Being Foolish

I try to read for improvement whenever I can.  I do not casually buy every book that comes out, but I am always watching for titles that will challenge me in my walk with God.  Over the last couple years  I have read a lot of books on Marriage as I try to understand what has gone wrong in mine.  I want to learn how to change behaviors and avoid mistakes.  I also read a lot of men’s books, trying to understand my own heart and the way God created me.  Every once in a while, I feel like I need to step back from all the self-examination, and read something that examines Christ, something that points to him.

I have only just begun to read The Importance of Being Foolish: How to Think Like Jesus but I can already tell it will be that kind of book.   I am doing a bunch of underlining of things I want to write about or think about more.  One thing that struck me is the idea that the pursuit of power, pleasure and safety keep us from being transparent.  This by itself is a good thing to note, but what the author is really saying, and explains more, is that it keeps Christ from shining through us.  We become a shaded lamp which does not let His light through, instead of a lighthouse with a blazing bulb inside.  This is a different way to talk about transparency.  I generally think about it as me being transparent about my feelings, motives and actions.  Without Christ, that kind of transparency is like an inner window in an old apartment building that has been bricked up.  It is still transparent, but looking through it does not show you anything.  I need to be transparent for the purpose of letting Him shine through.

The Impostor

My writing is below

The Impostor 08/14/2008 From the place of our woundedness we construct a false self. We find a few gifts that work for us, and we try to live off them. Stuart found he was good at math and science. He shut down his heart and spent all his energies perfecting his “Spock” persona. There, in the academy, he was safe; he was also recognized and rewarded. “When I was eight,” confesses Brennan Manning, “the impostor, or false self, was born as a defense against pain. The impostor within whispered, ‘Brennan, don’t ever be your real self anymore because nobody likes you as you are. Invent a new self that everybody will admire and nobody will know.’” Notice the key phrase: “as a defense against pain,” as a way of saving himself. The impostor is our plan for salvation. So God must take it all away. He thwarts our plan for salvation; he shatters the false self. Our plan for redemption is hard to let go of; it clings to our hearts like an octopus. Why would God do something so terrible as to wound us in the place of our deepest wound? Jesus warned us that “whoever wants to save his life will lose it” (Luke 9:24). Christ is not using the word bios here; he’s not talking about our physical life. The passage is not about trying to save your skin by ducking martyrdom or something like that. The word Christ uses for “life” is the word psyche—the word for our soul, our inner self, our heart. He says that the things we do to save our psyche, our self, those plans to save and protect our inner life—those are the things that will actually destroy us. “There is a way that seems right to a man but in the end it leads to death,” says Proverbs 16:25. The false self, our plan for redemption, seems so right to us. It shields us from pain and secures us a little love and admiration. But the false self is a lie; the whole plan is built on pretense. It’s a deadly trap God loves us too much to leave us there. So he thwarts us, in many, many different ways. (Wild at Heart , 107–8) To subscribe to this email, create a profile at www.ransomedheart.com/myprofile See also the Ransomed Heart Podcast at www.ransomedheart.com/podcast

I get this daily reading from John Eldrege’s writings. I thought today was especially good. I have been an impostor for many years. Only in the last couple years has God begun speaking to me about this in a way that would get my attention. He first began softening me up as I attended the Discipleship group on Saturday morning. Then He hit me with a big bomb. Instead of turning to him, I resented the intrusion. Oh, I tried to rebuild, but it was clear that what had been ok before, would not work anymore. I was expected to build something completely new. It really angered me that my world had crumbled. I did not like the amount of work it would take to build a new thing. I did not understand that it would be Christ in me that would build anything lasting. Instead I chose to live in the rubble, focused on the destruction that had happened.

Being faithful, God is at it again. This time even the rubble is gone, there is no shelter for me. I can no longer sustain even a shadow of my former life. Sometimes I see bits my former comfort off in the distance, and I try to run towards it, but it vanishes before I can get there. The only thing that is constant is the Light. I walk forward into the glare, hoping to find the source.