Music.
I'm Pastor Luke, and I believe that you can experience lasting life change for your good and for God's glory.
Today we're going to start talking about a pretty significant topic that we'll spend
the next several weeks talking about, because I really want us to begin to unpack some of
the things that are going on inside of us.
A lot of our conversations that we've been having on this podcast so far have been things
is doing with kind of just waking up to our circumstances is beginning to say,
all right, what's going on in my life?
How can I begin to be honest about what's happening?
What's going on in my life, what I'm dealing with.
And now we come to a place where we need to start digging in a little bit more.
We start to look inwards so that we can begin to see what's going on inside my
heart, inside of my soul, inside of my mind? Why am I behaving these ways? We've started to confront
that, yeah, perhaps I'm living a life of insanity. I'm living in a way that does not lead to the
direction I want to go. Maybe I've been holding on to things that I shouldn't be holding on to.
Maybe I've got wounds that need addressed that I've not dealt with. Whatever part of those
conversations has resonated with you the most, that might be true.
But now let's start to dig in a little bit more.
We're going to talk about identifying the false self.
So let's talk about that a little bit.
So my question is, is like, my question is, who are you really?
What is the real you like how many people actually know you in?
Like in your raw form right who know you unfiltered,
When I get ready for the day right when I get up I get my day going I.
Pick out some matching clothes at least I try to I Take care of myself. I try and brush my teeth make sure there's nothing in my teeth and I head out,
right and I try and put out this image of kind of like just you know put together and then when I get home for the day I come home and I take off all
my clothes I put on my comfy pants and my comfy shirt and I sit out I relax ha
right and my question is is what are you like when you're in your comfy pants
what are you actually like not when you're trying to put on a show or trying
to put on an outward look or image or picture for everyone else.
What are you actually like?
What are you like when you stop worrying about trying to present a perfect image to other people?
We know what this is like, right? But what if it's more than just cleaning up our appearances?
What if we don't ever have spaces where we feel like we get to wear our comfy clothes?
We don't feel like we ever get to just be ourselves. There's no one in our life
that we get to be honest and vulnerable with. What if we feel like we're constantly putting on a mask so that others can't see us? That kind of living
is unsustainable. It just is. If we're living in a world, in a life where we
have to put on a mask and we can't ever let someone see us, we can't ever be
honest about something, that is an unsustainable place to live.
We all do this to some degree, but when it becomes a way of living, we are walking into
a very unhelpful space.
It is a core need of humans to be known and to feel accepted.
When we don't believe that our true selves are acceptable, we start to build what I call the false self.
This isn't an idea that's unique to me by any means. Other people have written and talked a lot about this,
but this is just me applying this to this particular.
A particular topic and particular way of thinking about things.
So here's a definition of the false self. The false self is an image of ourselves that we desire to be and for others we desire to
see.
It's the image, it's the mask, it's the performance, it's the way we want to be perceived by others.
It's the lies, it's the white lies that we say to kind of like smooth things over so
that we look like the good guy, or it looks like we've got it all together, right?
The false self is built by any number of things.
It can be built by our family's expectations of us in response to our insecurities.
The false self can look any way we want it to.
Some false selves are really prideful and confident while they know it all and they
have it all together.
False selves are really timid and respectable and kind of behaved, they might always do the right
thing and they might be very well behaved. Like the false self can look any number of ways,
but it looks the way that we think we ought to look. It looks and behaves the way we want other
people to think about us. That's the false self. It's the mask. It's the image that we
paint on so that other people see us a certain way.
But it's more than just that, because when we build up a false self,
there's a counter thing that happens.
We begin to develop what's called a shadow.
Things might be okay if we put up a false self and there's no big consequences,
but that's not how it works.
The false self doesn't contain our actual state of being. It doesn't carry our needs.
That doesn't carry our wants, all of those things, all those things that we removed from the false self, right?
Cause we put up the false self. We got to like, Oh, I'm going to take this away.
I've got to hide this thing. Kind of pull this back. Can't show this.
What happens at all those things that we removed from the false self?
They went somewhere. They went into the shadow. And this is what I mean by the shadow.
The shadow is the part of ourselves that we hide away from others and ourselves underneath our false selves.
These are the things that we don't want to talk about. These are the wants, desires, needs,
things that we don't want to talk about, things we don't want to even acknowledge
there in our own selves.
Let's talk about some examples of what the false self and the shadow might look like.
Someone might want everyone to think that they're really accomplished and good at what they do.
They put hard work into putting out an image so that others, that they will praise them and admire
them. But if they do that, their shadow might actually be really insecure. What they actually
might really want and need is not to be praised or accepted for how good they do things, they
might actually just want to be praised and accepted for who they are and not what they do.
Someone else might have a false self that puts on a smile for everyone around them.
They try really hard to be there for everyone in their lives, but secretly they feel really
lonely and they feel really sad.
Your shadow wants attention and acknowledgments of some big hurts that have often been ignored.
Sometimes there's this direct correlation between the shadow and the false self.
Sometimes the false self is trying to get a thing that the shadow wants, but it's kind
of a false way of getting it. It's kind of an indirect way of getting it.
And sometimes the shadow is just a combination of all the bits and pieces that we just don't want others to see.
It's the part that we don't want to talk about.
So let's think about this a little bit. Let's apply this to ourselves for a moment.
The false self, like particularly if you're dealing with addiction, right? The false self is when you're hiding it, right?
It's the maybe you put on a really good face and And at least you think that most people don't know that you've got an addiction or a problem, right?
You've put on a really good facade, that false self of having it all together. You're really happy. It's all put together.
But what people don't see is the shadow. They don't see the secrets. They don't see the hiding, the sneaking,
the constant thinking that you might be doing about how you can do that thing next or get your next drink,
whatever your particular addiction is, right? That's the false self and that's the shadow.
Maybe we feel like we need to put on a particular false self in order to make people happy.
Right? We put on false selves all the time to make people happy, to just kind of skate by because,
you know what? Like nobody wants to hear about my hurt, about my pain, about my past,
and it's too messy, it's too bad, it's too awful.
If people were to hear that about what actually happened in my past,
they would be scandalized, they wouldn't want to be my friends anymore.
So we hide that away and we put on that false self and we don't deal with it, right?
Those are very easy, very common examples of the false self and the shadow.
And we might think that the shadow is hidden from view, we might think and hope that it is,
but the reality is that just because maybe people aren't immediately seeing our shadow
doesn't mean that it's not having an impact on how we live our life. The shadow is often
connected to any of our unhelpful behaviors or habits. If we have a shadow that is hiding behind
a good performance but it secretly wants to be known and accepted, we might find the shadow is
compelling us towards behaviors that actually might result in us being caught or exposed or
be found out to be not as good as we want because we actually want people to know that we're not.
Perfect and then for them to respond the way we hope they would but we're very afraid that they they won't, right?
Shadows often cause us to behave in ways that are crazy. When we act out in a way that doesn't seem to make sense
with the way that we normally act out, right?
If we're like 90% of the time, we've got the false self put together and we're kind of doing things.
And then like every once in a while, something kind of crazy happens, right?
Well, that kind of crazy thing is probably the shadow that those parts of yourself that you've been hiding
saying, hey, we're still here, we want some attention and they find a way out.
If our shadow contains hurts or feelings that we don't want to address, then we might develop
coping mechanisms that we use to escape or to ignore those feelings in the shadow.
The things that compose our shadow want to be addressed, they don't go away.
Talk about that image again of building the false self by looking at ourselves and pulling
things away and adding things that aren't there, right, in order to create this image,
what do we do with what's left over?
We can't get rid of it because it's you.
It doesn't go anywhere. It stays. And so if we're just hiding it, we're running into a problem.
And so what we find is that the more we pull our false self and our shadows away from each
other, the bigger and stronger the internal conflict becomes.
We're given two options it seems sometimes, right? If we're saying, you know what, like I've got this false self and the more I put effort
into building that false self to keeping that image, the bigger and bigger the shadow seems to get.
The more I try and hide the shadow, the bigger the false self gets and the greater this tension
gets as it's kind of like a rubber band that's being stretched out to its limits.
That's how we feel sometimes when we're living in a really unhealthy place, like a rubber
band being stretched and stretched and stretched and how long are we going to hold until we,
snap, until the false self crumbles and the shadow comes out. So we've got two options.
First is to double down Try harder and harder to be the best version of ourselves, right?
And we might believe that well, we should be like our false self. We're like, well, yeah, that's not really who I am
But that's who I should be right. Isn't that how I ought to behave?
It might not be real But it's who I'm supposed to be if you have a religious background you grew up in a church you grew up in a family
That went to church Maybe you grew up in a family that went to church,
church on Sundays, but any time outside of being in front of people in public, you didn't
act like a church, or act like a family that went to church, right?
Like a lot of ugliness and secrets in the family, but a lot of putting out a performance,
putting out a, this is everything put together, this is how it's all okay, this is the way
it's supposed to look.
This might be your, a very familiar option, right? We just need to try harder.
Rid of our sin and our imperfections. Oftentimes, even our communities, even church communities,
will encourage this behavior. We praise people who are seemingly able to keep themselves
in line with sheer will. This might produce short-term results, but in the long term,
it leaves us with lots of guilt and shame. Hidden sin abounds, and our shadows grow bigger.
This is a huge deal, particularly in churches and in anyone who's been in the Christian
religious circle before.
Oftentimes people who kind of live the perfect Christian life on the outside get praise.
They get kudos points because they read their Bible like they're supposed to, they go to
Sunday every, or they go to church every Sunday, they do all the things that they're supposed to do, right?
But what if that's just a false self.
What if underneath of all of that, there's still a whole bunch of hidden sin?
They just seem to have always had it together, they never really mess up.
We praise those type of people in church oftentimes, but the problem is, is that what we might
be praising is we might be praising their false self.
And behind that false self is a lot of guilt, a lot of shame, a lot of hurt, a lot of fear,
If people were to know what's really going on in here, I would be kicked out of the church.
The other option might seem to just live the way that our shadow wants us to.
This might relieve a lot of tension, but usually leads us to somewhere where we don't want to go.
We talked about one option. Live into the false self. We put up a better picture, we put more makeup on, we put on better clothes, we try and behave
better.
Well, when we do that, there becomes a lot more shame, a lot more guilt, and the shadow becomes bigger.
Well, okay, well let's just live like our shadow wants to. Let's just do whatever my impulses say.
Whatever is all the things that I've been hiding and I don't want to talk about.
All of that.
What if I just did those things?
Well, you could, but chances are is that actually is not very healthy either.
Going to end up making choices that you don't want to make, that aren't in line with your
values, that aren't very Christ-like, that are going to lead you away from where you're going to want to go.
That's not good either.
So, what then do we do? Our shadows often offer solutions that are quick fixes or are detached from the root
of the problem.
Our false self might cover up our dysfunctions while our shadow wants us to indulge in maybe
drugs or alcohol or whatever addiction or behavior you're dealing with in a response
to feelings that we're trying to not deal with,
to not address.
So what do we do?
The false self covers up the real us and the shadow distorts the real us.
Both ends of those spectrums. One is covering up the real us,
the other is distorting the real us, behaving and living in a way that doesn't feel
like that's actually us either.
Well, the solution to this problem is to meet in the middle.
The solution is to let our false self and our shadows meet in the middle.
When we pull down the false self and we open up our shadow to the light of connection,
forgiveness, and grace, we find that suddenly the shadow begins to shrink.
If we begin to take down the mask, begin to become vulnerable and honest and open, then,
And then, oh, that shadow's not as bad.
And then we find a place where we can kind of bring them into the middle.
We are neither as good as everyone thinks we are or as bad as we believe we are.
Or vice versa. That can be flipped sometimes. I like to say that people are rarely either as good as you think they are or as evil as
you think they are.
They're probably somewhere in the middle. And that applies to you and me.
When we open up our shadows and our false selves to genuine connection, we begin to find healing.
When we start connecting both parts of ourselves to our stories, we can begin to see where did that come from?
Why do I hide? Why do I hide this certain part of myself?
Or why does this certain part of myself feel like such a big deal?
Why do I want to be accepted so much?
Why does this matter? We can start to identify the real roots of things, and we can start identifying what
we really need and want, and when we do that, we can find healthy new ways to get those things.
Let's talk about this from a biblical perspective for a little bit.
I'm going to read for you a passage from 1 John 1, verses 5-9.
This is John the Apostle saying, this is the message that we heard from him, talking about Jesus.
Heard from Jesus, and we declare to you, God is light. In Him, there is no darkness at
all. If we claim to have fellowship with Jesus, and yet we walk in darkness, we lie, and we
do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have,
fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us, and will forgive us our
sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."
I don't know about you, but that sounds an awful lot like a solution to that problem.
Jesus is saying, if you follow me, you don't get to live in the shadows.
You don't get to live with a false self and a shadow.
No, no, no. Follow me means walking in the light.
Following me means that you get to let the false self down a little bit and that you get to let the shadow be exposed,
to the light of God to the light of forgiveness of grace of,
community to the gospel and what you find is that you,
Come somewhere in the middle and you experience grace you experience forgiveness
You experience newness of life.
See, can you see how the gospel completely disarms that tension inside of us?
How it retracts that rubber band? How it says, you know what?
Here's the thing.
Whatever's going on in your life, whether if you have an addiction, if you have maybe a secret sin,
sin, a thing that you don't want anyone to know about. The thing is, is that God
knows about it, and you're not fooling Him. And the thing is, is that He sees you,
sees all the things about you that you wish nobody would ever see. And you know
what His response is to seeing all of those things? It's not anger. It's an
invitation. It's love. It's come know me and know my love. He's saying, look, I know,
that you are weak, human, humble, that you're not able to be perfect. That's the
thing. We get stuck in the Christian life thinking we've got to be perfect, we got
to be just exactly like so, we got to have this perfect image, and we're not.
When that's not actually it. Jesus is saying, no, no, no, no. Like, I died on the cross so that you
didn't have to be perfect. I died on the cross so you could be who you are right now, and that you
could begin to take steps forward from there. The message of the Bible is not that we need to
pretend to be a better person than we actually are. The message of the Bible is that God has
enough grace for where you are right now. And when you step out of darkness, and you,
step into light, that is where you find forgiveness. In that place of grace, you can actually begin
to move forward. If you're in a place where you've got to fall self up, and you've got
a big shadow looming behind you, trying to make any progress, it's just rubber band pulling
against rubber band. You're not going anywhere. But if you can come into the grace of God.
You can say, you know what? God actually has grace for where you are right now, for how much pain,
suffering, hurt, how much sin is in your life. He's got enough grace for you. He can handle you
where you are right now. If you can accept that, come into the light where Christ will purify you
of your sins, where you confess, and He will take those sins from you. That is the promise at the
end of that passage. He is faithful and just to forgive and purify you from all unrighteousness.
That is a promise. And then you find that where you're at, God is okay with, and that God is
willing to walk with you in the path that He's calling you down. God has enough grace for you
right now. He will neither leave you there, nor will He demand that you make
some sort of unrealistic leap forward. God will walk with you through each,
small right next step. That's the encouragement I have for you. So I want you to take some time this week. Reflect. What are some
characteristics of your false self? How would you describe the picture of yourself that you feel like you're trying to present to others?
What does that look like? What is your false self look like?
And then reflect on the other side of the coin. What are some characteristics of your false self's shadow?
How does that shadow show itself to you?
What are the indications that there are some things you're not wanting to deal
with? You don't want to show people.
And then, where do you see those two things in the story of your life?
They didn't come out of nowhere, right? Is there a habit in your life?
Was that connected to something that happened as a kid?
Something that happened that your parents struggled with as well?
Did it kind of come out of a place where you were experiencing a lot of hurt? Right?
Where did you get this idea that you needed to perform well,
that you needed to do things just right so that everybody would like you?
Where did that idea come from?
Where is that in your story? Look at both your shadow and your false self, identify some of the
characteristics of each, and then ask yourself, where do those connect in the story of my life?
We're going to continue to dig into some of these questions over the next couple of weeks, so,
invite you to join me on this journey as we begin to dig in and see where are the places where God's
God's grace and love want to begin to penetrate and help bring us forward so that we can experience
lasting life change for our good and for God's glory.
Thank you for joining me today in this conversation.
You can always leave me a comment or send me a message. you can email me at.
Music.