Advertizers, con-men, and seducers, not to mention corrupt and authoritarian politicians, all know how to get people to do what they want. They influence people by appealing to the force that occupies our souls: the fearful, angry, ashamed, and deeply selfish ego. They represent and reflect back to us the worst and most destructive parts of us… which are unfortunately often the most appealing.
Christianity is designed to liberate us from social tyranny by releasing us from the grip of this illegitimate occupant within. This is what Jesus means when he says things like “You must lose your life in order to save it,” and “You must take up your cross and follow me.” He is instructing us to get over ourselves. The ego that tells us who we are has convinced us it is our very life. But that is what has to go if we are ever to realize our true life in Christ.
Baptism has to do with this dying, which leads to a rising to new life which is fed in the Eucharist with Christ himself.
But far too often Christianity has grievously failed in this, its primary task. It became largely a lapdog for our fragile, fearful egos. Instead of the Way of transcendence and union with the Creator through Christ, Christianity was reduced to just another religion of laws, rules, control, and caste, serving the interests of those in charge. Instead of bringing people to Christ, it inoculated people against him, injecting us with a weak, synthesized version of faith, designed to prop up and amplify the fear and rage of our ego. We want a religion that feeds, comforts, and reassures our ego. This is the way Christianity is used, most of the time.
Bonhoeffer said that “when Christ calls us he bids us come and die.” But that is absolutely the last thing people look for in a church. Instead, we shop for the place that will provide themes benefits for our ego. Church, in this view, should tell us what we want to hear.
How did this happen?
As soon as we are flushed into this world, suddenly finding ourself separate from our secure and connected womb-environment, and where now everyone else is apparently separate from us, our brains go to work figuring out how to deal with this new situation. We perceive that we are small, needy, helpless, dependent, and vulnerable. We feel alone. We feel trapped in a little, discrete container of flesh. So we welcome the ego’s strong and soothing voice that gives us seemingly good advice for how to survive. We develop strategies for coping, defense, getting what we need and want, and ingratiating ourselves to our caretakers and protectors. We spin a personality, we tell ourselves stories, we manipulate memories, we build a self based on the instruction of this inner occupant, our ego.
The ego tells us we are at risk and “I alone can fix it.” It says that only by following this regime of nihilistic narcissism, with its addiction to lying, cheating, stealing, hating, fearing, and killing, will we survive amid the “carnage” of this existence. The motto here is “me first!” No one else matters. The ego accepts no responsibility; it is rather always looking to blame others for its circumstances. It invents wild, improbable, even impossible tales to justify its own desires and strategies for meeting them. It has a cold and callous disregard for the suffering of others. It will seek ruthlessly to win, by any means necessary.
The consequence is annihilation of the self, society, and planet. It is the regime of death represented by the Beast in the Book of Revelation.
Jesus threatens this system by proclaiming a different reality, that of God’s Kingdom, a true alternative to the false and toxic tyranny of ego. He brings us to see more deeply and fully, from a higher perspective, that we are not alone. We are not at-risk. Our fears are unwarranted; our anger baseless. It is humans who think the world is dangerous, and who, by this thinking, make it so. In reality “the Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.” The truth is that we are children of a beneficent Creator who made everything “very good.” We are all connected. We are made for togetherness, delight, wonder, wisdom, and peace. We are made to live eternally, in the fullness of time, in joy, praise, and thanksgiving.
When Jesus says we have to die to ourselves, he means we have to let go of the lies upon which we have based our existence. Who our egos tell us we are is a lie. Indeed, lies never hold up. They and everything built on them collapse and crumble into nonexistence, a process which is always happening, and which is the cause of our suffering. Our thinking is incompatible with the truth; our actions create a world of falsehood. The collision between God’s truth and our lies generates the misery of our existence.
To follow Jesus is to live in the light of his Word instead of the tempting slogans of our ego.
Before we will truly be truly free of the corrupt, lying, incompetent, fearful, angry forces occupying leadership positions over us, we have to deal with the occupant within us: the corrupt, lying, incompetent, fearful, angry ego that rules in our own souls. And we have to let that all go.
This happens when we to turn instead to Jesus Christ and his Word of compassion, forgiveness, non-violence, simplicity, generosity, and gratitude. We need to base our lives on that Rock, thereby allowing Christ to emerge in us, and the Kingdom of God to emerge in our world.
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