cross) contribute to why the false
self is so tenacious?
GT: I think Becker was clearer
than any contemporary psycholo-
gist about our preconscious fear
of death being the mainspring for
so much of our behavior,
thoughts, and feelings. I like your
recognition of how he indicts our
resisting our personal crosses. If
Becker were with us today, using
religious vocabulary (which he
could do with the best of them),
he might describe sin as resulting
from a failure of nerve. Becker
compels us to face the following
question: Has my new relationship
Until we are
born again on
the far side of such
a preliminary death,
our religious self will
likely be phony.
to God in Christ embraced my
fear of death and helped me tran-
scend itor has my fear of death
sucked up my faith as another
ploy to attract Gods favor and
postpone my extinction? Becker
would urge us to the terrifying
task of getting our deaths over
with, of facing into the fear of
nonbeing. He would agree with
Tillich, whom he often cites, that
the courage to be is grounded in
the God who appears when God
has disappeared in the anxiety of
doubt.
Until we are born again on the
far side of such a preliminary
death, our religious self will likely
be phony.
GM: How have you experienced
that?
GT: You didnt say this was
going to get personal! But since
you asked for it, heres an illustra-
tive anecdote: I once faced a crisis
in my congregation that eventually
led to a split. I realized I was being
a jerk in the face of it, trying to
behave over-cordially and overcon-
fidently. Sensing that I was in for a
lot of trouble, I sought out an
intensive psychotherapeutic week-
end retreat a friend offered, asking
for help to work on the issue of
fear. That sort of therapeutic work
is scary. This therapist blindfolds
42
you, lays you down on a sheeted
mat, gets you hyperventilating and
yelling your throat raw. Within min-
utes, youre in a regressed, near-
psychotic state. While youre in
that condition, he puts you
through all sorts of physical and
mental exercises, intensifying
metaphors of whatever issues
youre working. You take a con-
trolled trip deep into what youre
most scared ofand back.
In that state, as I confronted the
fears that threatened me in the
parish, it was as though I was in
darkness and something huge,
hideous, and hatefulcolored
arterial-blood redwas rolling
ineluctably toward me to annihilate
me. I could not get out of its path.
It was so utterly terrifying that I felt
the onset of a cardiac episode and
suffocating asthma. The therapist
shouted instructions to me: Call
on some people for help!
I could think of none to call on,
none whod be adequate. Call on
your parentscall their names
aloud! I did. Still the thingdeath
itselfcame rolling at me.Find a
resource! he commanded urgently.
JEEEEESSSSUUUUUUUUUU-
UUUSSSS! I cried.
I AM HERE, Jesus said.
Do you know the place in
Psalm 139 where it says:
Where can I go from your spirit? Or
where can I flee from your presence? If I
ascend to heaven, you are there; if I
make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I
take the wings of the morning and settle
at the farthest limits of the sea, even there
your hand shall lead me, and your right
hand shall hold me fast. If I say, Surely
the darkness shall cover me, and the
light around me become night, even the
darkness is not dark to you; the night is
as bright as the day, for darkness is as
light to you. (verses 712, NRS)
Thats all true.
Jesus and I held each other in
the dark, my weeping like a child
with the relief of terror immediate-
ly past. I think the therapist
deduced what was happening and
lent Jesus his own form to hug me
with and hold me safe. We stayed
like that a long time until I was
back.
It was now really clear. There
would be no resource but our Lord
himself in the parochial struggles
to come. And he would be
enough.
If I were asked to string every
moment together for the rest of
the year in which I experienced
active fear, that daisy-chain would
amount to less than two minutes.
GM: Wow, thats a pretty pro-
ductive use of pain. To be stripped
of all attachments and to realize at
the bottom of a pit that all you
have is all you need, the sustain-
ing love of Christ. Its enough to
wound the false self and vivify the
true.
T
GT: The effect lasted a long
time. For months afterward, I was
able to withstand scathing person-
al attacksin person, in letters
and emails, toxic phone mes-
sages, and two sliming articles in
national conservative Christian
magazinesto withstand all that
without snapping back or cravenly
placating the critics. I was able to
repeat what theyd said back to
them to their satisfaction. I was
able to refrain from disparaging my
critics in front of my friends. All of
that was effortless enough to help
me recognize that theres a way
you can live out Pauls instructions
authentically, without contrivance.
GM: Thank you for being willing
to share that. A deep sense of
experiencing the love of God, like
a helpless child loved by a parent,
is so deeply healing. And it seems
to have left you open to input from
groups you may not see eye-to-
eye with on everything. You say in
your book that whatever success
I have enjoyed in staying molten
has resulted from blending
Evangelical procedures for spiritual
direction, classical (largely
Catholic) procedures for spiritual
guidance, Charismatic procedures
for spiritual growth, and liberal
approaches to the Bible and to
group dynamics for spiritual sani-
ty. What makes it possible for
you to celebrate theological differ-
ences that would rip the average
church apart?
GT: Properly addressed, those
are not rival theological postures
any more than the violin section is
rival to the winds and brasses.
Whenever I get tempted to throw
out one of those emphases, I real-
ize that Ive succumbed to thinking
of my own package as complete
again. My best defense against
rejecting the possible contribution
of other perspectivesa way of
staying moltenis to cultivate the
habit of always regarding myself
as incomplete.
GM: Regarding yourself as
incomplete. Were running short
on time, but that phrase reminds
me of your refreshing take on
what is meant in Scripture by
pride. You say it is much deeper
and more sinister than conceit or
vanity. Say more about how pride
can to a toxin to the soul.
GT: A word study on the terms
pride and proud through both
Testaments shows us that the
writers normally do not mean vani-
ty or conceit in our sense. The
writers always mean reliance on
self rather than reliance on God.
Thats toxic for the simple reason
that my self is not nearly as reli-
able as God. So to compensate
for not being up to the job, my
false self lies to itself and exploits
others in the pursuit of self-preser-
vation. Its so much simpler to rec-
ognize that, Yes, Im mortalIm
going to die and rot and quit
43
being. But what holds me perma-
nent is not wealth or fame, but the
simple fact that I am the object of
Gods love.
Jesus asks us regularly to Do
this for the remembrance of me.
Obeying that instruction helps me
trust in all that the Holy Trinity
does in remembrance of me.
NOTE
The Reverend Canon Gray
Temple, Jr., has been rector of St.
Patricks, Atlanta since 1975. He
holds an M.Div. degree from
Episcopal Theological Seminary in
Virginia and has completed addi-
tional graduate work at Gottingen
and Oxford Universities. He is the
author of 52 Ways to Help Homeless
People (1990) and Molten Soul
(2001).
Correspondence regarding this
article should be addressed to
Gray Temple, M.Div., St. Patricks
Episcopal Church, 4755 North
Peachtree Road, Atlanta, Georgia
30338. E-mail at grayt1@mind-
spring.com.
G A R Y W. M O O N
is a psychologist and
author. He serves as pro-
fessor and Vice President
for Spiritual Development
at the Psychological
Studies Institute and as a
writer/editor for LifeSprings
Resources.
TwoTrees
Two Selves
a
Not long ago I was sitting with two
close friends, enjoying lunch.
Since one is a priest, it wasnt
long before he asked the anticipat-
ed question, What are each of
you doing to keep your soul
healthy?
Even though the question was
expected, my response was not. It
came from a place of deep hon-
esty. I blurted out, I keep screw-
ing up.
I looked up and saw two con-
cerned faces, wearing question
marks. Neither knew until that
moment that I had been going
through a tough period of time. So
tough, Saint John of the Cross
wouldve probably labeled it a
dark night of the soul, and a
psychiatrist might scribble, mild
depression.
In this case the four-hundred-
year-old diagnosis was more on
target. I was in the middle of a
dark time, and I knew very well
what had caused the lights to dim.
For several months I had been fol-
lowing the advice of my false self
and taking the willful fork in the
road, each time moving further
from conversation and communion
with God. At work, at home, and
in all my closest relationships, I
had slipped back into old patterns
of self-absorption and had become
more demanding that I get my
way. And in my shame, I had been
avoiding awareness of Gods pres-
ence.
For a long period of time, years
before, God had showered me
with grace. I think he knew I had
needed that to be jolted free from
a legalistic background. For more
Gary W. Moon
level of intensity that would moti-
vate me to do something sensible.
Stop. Turn around. Face God.
Drop to my knees and ask for for-
giveness, and once again live con-
nected to his love. Within a few
days, the pain would cause me to
back up and take the right road,
than a decade, his words of love back to the Tree of Life.
and forgiveness echoed in my
ears as his portrait changed in my
mindfrom that of a cosmic sher-
iff to the prodigals father.
Willingness
But I had left the cork out of
the bottle, and the expensive taste
of radical grace had begun to
Versus
spoil. I had allowed it to become
cheap and myself complacent. It
Willfulness
had become too easy to live by
the motto, Ill do what I want and
ask for forgiveness later.
The Different
So as mercy eventually
demands, justice stepped out of
Paths of Our
the shadows. God had begun to
allow me to experience some of
the natural and logical conse-
Two Selves
quences of willfulnessthe isola- For a long while I have held the
tion and despair produced by self- view that the best images we have
ish choices, the crushing weight of for understanding our true and
trying to be God. These conse- false self are the two trees in the
quences had become very painful, Garden of Eden and the two differ-
and I was beginning to feel more ent options they representwill-
and more alone. ingness and willfulness. The stom-
But I also knew the pain was achache I was experiencing was a
my friend. Like an abscessed result of eating too many apples
tooth, it was telling me something from the wrong treefollowing
was wrong, and was reaching the the advice of my false self.
44
 Scripture repeatedly draws a
distinction between willingness
and willfulness. Even prior to the
first stain of ink on papyrus to
form the words, In the begin-
ning, Satan had already fallen
from grace because he chose will-
fulnessan attempt to seize
power, to be as Godinstead of
continued surrender to the will of
his Creator.
In the garden, the fundamental
choice given to Father Adam and
Mother Eve was a selection
between eating from the Tree of
Life (embracing willingness and
staying connected to God like
branches in a vine) and the Tree of
the Knowledge of Good and Evil
(a continuation of the willful choice
Satan made to be as God).
Adam and Eve were to avoid eat-
ingconsuming, making a part of
themselvesthe knowledge of
good and evil. But whats so
wrong with that, knowing the dif-
ference between good and evil?
According to Ted Dorman, in
the Old Testament the knowledge
of good and evil refers to moral
autonomy, or the ability to make
moral choices without being
accountable to anyone else.1
Initially, small children must
depend on their parents to guide
them in making moral choices, but
as they grow, they should develop
an understanding of the knowl-
edge of good and evil for them-
selves (Isaiah 7:15), since their
parents will not always be around.
For human relationships, this type
of knowledge is desirable.
But the Genesis account does
not describe a human, parent-child
relationship. Adam and Eves par-
ent is the creator of the universe.
To desire moral autonomy in rela-
tionship to God is to desire to be
like God, to be God. Adam and
Eves disobedience is a matter of
unbelief (distrust that God has
their best interests at heart) and
results in a movement away from
The motto of the
false self is carved
into the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good
and Evil: God
cannot be trusted,
so I must take
matters into my
own hands.
living connected to Godin con-
stant conversation, communion,
and union.
A
Arguably the greatest insult one
person can give to another is to
say, I dont trust you. Imagine
those words in the mouth of your
spouse, child, or parent. But this
is exactly what Adam and Eve said
to God: I dont trust you to know
what is best for me; I must
become independent and take
matters into my own hands. The
original sin was a fear-driven
incapacity to trust, and resulted in
the loss of the willingness to live
in a submissive relationship to the
alluring Mystery and community
that is God. The motto of the false
self is carved into the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil: God
cannot be trusted, so I must take matters
into my own hands.
Conversely, the Tree of Life, I
believe, is symbolic of the willing-
ness to live life connected to God.
If you will permit me some license
with the symbolism here, the river
of life that flowed through the
Garden of Edenthe very person
and presence of Godis what
45
watered the Tree of Life and
became present in its fruit. To eat
from the Tree of Life is to choose
willingness; it is to choose staying
connected to God, keeping God in
us, like branches into a vine. The
water of his presence is to water
our soul and cause the fruit of his
Spirit to become the character of
our life. The Lords Supper con-
sists of fruit from the Tree of
Lifethe real and indwelling pres-
ence of Christ.
The Garden of Eden and the
Garden of Gethsemane are the
first and last chapters of the same
story. Each describes the two
most fundamental choices in the
universe. Then, now and forever,
the option that faces you and me
a few thousand times each day is
the choice between willful autono-
my from God attempting to be
Godand willing surrender to an
on going, organic connection to
God. The choice is between the
way of the false self and the way
of the true self.
The life of every patriarch can
be viewed as a parable of Gods
faithful reward for willingness and
his punishment for willfulness.
Cain made a willful choice and
fell even further than his parents
into the pit of despair.
Come, let us build ourselves a
city, with a tower that reaches into
the heavens, so that we may
make a name for ourselves and
not be scattered over the face of
the whole earth (Genesis 11:4,
NIV). This was the chorus sung by
the willful builders of Babel as
apple juice dripped from their lips.
Abraham became the father of a
great nation in the exact moment he
stood over his own son, knife drawn,
and became willing to say to God,
Your will and not mine be done, no
matter how high the cost. This act of
willingness made Abraham a Jew.
Radical trust in God saying, As you
wish even as every fiber in his body
shouted, No!
 Although it was a forty-year jour-
ney from the crime scene of his
willful murder of an Egyptian,
Moses was eventually able to
throw down his rod (the symbol of
his ability to protect himself) in the
very presence of an enemy
(Pharaoh) and came to realize that
his self-sufficiency really was a
snake all along.
The Israelites six-month trip
across the wilderness took forty
years because willfulness was
chosen at almost every fork in the
road.
David followed the path of will-
ingness to confront Goliath, but
took the willful shortcut to
Bathshebas place.
Each minor and major prophet
pointed out the cost of willful
choices and offered an invitation
to come back to willingness.
A young Jewish girl, after being
told by an angel that as a virgin
she would conceive a baby, said,
I am the Lords servant ...May it
be to me as you have said (Luke
1:38, NIV). Willingness made Mary
Gods first communion chalice.
Jesus began his ministry by
drawing nurture from fasting to
overcome Satans temptations
toward willful choices. Jesus often
taught using sheep as a model of
willingness and goats as an exam-
ple of willfulness. He contrasted
the sheeps gentle, compliant
character with that of the willful,
bottom-butting behavior of goats.
Jesus entered a garden and
reversed the curse of Adam and
Eve by choosing the right tree of
willingness and trust.
Jesus acceptance of the cross
became the ultimate symbol of
willingnessobedience, even unto
death. His sacred heart hung as a
picture within a picture at the point
Willingness says Whoopee! to the mystery of being alive in Christ,
in each moment. Willfulness says either no or yes, but....
of intersection between the verti-
cal (the will of God) and the hori-
zontal (the will of man).
Willingness means learning to
embrace a state of continuous
surrender to the will of God. It is
more foundational to the Christian
journey than salvation. Its the
gateway to deeper levels of com-
munion with God. In willingness
we surrender our separateness
from God and resolve to continue
on the road that ultimately leads
home. Willingness, the character
of our truest self, is surrender and
organic connection to God. It
enables us to splash freely in the
river of Gods sufficiency on a day-
by-day, hour-by-hour, moment-by-
moment basis. Willingness says
Whoopee! to the mystery of
being alive in Christ, in each
moment. Willfulness says either
no or yes, but....
Willfulness is what sets us
apart from God, the fundamental
essence of life, by attempting to
master, direct, control, or other-
wise manipulate our existence.
Willfulness says, I want to be
God. It leads away from relation-
ship and to the hell of isolation
from the loving community of
being (God), meaning (Jesus), and
love (the Holy Spirit). Willfulness is
another name for our false self.
It is not surprising that the
church has prized devotional litera-
ture which begins with a declara-
tion of willingness. For example,
The Lord is my shepherd...;
Lord.
a
Our Father who art in heaven...
Thy will be done; and Jesus is
But those who join this club pay
staggering dues. Members must
make a profession of the willing
statements: Jesus is the Lord of
my lifeI am not; and Your
46
kingdom come, and my kingdom
go. For most people, it takes a
lot of pain to jolt them into being
willing to surrender the reins of life
to God. For most, the battle is
ongoing.
The Great
Battle
The longest battle in history rages
within the skin of humanity. It is
the great tug-of-war between our
true and false selves, between
willing surrender and willful inde-
pendence.
The self that I am called to be
from the dawn of eternity is the
self that I am in Christ. It is my
eternal self, my real identity, and
the part of me that desires nothing
more than a relationship of contin-
ual conversation, communion, and
union with God, to be sustained
by the Tree of Life.
But my false self resists
Christs invitation to reign in me. It
wants to be the ruler, even if over
a tiny kingdom and for a wisp of
time. At the core of my false ways
of being is what Thomas Merton
calls a sinful refusal to surrender
to Gods will.
The seeds of distrust planted in
the souls of my foreparents still
germinate inside me. And as they
ripen, I am tempted to follow their
course: First to grasp (the initial act
of willfulness) and then to hide.2 In
grasping from the wrong tree, I
vote that control, independence,
and self-determination are more
cherished than surrender, commu-
nity, and abandonment to the love
of God. In hiding, I move into a
world of shame and isolation and
out of the realm of received grace
and togetherness. These two
themesgrasping and hiding
have soiled the souls of every
descendant of Adam and Eve and
block us from being in a position
for conversation, communion, and
union with God.
The refusal to come out of hid-
ing from God and return to willing
surrender leaves me separate and
vulnerable. And because it is not
from God, my false self will sug-
gest pain-killing idols or solace in
the form of pleasure (how I can be
gratified), esteem (what others think
of me), and security (what I have
and what I do).
Solution:
The Cross of
Christ
Most people recognize crucifixion
as the most horrible type of death,
and the bloody symbol of the
cross is the most familiar symbol
of the Christian faith. The cross,
empty tomb, and the communion
chalice are the heart and soul of
Christianity. On the cross Jesus
demonstrated obedience to the will
of God unto death. The empty
tomb proved that he was who he
said he was and that he had the
authority to do such radical teach-
ing. The chalice symbolizes that all
he said and did, he can say and do
again through us. We too can be
obedient unto death. We too can
rise from the dead.
The cross plays two roles in
Christian theology. It is significant
in its necessity for the atonement
of the believer. The sacrifice of the
Son of God pays the ransom price
for the redemption of mankind.
The cross of Christ symbolizes
atonement.
The cross also graphically
reminds us that we are to follow
Christs example and embrace rad-
The decision of Christ
to have no will but the will of his father
is our example to follow.
ical willingness. We too are to die
to a will apart from the will of God.
No desires of the flesh, no desires
for independence or autonomy,
can stand in the way of our jour-
ney to union with God.
If you will humor me for a
moment, Id like to share a secret
with you that Ive never communi-
cated before. In my private devo-
tion time, I like to imagine that the
cross on which Jesus died was
taken from the wood of two trees.
I envision that the horizontal beam
was hewn from the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil. It
represents human willapart from
divine willand the desire for self-
rule. It points to the east and
west, but not up to the throne of
God. I then imagine the vertical
beam to be taken from the Tree of
Life. It points to the heavens and
represents divine will. It symbol-
izes the ideal of living in union with
Godconnected, one. The heart
of Christ hung over the intersec-
tion of the two trees. The decision
of Christto have no will but the
will of his Fatheris our example
to follow. As we try to follow
Christ, we must accept daily that
same cross; we must seek to
have one will with the Father.
In Christs acceptance of death
on the cross, he modeled for us
that nothing, not our deepest fears
or our most cherished idols, can
come between our heavenly Father
and us. Our heart must be like
hisdead to this world, alive in the
kingdom forever. Finally free from
fear and blind to the lure of idols.
The last thing Jesus did before
being arrested was to go to a gar-
den for a conversation with his
47
Father. And just like the first
Adam, he encountered two trees
there. Unlike the first Adam, he
ate only from the Tree of Life
willing surrender to the will of
God. Staying plugged into his
Father like a branch into a vine.
a
His conversation with his father
deepened into communion. Home
was in view. A garden tragedy has
become a garden triumph. The
right roadthe way of communion
with Godwas chosen. Jesus
demonstrated that saying As you
wish to God is the best way of
saying I love you. Conversation
becomes communion.
Because of the cross of Christ,
Edens gates are open, and I am
welcome. But the cross of Christ
is also my example of how I am to
live.
Father, I pray, dont take this cross
away from me. The pain is of my own
making. I want to eat from both trees
and feed both of my dual natures. This
is not your way. This is not the way to
life in full. Thanks you for this foretaste
of life apart from you. Because of your
example and because of the pain I feel, I
reject the fruit that nourishes my false
self, life disconnected from you. Amen.
i
This article is adapted from Falling For
God: Saying Yes to His Extravagant
Proposal by Gary W. Moon. Forthcoming
February 2004. Used by permission of
Random House.
1
Dorman, Ted M. A Faith for All Seasons:
Historic Christian Belief in Its Classical
Expressions. Nashville: Broadman &
Holman, 2001, p.125
2
Robert Barron. And Now I See: A Theology
of Transformation. New York: Crossroad,
1998, p. 7

behavior
Touched by an Author
intention
An Interactive Review of
True Self/False Self: Unmasking the Spirit Within
M. Basil Pennington
thought
I
I have been reading books
on the true self and false self for
decadesin part because of my
interest in the places where the
spiritual and psychological streams
of human experience converge,
relationship
and in part because of longings in
the depths of my soul to be the
authentic person that I know I am
called in Christ to be. This book
stands out from all others on the
topic. It speaks with simplicity, ele-
gance, and personal warmth.
And it quickly demonstrates why
uncovering our falsity and finding
our true self-in-Christ plays such a
vitally important role in Christian
emotion
spiritual transformation.
Fr. Pennington is a Trappist
monk who is best known for his
many books on Centering Prayer.
Although you do not need to know
anything about this approach to
prayer to appreciate the book,
you will receive a wonderful
introduction to it as a fringe
benefit.
Questions such as Who is my
true self? and How can I get rid
of my false ways of being? might
strike you as not very practical.
Perhaps they are just the sort of
things you might expect a monk to
be concerned about, but too spec-
Streams of Living Water:
Wisdom and Energy for the Soul
David G. Benner
ulative for those of us who live our
lives in the world. It is as if the
author overhears your thoughts.
On the first page of the book he
asserts that learning to live these
questions of our identity has the
potential to lead us into a joy and
fulfillment that exceeds anything
we have ever imagined. He says
this has been his own experience.
With a surge of hope, my ears
perk up!
This, it turns out, was a rather
helpful response because the first
chapter introduces us to what he
calls The Listening That We
Are. I wonder what this has to do
with the topic. But I quickly see
the answer. Listening, he argues,
is not simply something we do.
Our total being is a listening.
Everything we receive from out-
side us comes not simply through
our senses but also through the
filters of our perceptionthis
including our prejudices. Rigid
people hear little (or nothing) they
do not already know. Open people
hear things that continuously
expand the self.
The point, he argues, is that
when I realize that I am a certain
listening, I am taking the first step
in the journey toward embracing
48
my true self... My particular listen-
ing is necessarily partial. There are
other listenings. And these can
enrich me if I can add the richness
of these other listenings to the lis-
tening that I am (p. 25).
He has given me a starting
point. He has already given me
cause for reflection. He encour-
ages me to rejoice in the unique-
ness that I amthe uniqueness of
my own vantage point on the
world. But he challenges me to
see the smallness of that vantage
point when I think my way is Gods
way. And without reference to the
concept, he has given me a most
helpful and eminently practical
introduction to the false self.
Although only 127 pages long,
the book is simply too rich for me
to comment on chapter by chap-
ter. Weaving seamlessly among
such seemingly diverse ideas as
the healing of memories, the
transformation of consciousness
through prayer, and lectio divina as
a way to hear Gods Word freshly
as direct personal revelation, the
book centers on a profoundly sim-
ple and at the same time remark-
ably powerful framework for
understanding both our falsity and
the route to our truth in Christ.
 therefore, that material posses-
Understanding sions were a poor substitute for
this.
the False Self The temptation of Jesus was to
live out of his false self and reject
his true identity. He was tempted
peace described by Paul as I live,
but actually it is not I but Christ
who lives in me. Once again the
longings in the depth of my soul
are stirred. This is the Spirit with-
incalling me home. This is the

L
Let me start with his understand-
to place his identity in what he did life I want. This is my calling. This
ing of the false self. It contains the
(power), had (possessions), or is my true identity. I feel a fresh
seeds of the truth of our self that
manipulated (prestige), instead of readiness to abandon the false
is discovered by uncovering our
what he was. places of illusory security and sig-
falsity. In a sentence, The false
Jesus fully knew who he was in nificance that I have created as I
self is made up of what I have,
God. He alone, therefore, can have sought to create a self,
what I do, and what people think
show us how to die to the false rather than receive the self that is
of me (p. 31). It is, in short, an
ways of being. This unpacking of given to me in Christ.
investment in a self that we
the significance of the temptation Let me point to just one more
assume will earn us love.
of Christ speaks powerfully to me. of the many gifts I have received
We clearly see the nature of
It gives me hope. Jesus points the from this book. Chapter Six dis-
the false self in the account of the
way to my moving through and out cusses the contribution of
temptation of Jesus in the wilder-
of my falsity. Seeing how he Thomas Merton to this question of
ness (Matthew 4:1-11). Fr.
rejected the seductions of power, the true and false selfsomething
Pennington suggests that these
prestige, and possessions helps that would be well worth the price
temptations are best understood
me see how I have succumbed to of the book even if this chapter
as Christs struggles with three
them. There is no freedom until I was its total substance. The rea-
major potential false selves.
understand the nature and extent son this is so important is that
After forty days of fasting,
of my imprisonment. There can be Merton, widely recognized as one
Jesus would have been ravenous.
no true self until I appreciate the of the great spiritual masters of
The first attempted seduction by
extent of my bondage to my false our century, has so much help to
the tempter was to turn stones
ways of being. offer on this topic. And
into breada temptation to
Pennington, a fellow Trappist,
power. But Jesus said no to the
invitation to establish his identity
on the basis of his doing, particu-
Route to Our knew Merton and gives us an inti-
mate and personal walk through
his life and writings that makes
larly doing something that was
independent of submission to the
True Self Mertons insights even more
accessible and lively than they oth-
authority of God. Jesus had a

T
The route to our true self is, erwise are. Listen in on just a bit
better foodthe Word of God
according to the author, to enter of his summary of Mertons under-
(Matthew 4:4).
into the practice of pure prayer standingfocusing on Mertons
Then the tempter invited him to
where we learn simply to be in assertion that our true self is
throw himself from the top of the
Gods presence. Or perhaps, found in the personal experiential
temple into the crowds below, so
more accurately, he suggests,it knowing of Gods love.
they would immediately recognize
is not even being, but allowing Self-realization in this true reli-
him as the Messiah. Again Jesus
God to be in us and express gious sense is less an awareness
rejected the temptation. He chose
Gods being in us, in our being. of ourselves than it is an aware-
not to base his identity on pres-
We are no longer doing anything. ness of the God to whom we are
tige. And in so doing, he took a
Let it be done unto me according drawn in the depths of our own
further step to anchor his identity
to your Word (pp. 39-40). It is being. We become real...not when
in the Father, not in what people
learning to let go, to surrender to we pause to reflect upon our self
thought of him.
the Divine who alone creates the as an isolated individual entity, but
Finally the tempter offered him
true self. rather when, transcending our-
all the kingdoms of the world. But
Once I do this, I no longer iden- selves and passing beyond reflec-
once again Jesus rejected the
tify with the concocted false self tion, we center our whole soul
offer, refusing to find his identity in
made up of what I do, what I have, upon the God who is our life. That
possessions. He knew himself in
and what others think of me. This is to say we fully realize our-
terms of poverty of spirit and the
is the place of freedom, joy, and selves when we cease to be con-
loving will of the Father. He knew,

49
scious of ourselves in separate-
ness and know nothing but the
one God who is above all knowl-
edge (pp. 89-90).
Quoting Merton he notes that
the realization of the true self
means that we become trans-
formed from within by Gods inner
Presence in order to become like
God, living in God, seeing as God
sees, loving as God loves all cre-
ationwith compassion. God
does it in us, not we (p. 95).
Perhaps the most important
thing I can say about this book is
that it has helped ground me in
the truth of my existencemy
relationship to God and my identi-
ty in Christ. Some books give me
ideas. I value ideas enough that I
am seldom unhappy even if all I
get is understanding. But this
book has given me much, much
more. It has put me more directly
in touch with my life in Christ. For
that, I thank Fr. Pennington. And I
thank God.
Dialogue with
the Author
O
DGB: One of the many things I
appreciated about this book was
its personal tone. But Id love to
hear even more about your own
journey through your false ways of
being toward your true self.
Looking back, can you say any-
thing more about what was most
helpful to you in this?
MBP: Entering a monastery,
one sells what he has, gives to the
poor, and follows. You have noth-
ing and expect everything from
God through the community. But it
was still possible to sustain a false
self based on what I had, what I
did, and what others thought of
me. I did a lotcreated Cistercian
Publications and the Institute of
I am addicted
to what others think
of me. And only
my Higher Power
can liberate me
from this
addiction.
Cistercian Studies, organized the
Cistercian Symposia and
Conferences, was a periti (advisor)
at Vatican II, worked on the new
Code of Canon Law and the
Constitutions of my Order, and
taught Centering Prayer all over
the world, and published sixty
books and a thousand articles.
The litany turns my stomach. I
know it doesnt change one bit
who I am.
Only when I stop trying to make
something of myself can I begin to
perceive my true self and live out
of that reality. It was the leveling
grace of the Spirit, blowing power-
fully through the Church at the
Second Vatican Council that took
care of the phoniness arising from
what others thought of me. I was
by the mercy of God just one of
the pilgrim People of God.
DGB: Have there been any par-
ticular personal disciplines that
have most helped you cooperate
with this leveling grace of the
Spirit?
MBP: It has been the daily
encounter with our Master in lectio
that has challenged me, made me
honest, brought me face to face
with my true self. And it continues
to do this. And it needs to contin-
50
ue because the false self contin-
ues to rear its phony face. I am
addicted to what others think of
me. And only my Higher Power
can liberate me from this addic-
tion. One day at a time, the truth
sets me free. I am a fruitless fig
tree that deserves to wither, but
he mercifully digs around it,
manures it, and gives it yet anoth-
er season of grace. As an old
man, even as I can feel the pain
and indignity of the digging and
manuring, listening to our Master, I
apprehend some perception of the
mystery of the Cross.
DGB: I appreciate your imagery.
Digging and manuring can be
both hard work and unpleasant,
and the struggle with the false self
is certainly that. But can you say
anything more about the freedom
you refer to?
MBP: There is greater freedom
on many levels. I no longer worry
or even care unduly what others
think. I am my own man. I no
longer do things to prove to
myself or others that I have worth,
or to obtain things that will estab-
lish my worth. I am and I do what I
want to do the way I want to do it
and when I want to do itof
course, not callously but appropri-
ately as love calls it forth. And I
am free not to do but simply to be
because I know my beauty and
reality, created by Gods grace,
draw down his divine favor upon
the human family.
DGB: You mentioned the impor-
tance of lectio divina as a way of
meeting our Master. Can you
briefly describe what form this
takes for you? How exactly does
this help you meet your true self?
MBP: I see lectio as involving
three stepsfirst a step in, then
one of abiding, and finally a step
out. Faith is of primal importance
here. I believe the Scriptures are
Gods Word; that God abides in
them. I believe, too, what Jesus
said at the Last Supper: The
Advocate, Holy Spirit, whom the
Father will send in my name, will
teach you everything and remind
you of all I have said to you. So I
step into lectio by acknowledging
and even rejoicing in the Presence
and asking Holy Spirit to help me
really to learn. I try to let go of my
confining parameters and open
myself to the expansive and
expanding Word of God. Then I lis-
ten, letting the Lord speak through
the words of the Sacred Text. I lis-
ten actively, letting the Word
engage me, questioning, not like
the incredulous Zachary but like
the faithful Virgin, seeking informa-
tion and direction. Sometimes as I
listen a word really strikes me,
breaking through the amor of my
false self, illuminating new sectors
of my being, now seen under the
Divine Light. I have a word to
take with me. Other days there is
no theophany; no word seems to
speak to me. In that case, before
saying my thank you to the gra-
cious Lord who has spoken to me,
asking the help of Holy Spirit, I
choose a word. In and through
this word the Lord walks with
me during the following hours as I
let it resound in my mind and
heart. As a part of the amazing
graces bounty, this word will
bring to my ongoing journey the
presence and light of the Lord,
exposing phoniness and enabling
me to laugh at the false self and
let go of its masquerading.
I might sum this up as follows:
Come into the Presence and call
upon Holy Spirit. Listen for some
time. Thank the Lord and take a
word.
DGB: You call yourself an old
man. That makes me wonder
about how the struggle to be
ones true self intersects with life
Come into the Presence and call upon
Holy Spirit. Listen for some time.
Thank the Lord and take a word
stages. Any comments on this? Your lifeand your writings
What challenges does your pre- encourage me to settle for nothing
sent stage of life pose to living the less than my true self-in-Christ. I
truth of your being? am deeply thankful for this.
MBP: With a very broad brush I ENDNOTE
would paint lifes stages: (1) the Pennington, Basil..True Self/False Self:
years when we first create the Unmasking the Spirit Within. New York:
Crossroad Publishing, 2000.
false self with our initial efforts to
establish the identity of our false
++++++
self through doing things that
impress; (2) the years we maintain
the false self with all our doing and
acquiring; and (3) the gradually
overlapping years that lead to the
terminal step where we have the
wisdom not only to let off seeking
to project a false self but begin to
dismantling it under the light and
with the assistance of Holy Spirit,
finding joy in coming into the free-
dom of the truth.
ABBOT BASIL entered the
I find that the habits of a lifetime
Cistercian Order (Trappists) in
constantly threaten this journey
1951 at the Abbey of Our Lady of
into Truth. It is dreadfully painful at
St. Joseph, Spencer,
times not only to peel off the
Massachusetts, where he now
veneer of phoniness but to have
lives in retirement after having
to admit to myself how phony it
served in many capacities around
has been and face the reality that
the world. With Thomas Merton
others will also discover this truth.
he started Cistercian Publications
Honest sharing with others, such
and founded the Institute of
as one finds in twelve-step meet-
Cistercian Studies at Western
ings, is powerfully edifying. What
Michigan University. He is best
others can do with the help of the
known internationally through his
Higher Power, I too can do. The
books and efforts to help the
challenge is to keep going, never
Church rediscover its contempla-
saying enough, but relentlessly
tive dimension by means of
and joyfully continuing to seek to
Centering Prayer.
be who I amnothing more and
nothing less.
DGB: Thank you, my friend. I
met you as a spiritual companion
on the way through your books,
and I thank God you have come to
be a spiritual friend in the flesh.
51
 Becoming Real:
Thomas Merton
and the True Self
M
Most of us present carefully pre-
pared facades. At least I do. While
the self we offer to others may
not be the product of conscious
deception, we are careful to
ensure that no one disturbs the
meticulously maintained image.
We do not want others to look too
closely at our real self because we
fear they may crack our pretense.
How vulnerable we are as we
come to terms with the reality of
our self!
The Christian life is a journey of
living out the reality of who we
really are and who we are created
to be. The spiritual path of know-
ing God is inseparable from dis-
covering our true self, our authen-
tic identity in God. Spiritual life is
neither pious self-actualization nor
self-absorbed navel-gazing. It is a
transformation of the self in God,
with God, and for God.
Thomas Merton has helped me
gradually see my real face as the
reflection of Gods face. In New
Seeds of Contemplation (1961), he
describes three stages of the jour-
ney of spiritual transformation,
building the movement from the
false to the true self into the very
heart of this process.
Ekman P. C.Tam
Awakened
from the
False Self
Conversion brings us to conscious
relationship with God. As a
Chinese person who formerly
embraced traditional religious and
cultural beliefs, my conversion
marked the beginning of my
Christian spiritual life. But to deep-
en that life, I need ongoing conver-
sion experiences in which I am so
moved by the love of God that I
turn from superficiality to authen-
ticity. Merton describes this ongo-
ing conversion as a journey from
the false to the true self. Our true
self is what God creates us to
bea person who lives life in
love, joy, and peace.
Masking our true self is a false,
superficial self. Because it is not
real, this false self constantly
seeks to enhance its visibility and
prove its reality. This happens in all
of us.
Brainwashed by materialistic
culture, I easily regard real things
52
as those that are visible, sensa-
tional, and expensive. To prove
that I am real, therefore, I want to
fill up my empty self with things
that will make me desirable to oth-
ers, thus covering my emptiness
and masking my unreality.
Ironically, however, my efforts to
make myself more real produce
just the opposite effect; they sim-
ply feed the false self.
Merton writes All sin starts
from the assumption that my false
self...is the fundamental reality of
life to which everything else in the
universe is ordered. Thus I use up
my life in the desire for pleasure
and the thirst for experiences, for
power, honor, knowledge and love,
to clothe this false self and con-
struct its nothingness into some-
thing objectively real.1 But my
false self is so greedy that it can
never be satisfied by the things it
seeks. I may hide this greedy face
in disguise as a powerful preacher,
a prolific writer, or sophisticated
theologian. But hiding is not the
same as transformation. Greed is,
indeed, one of the deadly sins,
and hiding it merely allows it to
grow and operate outside of
awareness.
 The way of the false self is to
show off and possess, whereas
the way of the true self is to be
and to share. But it is not by
doing more sharing and
working harder on being that I
come to know my true self. The
path of finding my true self begins
with the awareness that I am
shadowed by an illusory person:
a false self.2 The deepening of
my spiritual life therefore demands
that I first see clearly my falsity.
But at the same time the loving
whisper of God consoles me and
calls me to discover the positive
potentials of my true self.
Gods aim is not to punish us
by exposing us to our own ugli-
ness, but to show us our falsity so
that we may see beyond it to the
original beauty of our true self.
Merton says that God calls us to
shift from the circumference to the
center, from appearance to reality,
from the sensible to the intelligible,
and from time to eternity.
W
Search for
the True Self
Our true self is who God wants us
O
to be. It is our whole reality. The
path of finding our reality in God
involves our active response to
the calling of God. This usually
requires some kinds of ascetic
practice or spiritual discipline.
Growing up in Chinese culture,
I have no difficulty in keeping disci-
plinary practices. My problem is
excessive attachment to these
disciplines. Prayer easily becomes
for me a kind of spiritual perfor-
mance, and I seek contemplation
as a technique to become spiritu-
ally proficient.
Merton reminds me of these
pitfalls. Apart from occasional ref-
erence to the Eastern practice of
the Jesus prayer and the possi-
bility of using short scriptural texts
as a basis for prayer, he generally
declines to talk about specific
prayer methods. He suggests that
spiritual discipline is basically
learning not to do things we
instinctively feel driven to do. It is
learning to let go of whatever is
false or unreal and be prepared to
settle for nothing other than God.
Although his writings center on
contemplation, he never presents
this as a special method of prayer
or a higher stage of spiritual life.
Borrowing from the wisdom of
Zen and classical Taoism, he
emphasizes contemplation as a
way of lifemore a lifestyle than a
prayer method. Or put differently,
the contemplative prayer method
should ultimately help us grow and
become contemplative persons
who live everyday life with height-
ened awareness of God.
Contemplation, as a way of life
rather than simply a form of
prayer, is seeking to share with
God the work of creating the truth
of our identityLove is my true
identity. Selflessness is my true
self. Love is my true character.
Love is my name.3
In contemplation we unmask
our true self, returning to our real
identity in God. Contemplation
starts with the question of who I
am and rests in the discovery of
our true self. Both the question
and the answer come from God.
In Mertons own words, It is as if
in creating us God asked a ques-
tion, and in awakening us in con-
templation God answered the
question, so that the contempla-
tive is at the same time, question
and answer. The life of contempla-
tion implies two levels of aware-
ness: first, awareness of the ques-
tion, and second, awareness of
the answer.4
Personally, I experience contem-
plation as a process of entering
into the deep center of my being,
and through that center I enter into
53
the center of God. In probing the
ground of my being, I find that God
is there. In some moments when I
practice contemplative prayer, I
come to new levels of awareness
of the reality of myself, the reality
of God, and the reality of God
being the ground of my being.
Less frequently, I have sometimes
been simply absorbed in pure
awareness, in which nothing is
needed and nothing is sought
even the sense of time and space
disappearing. Is that what Christian
theology refers to as eternity? I
dont know. My experience in con-
templation is very shallow. But my
limited and transitory experience
can help me grasp a bit more what
Merton describes about the union
with God.
Union with
Gods Self
With regard to the search for
ones true self, contemplation can
be described as a process of dif-
ferentiation and identification. In
contemplation we differentiate our
true identity from the false self by
receiving the loving embrace of
God. I must learn to leave
myself in order to find myself by
yielding to the love of God. Silent
contemplation provides the interior
and exterior space for the differen-
tiation process, in which we
encounter the grimace of our false
self and recognize all the destruc-
tion we have done to ourselves, to
others, and to the world.
Not only is contemplation a
process of dropping the mask of
the false self. It is also a way of
confirming the true self with whom
God is identified. The identification
process (or what Merton calls
infused contemplation) is sheer
grace. In theological terms, it is
the self-emptying Christ, the Word
made Flesh, who becomes our
strength and leads us to the
Father.5 In contemplative experi-
ence, it is falling into the arms of
the Father, like the prodigal son
coming home and being given the
identity of a son. The ultimate
transformation we experience in
contemplation is analogous to that
of the son fully embraced by the
Fatherour true self is found and
affirmed by and in God. The story
of the prodigal ends with a union,
no longer the waiting Father and
the wandering son separated from
each other, but two in embrace.
Describing union with God,
Merton says,God alone is left.
He is the I who acts there. He is
the one Who loves and knows and
rejoices.6 At this point, the ques-
tion of false and true self is
answered, or, we should say, no
such question will be asked. In
union with God, whatever we do
or think is of GodGods will be
done on earth as it is in heaven.
To put it in mystical terms, when
the praying person is no longer
visible, God becomes tangible and
is fully mediated through the
human flesh of the praying person.
Union with God is mystical but not
abstract, nor is it an experience of
a spiritual high. Merton strongly
states that the fruit of union with
God can be seen in everyday life.
The way Merton describes the
self in union with God separates
him from those who advocate a
privatized spirituality. He argues
that Christian spirituality is not a
private me-and-God relation-
ship. The person who is, by grace,
identified with God in contempla-
tion embodies God in the contexts
where life is lived. To find our true
self in God is to become the true
self of God in humble service to
the needy. One who is fully known
by God will know the heart of God
and see the world through the
eyes of God.
The goal of the spiritual journey
is not only to become real to our-
selves and to God, but also to be
real to others so that the reality of
God can be seen in and through
us. While authentic Christian spiri-
tuality may begin or be revitalized
in a monastery or a quiet place of
retreat, it must always lead us
back to the messiness of the
world and our wounded neighbors.
In the monastery, Mertons strug-
gle to bring peace or to contain
violence and injustice weaves into
his daily rhythm of silent prayer.
As a retreat facilitator living in a
quiet mountain in Hong Kong, I am
reminded not to romanticize
retreat and prayer. In Merton I see
that mystics and prophets are not
necessarily opponents. I shall con-
tinue to explore the connection
between mystical prayer and
prophetic action.
Tam Talks with
David Benner
DGB: I suspect some readers
might find these concepts of true
and false selves overly abstract,
failing to see just how important
they are to their personal spiritual
journeys. To help with this, can
you tell us a bit more about your
own journey?
ET: Like many Chinese
Christians, I was converted to
Christianity in my early twenties. I
was attracted to Christianity
because my life was meaningless,
and I felt lost. I had a very sad
childhood, feeling deprived of love
and care. I lived the first twenty
years of life unhappy and uncertain
about my role in the world. To give
myself a sense of my existence, I
sought pleasure in wild, all-night
gambling. But taking a taxi home
at the end of a long, lonely night,
all I felt was emptiness, loneliness,
anger, and jealousy.
54
The secret of my
identity is hidden in the
love and mercy of God.
But whatever is in
God is really identical
with Him, for His
infinite simplicity
admits no division and
no distinction. Therefore
I cannot hope to find
myself anywhere except
in Him.
(Thomas Merton, New Seeds
of Contemplation)
Merton helped me identify my
false self and pointed me toward
my becoming in the love of God.
His words brought healing to my
deeply wounded self. I was con-
vinced that I was not what I felt I
was; my true self rests in God and
is with God. I am wonderfully and
fearfully made. My joy comes by
finding who I am in God. Merton
pointed me to truths that I am
learning to make my lived realities.
DGB: In his Thoughts in
Solitude, Merton reminds us that
that there is no greater disaster in
the spiritual life than to be
immersed in unreality. Can you
say anything more about the
importance of accepting the reali-
ties of our existence in the journey
from our false to our true self?
ET: I remember the first phase
of Gods healing in my spiritual life.
It involved a very painful acknowl-
edgement of the ugliness of my
false self. I was moved to tears so
easily in hearing a song with words
like In His time, God makes every-
thing beautiful. One day I saw a
person on TV with tattoos of
strange patterns on his face.
Looking at him was terrifying
because it made me feel as if I
was covered by the skin of a
snake. I was afraid of myself. And
I brought that fearful self-encoun-
tering experience into a silent
retreat. You are my beloved son,
in whom I am well pleased. The
words from Mark came as deep
consolation and healing. They
remain deeply affirming. From time
to time in my silent prayer, I still
repeat them and let them soak
over me. This was one of my early
experiences of facing my unreality.
DGB: You mention the impor-
tant role of contemplation as a
way of life, not simply a form of
prayer. Please say a bit more
about this. How does this work
out in your own life?
ET: I have always been a hard-
working person, something I
learned from my family. While this
is a positive part of my personality,
I tend to overwork. After becoming
a Christian and seeking growth in
my spiritual life, I learned many dif-
ferent prayer methods while attend-
ing retreats and workshops. I was
tempted to think I could progress in
my spiritual life by simply learning
more techniques and methods of
prayer. But while reading Merton, I
was reminded of the pitfalls of mak-
ing the means into the goal.
Contemplative prayer is very
much in vogue today. But Merton is
right in warning that contemplation
can be false when it comes from
the desires of the false self. In my
teaching about prayer or contem-
plation, I put very little emphasis on
methods. In my personal life, con-
templation is my habit of taking
long, loving looks at God in and
through all things. Hopefully, by the
grace of God I am then able to see
all things in Godmy spouse, chil-
dren, colleagues, friends, and,
indeed, all of life.
Ultimately the only
way that I can be myself
is to become identified
with Him in whom is
hidden the
reason and fulfillment
of my existence.
Therefore, there is only
one problem on which
all my existence, my
peace and my happiness
depend: to discover
myself in discovering
God. If I find God,
I will find myself, and
if I find my true self, I
will find God. But
although this looks
simple, it is in reality
immensely difficult. In
fact, if I am left to myself
it will be utterly
impossible. No man can
ever do [it] alone. Nor
can all the men and all
the created things in the
universe help him in this
work. The only One
Who can teach me to
find God is God,
Himself, Alone.
(Thomas Merton, New Seeds
of Contemplation)
DGB: You are a Chinese
Christian who I know has been
deeply committed to living out
your spiritual life in a way that is
55
true to your culture and heritage.
Has Merton been of help in doing
that?
ET: The reason I made Merton
the focus of my doctoral research
was his interest in and respect for
Chinese culture. I was struck by
his openness to and knowledge of
Zen and classical Taoism. In his
early monastic life, he was a typi-
cal Catholic monk at the time,
defending the Church and showing
no sympathy for other religious
traditions. But as he matured, he
boldly defended the wisdom of
Zen and other religious traditions. I
was struck by this change, and his
courage to show appreciation pub-
licly for the insights of other reli-
gious traditions. He gave me the
courage to begin to affirm my own
culture and heritage. The majority
of Chinese Christian churches in
Asia at the time ignored Chinese
culture and advocated a total dis-
tancing from local religious-cultural
values. But Merton stimulated me
to think about my own identity and
how I could live an authentically
Chinese Christian life. This is the
area I wish to explore in future
writings and teaching. Living and
working in a retreat center
designed to serve as a center for
religious dialogue with the other
major faiths of our country greatly
facilitates this.
DGB: Finally, I really appreciat-
ed your reminder of Mertons con-
nection of the true self and living
out our social responsibilities in a
broken world. You live and work in
an incredibly peaceful and beautiful
place on the top of a mountain.
How do you stay connected to the
issues of the brokenness of life in
Hong Kong?
ET: This is indeed a challenge. I
rarely go down to the city. My
family goes to bed around nine
every night. People jokingly won-

One of the paradoxes of the
mystical life is this: that a
man cannot enter into the
deepest center of himself and
pass through the center into
God, unless he is able to pass
entirely out of himself and
empty himself and give him-
self to other people in the
purity of a selfless love . . .
The more I become identi-
fied with God, the more will
I be identified with all the
others who are identified
with Him. His love will live
in all of us. His Spirit will be
our One Life, the Life of all
of us and Life of God.
And we shall love one
another with the same
Love with which He loves us
and Himself. This love is
God Himself. . . The secret of
my identity is hidden in
the love and mercy of God.
But whatever is in
God is really identical
with Him, for His
infinite simplicity admits no
division and no distinction.
Therefore I cannot hope to
find myself anywhere
except in Him.
(Thomas Merton, New Seeds of
Contemplation)
der if I am disconnected from the Endnotes
world. Sometimes I have the 1
Merton, Thomas . 1961. New Seeds of
same doubt. But Mertons life has Contemplation. New York: New Directions
Books. p. 35.
deeply impressed me that I must
2
Ibid, p. 34.
try my best to open my ears and
eyes to the world. As Merton
3
Ibid, p. 32, 60.
4
Ibid, p. 16.
says, we are not alone in soli- 5
Ibid, Ch. 21-22.
tude; in solitude we are in solidar- 6
Ibid, p. 287.
ity with our brothers and sisters
in the wounded world. One way I
try to do this is by taking my
neighbors with me to God in
prayer.
To illustrate, may I share my
recent experience as SARS has
hit us so hard in Hong Kong. The
news of people dying of SARS
has deeply troubled my heart.
Each of them is unknown to me.
But whenever the news on TV
shows their faces or tells their
stories, I am moved to tears. My
heart aches as I see their loved D R . E K M A N P. C . TA M
ones weeping. I dont understand is the spiritual director of Tao Fong
why. But every day when I go for Shan Christian Centre, Hong
noon prayer (a daily prayer Kong. He is the founding person
rhythm at our Centre), I feel like of a training program in spiritual
praying together with and on direction for Christian ministers in
behalf of those who have died Asia. As spiritual director, he
and their survivors. I feel as if teaches, gives retreats and spiritu-
God is weeping for each of them. al direction, and provides therapy
Maybe this is the way I keep con- and supervision
nected with the wounded world.
Similarly, when the war on Iraq
finally broke out, I was depressed
for the whole month, feeling very
angry, helpless, and sorry. Our
human family is indeed broken.
DGB: Thank you so much for
sharing these personal experi-
ences. You have helped me bet-
ter understand these concepts of
the true and the false self, and
reminded me that by fixing my
eyes on God, I see both who I
am in truth and others as they are
in God.
56
 Sometimes
YouNeed a
Speci
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emotion relationship

h a v thought
r el intention behavior

e at We do not usually tend to include

b
Classical Spiritual Exercises:
Habits that Transform
seeing and awareness in the spec-
trum of spiritual disciplines. Yet

io
O
they are an essential part of the

spiritual life.

ns
on Spirituality is all about seeing. It
is becoming aware of realities in
A Meditation on which we are immersed but of
which we are unaware. Surrounded
Rembrandts by the presence of God, we are
seldom aware of this great gift.
Tragically, we go through life as
Return of the sleepwalkers. We need to awaken
and we need to learn to see.1
Once we see, the rest follows.
e

Prodigal Son

nt
This is why Jesus tells us that if
our eye is healthy, our whole body

Taste
will be full of light.

e
Spiritual vision requires learning
ht

n
to notice the presence of God

g tio within and around us. The Christian

tradition provides many ways to do
o u n thiscentering prayer, lectio divina,
listening to music, and meditation
on art.
Much of the classical art in our
modern museums was originally

and
created for exactly this spiritual
purpose. They still speak profound-
ly to our souls if we are willing to
sit before them and open our-
selves to the Scriptures that were
their inspiration. But gallery statis-
tics tell us that the average time a
person spends looking at a work of
art is three seconds! What could
anyone hope to see in such a short

See
time?
Artists are especially gifted in
seeing. Van Gogh has observed that
being an artist involves grasping life
in its depth. Artists help us to open
ourselves to mystery. Great art calls
us to enter a quiet, contemplative
space. Great Christian art prompts
us to ponder anew what the
Almighty can do.
The artists vision sharpens our
own awareness of the deeper life
Juliet Benner because it makes the invisible visible,

Juliet Benner is a spiritual director and retreat leader at the Institute for Psychospiritual Health
(www.psy.edu/iph). For many years she was a docent at the Art Gallery of Hamilton (Ontario,
Canada). Her special interest is in art and spirituality, particularly the use of icons and
religious art as aids to prayer. She can be contacted by e-mail at julietbenner@aol.com.

59
 enriching our mind and nurturing
our heart and soul. John Drury,
Born and raised in dean of Christ Church (Oxford),
says that looking at pictures
Holland to parents in entails a contemplative waiting
upon them which puts us along-
the Reformed church, side those who painted and
viewed them so devoutly by
Rembrandt was a putting us in the realm of prayer,
with its passive expectancy, its
believer in the risen active openness. Worship and
looking at pictures require the
Christ. He was same kind of attentiona mixture
of curiosity with a relaxed readi-
immersed in the Bible ness to let things suggest them-
selves in their own good time.2
from early childhood,
his lifelong meditation Rembrandts
on it allowing him to
Return
express biblical truths in
The well-known picture on the front
his art in fresh and cover of this journal, Rembrandts
H
The Return of the Prodigal Son,
personal ways. depicts the homecoming of the
wayward son who had squandered
Rembrandt considered his inheritance in riotous living.
Measuring eight feet by six feet,
his artistic calling to this monumental work was painted
near the end of his life in 1668 and
be from God. reflected much of his own story.
Rembrandt had been a prolific
Convinced that and financially successful artist.
But his appetite for spending
ordinary human reality particularly in support of his per-
sonal collection of art and sculp-
was deeply connected turefar exceeded his income
and often left him seriously in
to the divine, he sought debt. Eventually, forced into bank-
ruptcy, all of his art had to be sold
to use his art to to repay his debts, and he was
obliged to depend on his family in
stimulate viewers order to survive. He also suffered
a great deal of personal tragedy
to make personal including the loss of a son and two
daughters, and the death of his
connections with the wife, which left him with the
responsibility of caring for a young
biblical events son. The greatest of his paintings
were produced in the last twenty
portrayed. years of his life and reflected
these tragedies. His former con-
cern to portray external grandeur
60
and detail gave way to a focus on
the spiritual qualities of his sub-
jects. His work began to reflect his
own return to the Father as he
found new meaning in his faith.
Before looking at the painting,
take time for a slow, meditative
reading of this familiar story. It is
found in the Luke 15:11-32. Read
it as if for the first time. Notice any
new images or thoughts that
come to your mind. After you have
done this, spend time looking at
the painting. Sit quietly and com-
fortably, without any distractions,
and prayerfully seek the guidance
of the Holy Spirit, asking for your
eyes to be opened to the spiritual
realities that the painting presents.
First
Impressions
How does this painting change or
enhance your understanding of the
story? What is your initial response
to it?
Observe the way darkness and
light are juxtaposed. The focus of
the paintinga father embracing
his sonleaps out of a back-
ground of dark shadows. It is high-
lighted by a warm, golden light
that creates a striking contrast to
the surrounding shadowy dark-
ness. Several figures emerge out
of this darkness and add mystery
to the drama taking place before
us. Even without knowing the
story, the viewer becomes aware
that something momentous is tak-
ing place in this scene. But, know-
ing the story, we immediately
catch a glimpse into the heart of a
forgiving and gracious father.
Pause for a moment and consid-
er what preceded this scene. The
younger of two sons had brought
disgrace to the family by asking for
his inheritance before his father had
died. Having received the money,
he traveled to far places, spending
it wastefully until it was used up.
Destitute and desperate, he was
forced to hire himself out to a
swine-herder. Still starving, he now
groveled with the pigs, jostling with
them to share the scraps with
which they were fed. In this deso-
late position, the younger son slow-
ly began to realize how far he had
strayed from his true home. The
story tells us that he came to his
senses and determined to return
to his father and ask him to be
treated as one of his hired servants.
Rembrandts meditation on this
story does not tell us about the
fathers anxious watching and wait-
ing for his son. We see nothing of
his sighting from a distance; no
eager rushing out, robes fluttering
in the wind; no clouds of dust nor
arms spread wide; no sound of
flapping sandals, nor of painful
gasping to catch up with his son
to restore him to his rightful place
in the family. Here we see only
stillness and rest.
This is a moment of complete
calm, a hushed and awesome
silence. The eyes of all the specta-
tors in this tableau are riveted on
the two figures who are bathed in
light and colour. It is the moment of
humble surrender for the younger
son. He kneels before his father
with his head buried against his
chest, embraced in strong arms
that offer forgiveness and restora-
tion. He is clasped so closely that
he can hear his fathers heartbeat.
It is a heartbeat that throbs with
the rhythm of love and tenderness
in spite of the unlovely estate of
the son. It is the life pulse of the
father that reminds and reaffirms
the son whose he is and where his
identity is grounded.
The Younger
Son
Look now at how the artist por-
trays the condition of this son.
Look at the details used to illus-
trate his situation. What do they
tell us about his outward and inner
circumstances?
Notice the similarity between the
rich profusion of lace on the fathers
sleeves and the traces of lace on
the sons robe. His clothesonce
as fine and regal as his fathers,
with the tattered remnants of lace
still visible around his neckhave
become ragged and dirty. They may
represent his futile attempts to
reclothe himself in some vestige of
respectability to recapture his lost
identity. But clothes of his own
making are poor substitutes for the
rich, more adequate clothes his
father can provide.
He is filthy, his hair seems to be
shaved off, and his shoes are
sadly worn. One shoe lies beside
a foot that is calloused and grimy,
and the other has deteriorated to
the point of having no heel at all. A
closer look at his feet reveals the
haste with which he has returned.
He appears to have hurriedly and
carelessly placed his shoes on the
wrong feet. This only emphasizes
his broken and lost condition.
The last remaining trace of his
true identity is the short sword at
his right side. An indication of his
former status as the son of a
nobleman, this is the only article
that he has managed to save. It is
the one thing that connects him to
his home and his father. His head,
once crowned with healthy hair, is
now shorn, reminding us of a pris-
oner whose identity is lost.
In his lustful pursuit of an identi-
ty apart from his father, he has
instead experienced a loss of his
true self. He no longer resembles
the wealthy father or reflects his
nobility. His identity is that of a
ragged beggar. Yet, as Henri
Nouwen suggests, his head also
looks like that of a newborn baby.3
This insight adds a new dimension
to this homecoming. This son is
being reborn. He is being given a
61
new identity, a new beginning.
There is a profound spiritual
truth presented here. How often
we have strayed from who we
were created and intended to be
by losing our connectedness with
our heavenly Father. In our desire
to live life apart from dependence
and trust in our Fathers love, we
have settled for scraps of slop
instead of feasting at the rich table
that home offers us. Instead of
clothing ourselves in the fine gar-
ments which ennoble us, we have
pieced together scraps of our own
making to try to cover our shame
and nakedness. This is the false
self. We see echoes of it in the
condition of our first parents in the
garden of Eden when they hid from
God, fashioning for themselves
clothes of leaves. But God had
better clothing for them, clothing
that would offer dignity and worth.
How would you describe the gar-
ments you have made for yourself
the clothing of your self-made identi-
ty? What is the far country that has
provided your sense of identity and
self? What is the meager food on
which you try to satisfy your
hunger? Why do you leave home?
Look again at the son. There is
no pretense here. He kneels
before the father just as he is,
with no attempt to hide his seamy
appearance. Exposed to the light,
which emanates from his father,
the son clearly sees himself as he
ishis destitution, his poverty of
body and spirit. This is the first
step of return.
Yet this same light shows him
how much he is forgiven and loved.
Unlike Adam and Eve, this son has
chosen to return home and not
hide from his father any longer. He
has taken the path of humility and
courage, bravely facing his own
sorry state as well as the fathers
responsean expected response
of punishment or rejection.
Before making the journey
home, he had rehearsed a speech
which he had intended to use to
convince his father to allow him
back into the household. His
speech revealed much that was
wrong about his view of the father.
He had planned to confess his sin
and then ask to be made as one
of the hired servants. He thought
he could earn his fathers love. He
failed to see himself as deeply
loved by his father. He anticipated
a father who would angrily keep
score and then compare him to his
dutifully obedient brother. Instead,
he returns to a father who never
makes comparisons and cares
more about who he is than what
he has done. He receives love,
grace, forgiveness, and welcome.
Examine your own ideas about
your heavenly Father. Do you view
God as a tyrant, taking delight in
waiting to punish you for your
sins? How have your mispercep-
tions of God distorted your image
of him? How does your view of
God need to change?
The Father
But now let us turn to the father.
Go back to the picture on the
cover and spend some time look-
ing at him. Notice his posture, his
clothing, his facial expression.
What do these tell us about him?
The story describes the fathers
response to seeing his sons
shape approaching in the distance:
While he was still a long way off,
B
his father saw him, and felt com-
passion for him, and ran and
embraced him, and kissed him.
This father has rushed out to meet
his son, oblivious to the fact that it
was undignified and disgraceful for
an old man in his culture to do so.
Now, his old body, weary from
waiting, leans into the boy, and his
arms encircle the forlorn figure with
tenderness and love.
He has told his servants to
hurry and bring his best robe, his
ring and sandalsall symbols of
The father doesnt
demand that he get
cleaned up before he
is accepted. This is
unconditional love.
This is pure grace!
restoration and ownershipfor
this ragged creature. Before giving
his son a chance to apologize fully
or to give his prepared speech, he
orders his servants to prepare a
feast with a fatted calf to celebrate
this great event.
We see none of this back-
ground activity here. Instead, we
see a father whose eyes seem
almost blind from weeping. This is
a father who has grieved much
over his lost son. Yet his face radi-
ates with an intense inner light and
grace that extends to the son in
compassion and tenderness.
In his eagerness to forgive and
embrace his son, and perhaps in
haste to protect him from the wrath
of the entire village to which he is
returning, the father is unconcerned
about his sons condition. Here,
there is no holding at arms length
or repellent scorn. The father hugs
him and kisses him just as he is.
The son may not have looked or
smelled as he once did, but his sta-
tus as a son never changed. The
father doesnt demand that he get
cleaned up before he is accepted.
This is unconditional love. This is
pure grace!
The fathers clothing is rich with
sumptuous fabric. His wealth is
reflected in the luxurious color and
texture which Rembrandt renders
so realistically and beautifully. Yet
the father is unaware of the cost to
himself. He is unconcerned that he
62
is absorbing the dirt and pigpen-
stink of his son. All he wants is to
love him and express his joy at his
sons return. His arms are extend-
ed in blessing. His red, womb-like
cloak, warm and rich, offers a tent-
like refuge from the harsh realities
of life apart from home. Like shel-
tering wings, it is spread wide in
welcome. We recall the words of
Jesus in Matthew 23:37How
often I wanted to gather your chil-
dren together, the way a hen gath-
ers her chicks under her wings
(NASB). From the ends of this
cape flow luxurious crimson tas-
sels toward the shoulders of the
son. The fathers own lifeblood
appears to be pouring into the son,
offering a fresh transfusion that will
restore new life to him.
Take time to notice the fathers
hands. What more do they tell us
about the father?
If you look closely, you will see
that the hands are quite different
from each other. His right hand is
smaller, more delicate, more femi-
nine and refined. It rests on the
right side of the sons backthe
side which shows a completely
naked foot. It is this vulnerable,
more tender side that this mother-
ly hand caresses and nurtures,
offering comfort and gentleness. It
gives a picture of the maternal
love of our heavenly Father. Isaiah
49:15,16 reminds us of Gods
words: Can a woman forget her
nursing child....Even these may for-
get, but I will not forget you.
Behold, I have inscribed you on the
palms of My hands.(NASB). The
left hand of the father is masculine
and strong. Larger and more pow-
erful, it rests with more pressure
on the sons right shoulder. This
strong hand protects rather than
punishes or hurts. Both hands
encircle a large ragged hole in the
sons garment, drawing attention
to his plight. Loving tenderness
and firm strength are necessary to
restore wholeness of body and
spirit to this son. Both the femi-
nine and masculine aspects of
God are necessary in providing
the healing we need and the full-
ness of life for which we long.
Allow yourself to be held in this
maternal yet masculine embrace of
the fathers sheltering hands. Feel
his gentleness and his strength.
Let your senses absorb the clean,
familiar smell of the fathers cloth-
ing as it begins to erase the smells
of your own brokenness; touch the
texture of his rich garments, and
let that touch remind you of your
new righteous clothing; feel the
warmth of his nearness as his light
infuses your own body with
warmth; listen closely to his heart-
beat pulsing new life into you and
bringing healing and wholeness.
Let your own heartbeat be brought
gently into harmony with Gods.
Listen for what this heartbeat tells
you about who you arehis
beloved child (Isaiah 43). For as
long as you need to, enjoy this
moment of cuddling with your
heavenly Father, allowing him to
hold you just as you are.
The Older
Brother
Shift your focus for a moment and
look at the other figures who
appear outside this brilliant circle
of light. The most prominent one
is the man standing at the right of
the painting. This is the older
brother. Although the biblical story
tells us that he remained outside
and had to be told the news of his
brothers return by a servant,
Rembrandt has placed him at the
scene of the homecoming, a spec-
tator to this drama. This artistic
device telescopes all the parts of
the story into one. What insights
can we get from this depiction of
this first son of the father? How is
he different from or similar to the
younger son and the father?
In many aspects, the older son is
very much like his father. His facial
features are like his fathers, as are
his lavishly rich robes. Yet a closer
scrutiny affords greater insight into
some important differences.
Contrast his face with the
fathers. Unlike the tender expres-
sion of love in the fathers face,
the older sons face seems to
reflect criticism, judgmentalism,
and disapproval. Remember his
reaction to the return of his broth-
What are the
dutiful things in
your life that you use
to avoid intimacy
with the Father
and with your
brothers and sisters?
er and to his fathers plea to join in
the celebration: He became
angry, and was not willing to go in.
For so many years I have been
serving you, and I have never
neglected a command of yours:
and yet you have never given me
a kid, that I might be merry with
my friends; but when this son of
yours came, who has devoured
your wealth with harlots, you killed
the fatted calf for him (Luke
15:2830, NASB). Although the
fathers light partly illuminates his
face, it shows him up for who he
really is: a bitter, angry and self-
righteous man.
To further reinforce this aspect
of the older son, the artist places
him at the edge of the action. His
posture, emphasized by the long,
thin rod which he holds, suggests
63
a cold rigidity, an unwillingness to
enter into grace. His cloak, unlike the
fathers, hangs uninvitingly around
him. Notice also how he stands
above the two central figures. He
has placed himself two steps higher
than the father and younger son,
suggesting a judgmental haughtiness
and an aloofness from them. He is
controlled and upright. In contrast to
the open, receptive arms of the
father, his arms are held tightly
against his body, reminding us of a
handcuffed prisoner being taken to
his cell or to trial.
We can easily sympathize with
his anger at this seeming injustice,
identifying with him in our own
faithfulness and devotion. He has
stayed at home, working hard for
his father, doing all the right things
and never complaining. But, like
his brother, he also has a wrong
view of the father. He thought his
fathers love could be earned. He
expected his obedient works to be
the only requirement for member-
ship in his fathers household. But
the father wanted sons, not
slaves. He wanted relationships of
love and intimacy. He desired that
his children serve him out of
hearts of love rather than from
mere subservience.
Recall how the father takes the
initiative and goes outside to the
older son to plead with him to
come to the celebration of a son
who was dead and has begun to
live, and who was lost and has
been found,(Luke 15:32, NASB).
He risks rejection as he extends
his love toward this other son. But
the older son is angry that his sin-
ful brother, who has disgraced his
fathers household, is being
offered forgiveness and, of all
things, a party.
Could he possibly be as lost as
the young son? He never left home,
doing all that was right and proper.
But both sons needed the fathers
forgiveness. Both needed to see
the inadequacy of garments of their
own makingone opulent, the
other ragged. They both needed the
best robe that the father offered.
The older son was as much a for-
eigner in his own home as the
younger son. He also left home,
W
refusing to enter into the loving rela-
tionship to which his father always
invited him. In his inner homeless-
ness, he too needed to return
home to his fathers embrace.
What are the dutiful things in
your life that you use to avoid inti-
macy with the Father and with
your brothers and sisters? What
are the things that make you rigid
and willfully your own person?
How do you use objectivity to
keep you from being fully involved
in the drama of salvation? What do
your robes look like that you have
created to give yourself identity
and meaning?
We are not told how the older
son responds to his fathers invita-
tion. Does he step down the short
distance that separates him from
his father and brother to join in the
reconciliation? Does he choose to
go in and join the party, or does he
stay outside and sulk? The ques-
tion is also addressed to us. What
is our response to grace? Are we
willing to receive the generosity of
love and forgiveness offered to
us? Does it make us angry or
resentful to see others who are
less dutiful than we receiving
attention? Or do we enter joyfully
into the celebration of anothers
return home from a far country?
The
Spectators
While these are the main figures in
the drama of this story, other fig-
ures emerge out of the darkness.
The seated man wearing the large
hat appears to be a self-portrait of
Rembrandt as a younger man.
Inserting himself into many of his
paintings, this depiction is particu-
larly powerful. It shows him look-
ing at the younger son reflectively,
contemplating his own wayward-
nessthe inner and outer bank-
ruptcy of his own shattered life. In
many ways Rembrandt is the
younger son, returning to the
bosom of the father for love and
forgiveness.
Two women faintly appear in
the shadows of the background.
You may not even be able to see
them. One standing next to the pil-
lar beside the seated figure
appears to be a serving maid.
Hardly visible in the left corner
above the fathers huddled shape
is another woman, who may be
the sons mother or even the wife
who has been chosen for the
younger son by his father. We
cannot be sure. But what they do
add to this story is significant.
They all portray noninvolve-
ment. They all stand or sit in the
shadows, observing the scene
spectators to this incredible
drama. They are insubstantial fig-
ures, phantoms in the dark, who
also need to become real, solid
beings by emerging out of the
shadows and moving into the light
of love. They perhaps mirror our
own incredulity at such amazing
gracea grace that also invites us
to enter into that wonderful, glow-
ing circle and participate in it.
The
Viewers
Reflecting prayerfully on
Rembrandts marvelous painting
presents us with questions and
choices. In your imagination,
repaint the scene. Where would
you place yourself? With whom do
you identify most? Are you
presently most like the older son,
the younger son, the father, or the
64
observers in the background?
As you look meditatively at the
painting and ponder the biblical
text, what keeps you from com-
ing home, from running to the
embrace of the forgiving Father?
What aspects of your indepen-
dence do you treasure and cling
to? What are the rags with
which you clothe yourself to pro-
vide your self-worth? Are you so
tightly held by your heavenly
Father that you hear his heartbeat?
Does this loving heartbeat provide
the rhythm and the affirmation you
need for your life? Where do you
look to find yourself?
The real focus of this story is
the father. It is he who holds all
the tensions of this painting in his
welcoming embrace. This is a
wonderful picture of our heavenly
Father- his unconditional love, for-
giveness, and grace. He accepts
us just as we are, but does not
expect us to remain unchanged.
Once we have experienced this
grace, we cannot stay the same. If
we dare to enter this intimate cir-
cle of light and love, we begin to
be transformed into the persons
we were intended to be. We move
toward becoming our authentic
selves and begin to bear a family
resemblance to our Father.
Can we risk the kind of love the
Father has extended to us and lav-
ished upon us? Can we love with-
out expecting anything in return
and without control? Are we able
to see others through eyes of love
and acceptance instead of with
cool judgmentalism? How willing
are we to enter into the joy of
anothers forgiveness?
As you hold the image of the
painting in mind, listen to Sister
Maura Eichners poetic telling of
this amazing story. Watch and lis-
ten for new hints of the profound
mystery it communicates. Taste
and see the goodness of the Lord!

The Father
Never had the old man made such a journey.
His robes enfolded him like driving wind.
No one remembered the old man running. Even fire
had never moved him. His estates were the light
of the town. Yet, there he was, running to a dark
figure huddling the road. Love was flood-water
carrying him forward. Some tried to dike the water;
nothing could hold him. Love loosed a wind of words:
My son is coming home. Dark grief behind, the father ran,
arms open as light. He had to lift the boy before his sons fire
of sorrow burned the fathers sandals. Journey?
The old man could remember no other journey
but this homecoming: he held his son in the fire
of his arms, remembering his birth: water and fire.
Servants ran along thrusting at the wind of excitement:
what shall we do? what torchlight prepare?
Bathe away the pig-pen-slopping-dark that clothes my son.
Prepare a banquet. Jewel the dark with fires.
My son was dead. My son is afire with life. The land is fruit-
ful. Joy is its water. Where is my eldest son? The end of
the journey is ours. My son, do you grieve? Turn from the light
to say you are unrewarded? Son, is the wind from the south
closer than you to me? Is the wind of your doubt
stronger than my love for you? Water your hardness,
my son. Be a brother to the dark of your brothers sorrow.
Be a season of light to his coming home.
You will make many a journey through cities, up mountains,
over abysses of fire, but for tonight and tomorrow, my eldest,
fire your heart, strike at its stone. Let it journey toward
dawning, be a thrust at the dark your brother will never
forget. Find a woman of water and fire, seed her with sons
for my name and wind- supple daughters for bearing
daughters and sons of light.
I am a father of journeys. I remind you the dark can be
conquered by love-blazing fire. I made air and wind a
compassionate homeland. Be at home in the light. 4
65
Express your gratitude to God for new eye-
sight, physical and spiritual, that has increased
your awareness of deeper spiritual realities as
you have taken the time to immerse yourself in
this painting and biblical story. Allow the Fathers
love to begin to transform your heart and life.
Come out of the darkness and come home to
the warm embrace of forgiveness just as you
are. Enter into the cleansing and rest that he
offers. Accept the freedom that comes with
knowing who you really area person loved
and cherished by God. Then celebrate with joy
this new life, sharing it with others and drawing
them also into this intimate relationship of light
and love.
A Final Reflection
In her book, Inner Compass5, Margaret Silf speaks
of living trueorienting ourselves to God as
the true reference point for our identity. By med-
itating on this story, we discover that both sons
were living from a false reference point.
The younger had left home, seeking his
own way, focused on self. His wanderings took
him further and further from his true center,
and he became lost and inauthentic. The older
brother also lived out of a false way of being.
His focus on self kept him from seeing that his
true identity can be found only when he keeps
his focus on his fathers love.
Our heavenly Father wants each one of us
to draw close to him and to receive his extrav-
agant love. It is here that we discover our own
true selves. With Rembrandt, we too are invit-
ed to find our true fulfillment in God and not
ourselves. It is when we cling to the Father,
through all that life brings, that we find our true
selveswho we really are and who we are
becoming in God.
ENDNOTES
1
Rohr, Richard. Everything Belongs: The Gift of
Contemplative Prayer. New York: Crossroad, 1999, p. 27-33.
2
Drury, John. Painting the Word. New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1999, p. xiii-xiv.
3
Nouwen, Henri. The Return of the Prodigal Son. New York:
Doubleday, 1994.
4
Eichner, Sr. Maura. The Father in A Widening Light:
Poems of the Incarnation (Luci Shaw, Ed.). Wheaton: Harold
Shaw Publishers, 1984.
5
Silf, Margaret. Inner Compass: An Invitation to Ignatian
Spirituality. Chicago: Loyola Press, 1999, p. 142.


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What Happens in
Solitude?
H
Honestly, practicing a spiritual dis-
cipline was the last thing on my
mind. I needed to vary my workout
routine, so I began an arm-swing-
ing aerobic walk in our housing
tract. But my then-teenage daugh-
ter was embarrassed to have
Mom turning the corner in faded
pink shorts, so I retreated to a
lonely canyon road, cluttered with
garbage and swathed in mud.
Because I concentrate hard all
day as a writer, I move out of my
head and just be when I exer-
cise. Out on the canyon road
dodging gravel trucks, vulnerable
to the heat and miles away from
complex thoughts, I found myself
alone with God. God showed up in
everything around me. The tumble-
weeds nested at the edge of the
road stood for the stumbling
blocks of my lifeannoyances
with those I loved, fear of doing
difficult things, yearnings for a
problem-free life. So I gathered up
these bulky briars and hurled them
off the cliff-like side of the road.
The mountains around me
became symbols of Gods pres-
ence. I named the peaks for what I
was hearing from God. The invit-
ing manger-like ravine became
rest. The sharply pointed peak
became Dont forget to love
Jan Johnson
when we moved through a church
split. As I panted, chugged water,
and headed into the wind, those
phrases became ways to live life.
About that time, Id begun attend-
ing a monthly retreat day at a
retreat center. But no matter how
engaging the speaker was, I found
myself skipping the sessions to
scramble down a steep creek
bank to sit on a huge rock in the
middle of the water. There I
remained for the day. At that time,
I had such lofty opinions of the
spiritual discipline of solitude that I
didnt think these walks and rock-
sitting moments were heroic
enough to count as solitude. But
they did.
Furnace of
Transformation
Solitude and its accompanying dis-
cipline, silence, are absolutely
central to spiritual growth, writes
Dallas Willard.1 No one can expect
to have a life in which God lives
and moves and has his being, I
believe, unless he or she regularly
experiences solitude. The Gospel
writers took the trouble to record
Jesus taking huge chunks of time
67
away from ministry and people
(Matt. 4:111; 14:13, 23; 17:19;
26:3646 Mark 6:31; Luke 5:16;
6:12). Why? I dont believe Jesus
did this to be a good example or
because hed picked up messages
on his machine that God expected
it. I believe Jesus practiced soli-
tude because he loved being alone
with GodI and the Father are
one (John 10:30, NIV). Yet the
word solitude or even the idea
doesnt appear in the classics as
often as you would think. Instead,
it is assumed. Many of the prac-
tices mentioned in The Cloud of
Unknowing, Introduction to a Holy
Devout Life or The Imitation of Christ
presuppose that a person is
already practiced in solitude, which
will provide a setting for trying out
the recommended practices.
But, of course, solitude is not
just about warm, fuzzy moments
soaking your feet in a creek. You
let go of all the work and people-
related things that make you feel
importantappointments, tele-
phone calls, speaking engage-
ments. Nobody asks for your opin-
ion in solitude. Maybe no one is
even missing you! Where are you
without those things that support
your ego? When I first began tak-
ing off work for regular retreat
days, I had to work hard not to
think, But I could be working,
achieving, doing! What good is
this?
Good for revelation, it turns
out. Henri Nouwen wrote (in
describing St. Anthony) that soli-
tude experiences show that we
must be made aware of the call to
let our false, compulsive self be
transformed into the new self of
Jesus Christ. It also shows that
solitude is the furnace in which
this transformation takes place.2
Solitude cracks the facade of
our false self because in it we
discover what weve used to feel
productive and get through the
day. For those of us who have
used productivity for self-worth,
this is radical. Our false self,
hooked on productivity, has to say
yes to whatever is asked, so we
can feel good or look good. We
have to make sure we do the best
job thats ever been done (to hear
someone say, That time Jan was
in charge was the best event
ever!) Its to hike down a career
path faster and further than any-
one else. Its to hurry life away,
P
doing many things at once. Its to
experience that adrenaline high
when we can check off everything
on our daily to do list.
But in solitude, we are useless.
Nor is God useful to us.
Bernard of Clairvaux noted how
we falsely love God for His use-
fulness; not for Himself.3 When I
began designing my own personal
retreat days, I often felt tempted
to turn those days into a project,
to manufacture revelations or
tingly experiences. I had to coun-
teract that by making no schedule
for the day. Several days before, I
tossed books or articles or prayer
ideas into a folder to take with me,
but often I never touched them
during the retreat day. Instead, it
became a God-led day of hanging
out with God and not feeling guilty
for doing nothing. So now on
energetic retreat days, I may read
through a Gospel or meditate on
several passages for an extended
time. On others, I may curl up with
a favorite book or get absorbed
making a chart of all Jesus heal-
ings and comparing details about
how Jesus interacted with the
people he healed, and then pray-
ing about what that interaction
looks like in me. Or I might spend
the whole day gardening and pon-
dering. I have no rules about what
I do, just that I observe silence
and solitude. I try to listen to what
God leads me to do that day.
And even now I find myself wait-
ing each minute for the solitude to
feel rewarding, but it doesnt seem
to. Then afterward, I realize I loved
it. I am much like Jacob after he
awakened from his angel-climbing
ladder dream: Surely the LORD is
in this place, and I was not aware
of it (Gen. 28:16, NIV).
Enemies
Show Up
Perhaps the scariest element of
solitude is the way the false self
comes forward. Time in solitude
may at first seem little more than a
time in which we are bombarded
by thousands of thoughts and feel-
ings that emerge from hidden
areas of our mind,says Nouwen.4
Especially on my canyon road
walking days, I was plagued with
what I call the committee that lives
in my head. These voices are the
unregenerated parts of the soul,
our habits of thinking that arise
from the parts of us yet to be
healed.
My committee members
include the followingperhaps
youll recognize them:
The Looking Good Kid wants to
be loved and valued. She works
hard to be admired, out of fear of
not being good enough. She plots
68
to make sure I will never be reject-
ed again. If I think I hear God say-
ing, Be perfect! Get it right!
Dont make any mistakesthen
Ill be proud of you! this is not
God, but the Looking Good Kid.
The Rescuer also wants to be
loved and valued, so she thinks of
ways to help others so they have
to love me. As a result, busyness
is next to godliness. If I think I hear
God say, Help people till it
exhausts you. Make people
happy, that is not God but my
Rescuer sabotaging my solitude.
The Attitude Police Officer
wants everything done right. She
evaluates, criticizes, and ruins my
attempts to focus on God. She
sabotages my thoughts so that I
hear God correcting meor
someone else.
The Grouch feels sorry for me
and thinks others should pay
attention to me. She blocks the
voice of God by saying, You blew
it again! Get with it! Nothing is
ever going to work for you.5
On my canyon road walks,
these last two members often took
over and rehearsed long, hostile
speeches to those with whom I
disagreed, plotting every point,
entrenching myself in reasons I
was right. Then would follow equal-
ly virulent diatribes against deep
despair and myself over how my
anger had taken over.
It took several years to replace
these thoughts with prayer for
those who irritated me. Yet that
was what I needed to do, and it
trained my soul to love when I
wanted to criticize. Nouwen says
the Desert Fathers insisted that
solitude gives birth to compassion
because it makes us die to our
neighbor.... To die to our neighbors
means to stop judging them, to
stop evaluating them, and thus to
become free to be compassion-
ate. Compassion can never coex-
ist with judgment because judg-
ment creates the distance, the dis-
tinction, which prevents us from
really being with the other.6 This
is the quagmire in which the false
self thrives.
Dismissing the voices of the
committee members is best done
gently. To be upset about my fail-
ings does not help. That only
affirms that my spirituality is about
me, not about God. I gently usher
the members to the door of my
mind without giving the enemy of
my soul more airplay. Nouwen
compared this process in solitude
as the experience of a man who,
after years of living with open
doors, suddenly decides to shut
them. The visitors who used to
come and enter his home start
pounding on his doors, wondering
why they are not allowed to enter
. . .as they receive less and less
attention, they slowly withdraw.
Only when they realize that they
are not welcome do they gradually
stop coming.7
How Solitude
Helps
T
Time alone retrains your thought
patterns and even your body.
HEARING GOD.
The first step in hearing God is
knowing who God is notthe
false self, the voices of the com-
mittee, or habitual poisonous
thinking patterns.8 In solitude, we
become acquainted with them and
practiced in dismissing them. This
trains us further in letting go of all
that resists God.9 As you let go
of the committee members, you
make room for God. It requires a
lot of inner solitude and silence to
become aware of these divine
movements. God does not shout,
scream or push, warned Henri
Nouwen.10 Solitude helps you culti-
vate a listening heart.
EXPERIENCING THE
C O M PA N I O N S H I P O F G O D .
People often confuse solitude with
loneliness, but they are different.
Solitude is the glory of being
alone, but loneliness is the pain of
being alone. Solitude is rich and
full, while loneliness is empty and
hollow. How do you make the
switch? Elisabeth Elliot wrote,
Turn your loneliness into solitude
and your solitude into prayer.11 In
solitude you learn to nourish in
your heart the lively longing for
God.12
As you practice longer times of
solitude, that daily quiet time
becomes easier to squeeze in.
You love soaking in what God
says, so you must have it every
day. ( I find that working out or rid-
ing my bike afterward creates
even more space to hear God
daily.) Even when attending a con-
ference or class thats full of stim-
ulating people, you see that you
need to separate yourself for a
while. You become attentive to the
crazy voices in your head
(Everyone really likes me! Im
further down the spiritual road
than some of these folks.) and
take time to repentthink about
your thinking. You make the shift
to praying for people around you
rather than glorying in what others
think of you.
LETTING GO OF BUSYNESS.
As you free yourself from the bur-
den of being important, you also
let go of hurry and busyness.
Nothing makes a claim on you and
forces you to run over people. You
live more purposefully from a quiet
center in life and are not distracted
so easily. You enjoy leaving mar-
gins in life. It was a milestone in
my life when I no longer found
being called a busy writer a
compliment.
When your body slows down on
a regular basis, you notice the rich-
ness in nature. You love being skin
69
to skin with the kingdom of God,
as Ive heard Dallas Willard say.
TEACHES US HOW TO
BE WITH OTHERS.
Contrary to what some might
think, solitude is not a me-myself-
and-I discipline, but one that
changes the way you interact with
people. Thomas Merton is famous
for saying that solitude is not
turning ones back on the world; it
is turning our face toward God.13
As we do this, God turns our face
toward others because we see
them differently. We come away
from solitude more fit to be with
people: quick to listen, slow to
speak, and slow to become angry
(James 1:19, NIV). We talk less,
talk more slowly, and stop inter-
rupting people because we take
our silence with us. Because we
slow down, we catch ourselves
before we make those automatic
slighting comments we regret later.
Being alone is actually good
training for being with others.
While guiding an underground
seminary of twenty-five vicars
learning to live in community,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it this way:
Let him who cannot be alone
beware of community.14 Being
alone creates a more selfless pos-
ture when you are with people.
One of these improvements is that
you have silenced yourself so you
can better listen intently to others.
In your solitude you experience a
sense of powerlessness that leads
you to drop your managing of peo-
ple. Without realizing it, we use
comments and looks to project an
image of who wed like to be, try-
ing to give a good impression,
maneuvering through mined con-
versations, plotting the best
response, looking for affirmation,
or refusing affirmation through
attempted humility. After times of
not talking, you dont interrupt
people or bombard them with,
Right, right, right as they

Solitude is a place
of having ones
false self revealed
and replacing it
with interaction
with God.
attempt to reveal their thoughts. In
solitude you learn to offer a quiet,
simple presence to God (sitting on
the rock in the creek), and so you
do the same with people. As
Bonhoeffer says, Chatter does
not create fellowship.15
Solitude could become a prob-
lem if you use it to isolate your-
self. Bonhoeffer also said, Let
him who is not in community
beware of being alone.16 You
develop a rhythm in your life of
both. Solitude can also degener-
ate into a time of feeling sorry for
yourself or beating yourself up.
Thats why its often accompanied
by other disciplines that keep us
focused on the truth of God. You
often will also pray or meditate on
Scripture. For example, if youve
spent time in solitude asking God
to show you someones heart,
youre more likely to listen careful-
ly to that person, wanting to hear
that persons heart.
Solitude is a place of having
ones false self revealed and
replacing it with interaction with
God. As that false self withers,
solitude becomes a place of
purification and transformation.17
In these rich interludes, compan-
ionship with God grows, and it is
from this transformed or convert-
ed self that real ministry flows.18
ENDNOTES
1
Willard, Dallas. The Divine Conspiracy. San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998, p.
357.
2
Nouwen, Henri J. M. The Way of the
Heart. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
1981, p. 20.
Bernard of Clairvaux. Great Devotional
3
Classics: Revelations of Divine Love,
Douglas V. Steere, ed. Nashville: The Upper J A N J O H N S O N is the author
Room, 1961, p. 15.
4
Nouwen, Henri. Making All Things New.
of When the Soul Listens, Enjoying the
Presence of God and the new Spiritual
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999, Disciplines Bible Studies. Also a speaker
p. 72. and spiritual director, Jan lives in Simi
5
Johnson, Jan. When the Soul Listens. Valley, California with her family.
Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1999, pp. 127- http://www.janjohnson.org.
128.
6
Nouwen, Henri J. M. The Way of the Jan Johnson
Heart. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 4897 Abilene St.
pp. 34, 35, italics mine. Simi, CA 93063
805/522-3221
7
Nouwen, Henri. Making All Things New. Fax: 805/522-3974
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1981,
jan@janjohnson.org
p. 72-73.
www.janjohnson.org
271-42-3362
8
The second step is to focus on the kinds of
things God is likely to say, which is a disci-
pline of engaging Scripture in some way. But
thats a different article.
9
Hall, Thelma. Too Deep for Words:
Rediscovering Lectio Divina. New York:
Paulist Press. p. 33.
Nouwen, Henri. Deeper Into Love.
10
Weavings (September/October 1995) p.
25.
11
Elliot, Elisabeth. Turning Solitude Into
Prayer Cross Point (Summer 1997): 7.
Anonymous. The Cloud of Unknowing.
12
W. Johnston, trans. New York: Doubleday,
1973, p. 47.
13
Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of
Contemplation. New York: New Directions,
1962, p. 52-63 and Nouwen, Henri.
Reaching Out: The Movements of the
Spiritual Life. New York: Doubleday, 1975,
p. 37-62, as developed and adapted by
David Rensberger in The Holiness of
Winter, Weavings, (November/December
1996): p. 40.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Life Together. New
14
York: Harper & Row, 1954, p. 77.
15
Ibid. p. 78.
16
Ibid. p. 77.
17
Nouwen, Henri J. M. The Way of the
Heart. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
p. 31.
18
Ibid. p. 20.
70

Living inTruth
Ever since our first parents encountered the
choice between the two trees in the Garden of Eden,
we, like them, are so easily seduced by the
whispered lies of the deceiver.
W
We want to be like God, and this
in itself is fine. This is how God
fashioned usin the divine image.
The problem, however, is that we
want to be like God without sur-
render of our willfulness and
autonomy. We want a life of god-
like existence independent of God.
We want to keep one foot in the
kingdom of self while awkwardly
attempting to plant the other in the
kingdom of God.
The false self is the tragic result
of trying to steal something from
God that we did not have to steal.
If only we would dare to trust
Gods goodness, we would dis-
cover that everything we could
ever long for most deeply will be
ours in God. By trying to gain
more than the everything God
offers, we end up with less than
nothing. By rejecting unconditional
surrender to Gods way of truth,
we end up with a nest of lies and
illusions. By displacing God we
become a god unto ourselves. We
become false selves.
Rejecting the self that is created
in Gods likeness, the false self is
the one we develop in our own
likeness. This is the person we
think we would like to bethe
person we would create if we
B A C K P A G E
were God. But such a person can-
not exist because he or she is an
illusion. Intuiting that we are but a
shadow, we seek to convince our-
selves of our reality by equating
ourselves with what we have,
what we can do, and what others
think of us.
The false self helps us forget
that we are naked. Wrapped in
this hastily prepared garment of
our own making, we lose touch
with our vulnerability. But God
wants something better than fig
leaves for us. Gods deepest
desire for us is that we become
the self that we were destined
from all eternity to be. This self is
our truest and deepest identity
the only one in which we can find
ultimate fulfillment.
Every moment of every day of
our lives, God wanders in our
inner garden, seeking our compan-
ionship. The reason God cant find
us is that we are hiding in the
bushes of our false selves. Gods
call to us is gentle and persistent:
Where are you? Why are you
hiding?
Coming out of hiding means
meeting God on Gods own gra-
cious terms. Coming out of hiding
means surrendering the keys of
71
the kingdom of self (even the
duplicates!) and accepting the
keys to the kingdom of God.
Coming out of hiding means
accepting the gift of our true-self-
in-Christ. Coming out of hiding
means daring to know God in the
only way God can ever be gen-
uinely knownin a deep
encounter with ourselves. Coming
out of hiding means daring to
know ourselves in the only way
the self can ever be fully known
in a deep encounter with God.
In Christian spiritual transfor-
mation, the self that embarks on
the journey is not the self that
arrives. The self that begins the
spiritual journey is the self of our
own willful creation. This is the self
that dies on the journey. The self
that arrives is the self that was
loved into existence by divine
Love. This is the person we were
destined from eternity to
becomethe I that is hidden in
the I AM.
May we dare to trust Gods
invitation to surrender our wilful-
ness and exchange it for Divine
willingness. May we dare to
accept the gift of living in the truth
of our self-in-Christ.
David G. Benner