False Self

Friday, April 25, 2008

False Self
Currently Reading
Mens Secret Wars
By Patrick A. Means
see related

I recently put what I had learned in this book into practice and it strengthened my walk with the Lord greatly. The issues are emotional and hard to handle sometimes but God has a way of taking your faults and somehow glorifying Him with them.

This is an insert from a book called, Men's Secret Wars. This book has helped me in many ways and I know that it will help others in our group as well. But don't take my word for it. Here is a quote from the author of the Every Man's Battle series.....
"If I had read Men's Secret Wars and applied it as a young man, I would have saved myself many sorrows, many regrets." - Stephen Arterburn

Children raised in dysfunctional homes - whether those homes are alcoholic or rigidly religious - learn that who they are simply isn't enough. As we saw in the chapter dealing with the hero subculture in America, men learn to play a role in our society and to erect a facade to garner the approval of others. The result, we saw, is the creation of a carefully designed image. This image is our false self and includes only those parts of us that we choose to reveal.
Society actively encourages the creation of a false self; it's called putting your best foot forward. The problem,of course, is that to maintain our sanitized image we must keep our dark side hidden, along with its potential for sin and destructive behavior. In fact, we humans are capable of playing a role so effectively that we even fool ourselves. This is what the Bible calls being "hardened by the deceitfulness of sin" and what Twelve Steppers call denial.
As a teenager I tried to hide the fact that I was a Christian from my friends in high school in order to be popular. A kind of double life in high school in which I had one set of friends and activities at church and an entirely different set of friends and activities at school - and I expended great energy in trying to insure one world never intersected with the other. The nonreligious persona I adopted at school was a false self.
I also developed a secret life of sexual fantasizing as a teenager. All during this time I never talked to anyone about my secret fantasy life, and I cultivated a squeaky - clean image at church as a young Christian leader. We all have dozens of ways we hide parts of ourselves in the shadows and prop other parts in the light. The more discrepancy there is between our hidden self and our public self, the greater the danger of becoming entrenched in the secret life syndrome.
One of the greatest dangers in the development of a false self is the potential for what Chuck Colson calls the Pedestal Complex. In an article in Christianity Today Colson decried the tendency among Christians today to exalt our stars and leaders and put them on pedestals. He quite properly labeled the tendency as idolatry.
But I hate pedestals for a different reason. I hate them for what they do to the people occupying them. Pedestals have their perks, but ultimately they're just another kind of prison. In a tragic catch-22, the leader on a pedestal can't admit to struggling with anything in his personal life, or according to the unspoken rules of the game, he loses his perch. At that point, for many leaders it's a relatively short walk from the pedestal to the closet.
In my own case, I was so obsessed with my image as a Christian leader that I didn't want to let anyone see my weaknesses. So as my first marriage became increasingly conflicted, I refused to go to a marriage counselor. I was afraid someone might see me, and then my reputation would be harmed. By the time I did finally agree to go, I was already involved in the sexual sin that ultimately damages so many.
By contrast, a few years ago a good friend of mine found himself overwhelmingly attracted to the wife of his business partner. She, in turn, expressed a similar attraction to him. They didn't know if they were "falling in love" or not, but they knew that if they acted on their feelings, it would be wrong. So they did something courageous. They immediately went to their spouses and told them about their feelings, as well as their commitment to remain faithful to their marriage vows. The four of them discussed the issue calmly and openly. And a fascinating thing happened. By dragging their feelings out into the light rather than leaving them hidden, they found that their feelings lost their power. In fact, it all turned out so positively that the two of them actually went on to share about their healthy experience with the entire adult Sunday school class at their church. It was a wonderful model for how to handle impulses from our dark side.
Dr. Ken Druck, in his book The Secrets Men Keep, lists five benefits of acknowledging our secrets and living transparently:

1. Our whole world changes when we tell the truth.
2. We fulfill our human need to be known and accepted.
3. We simplify our lives.
4. We improve our relationships.
5. We become more secure.
And to those five benefits I would add a sixth: We restore our relationship with God.
taken from Men's Secret Wars pgs169-171