Crush Ego - No. 43
Several months ago, my nine-year-old son told me, “we should make a hat that says crush ego on it, because that's what your book is about.” I was shocked. He’s nine years old, he hasn't even read the book, and yet he somehow got to the heart of the message. Ever since then, we started using this phrase as a family, and kicked around the idea of making hats and t-shirts. This has become a sort of tagline for the work our family is doing. At the heart of the message of all the world’s wisdom traditions is the understanding that the journey of every person is to overcome themself. That's what initiation was all about, helping a young man understand that his life was not about himself. That's what religion is all about, trying to help mankind transcend himself and escape the prison of his own self-obsession.
Our modern world has forgotten that the central battle of humanity is overcoming the false self so that we can become who we are truly created to be. Most people no longer believe that there is a creator, so they can't believe that they were created to be anything more than they are right now. We have lost sight of our great struggle. Thus, we have lost sight of the power of Jesus's life and invitation to us. Until we recognize the prison we are trapped in, we cannot appreciate the gift freedom is, and will be unwilling to pay the price to get it.
Every wise man whose teachings have stood the test of time continually brought us back to this singular battle and the need for self-transcendence. Recognizing this changes how we see the invitation of Jesus in the gospel. Jesus wasn't telling us we needed to overcome ourselves; we already knew that. Instead, He was giving us the only way to truly overcome ourselves. He showed us that the true battle is not a battle to overcome our behavior, it's a battle to change our hearts. And that's a battle we have no hope of winning on our own. As I said in my book, Jesus walked into the biggest problem in all of humanity and showed us the way. More than that, He gave us the Holy Spirit, so that now we no longer have to try to overcome ourselves by ourselves. The work of the Holy Spirit isn't simply what He can do through us for others. It's the transformation that is made possible in us through the work of the Spirit. We must see the gospel through the forgotten lens of man's great battle to overcome himself. If we remove overcoming self from the gospel, then it is no longer the true gospel.
Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. - Matthew 10:38
And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. - Luke 14:27
What do we think Jesus means when He talks about taking up our cross, denying ourselves, losing our life to find it, being born again, and death bringing life? It seems that we think He is talking about simply embracing struggles and persecution, or perhaps He is referring to eternal life after death, or maybe this is simply about salvation. I think it is all of those things, but more importantly, it is about the process of transformation that happens when we truly follow Jesus. What is that transformation? It is the death of the false man and the birth of the true man. Well, what is the false man? It is who we think we are (or worse what the world tells us we should be). Our broken sense of identity that is constructed by our fears, wounding, desire for control, and the lies we believe about ourselves, God, and others. Simply put, it is our sense of self that falls far short of who we were created to be. In order to become who we were created to be, the false man must die so that the true man may live.
Ego is defined as two things. First, it is our sense of self, especially what makes us different from others. It is how we define ourselves in contrast to other people and the world. Second, it is our overinflated sense of self. It is the way in which we think we are more important, more capable, and more valuable than others around us. I believe that the simplest way to define the false man is ego. We see in Jesus’ teaching that we were created to be part of the body of Christ, to be completely one with God. That identity is defined by how deeply it is part of the body, not how different and distinct it is. And what leads us to think that we need to be defined as separate and different from the rest of the body? It is our overinflated sense of self. The human propensity is out of our insecurity and fear to construct an inflated sense of self that puts us at the center of the story in our own hearts and minds. The journey of transformation is a spiritual journey of crushing our ego so that God can show us who we really are.
In our world today, we define people by what makes them different. In the kingdom, we are defined by how we are an integral part of the body of Christ. That is a powerful contrast that should not be taken lightly. I believe that every time Jesus talks about picking up our cross, denying ourselves, and being born again, He is fundamentally talking about overcoming our ego. Yes, He is also talking about eternal life, but He demonstrated a completely un-self-obsessed life here on earth. He showed us what union with God looks like.
My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. - John 17:20-23
How can we read that and think of ourselves as independent, different, and separate? What is complete unity? It seems clear that we are being invited into an entirely different type of identity and way of being. It is the complete opposite of ego.
I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. - Galatians 2:20
Paul gave us a glimpse into this by saying, “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” What does that mean? Clearly, Paul had not actually been crucified on a cross. So what “I” no longer lives? The simplest definition of ego is “I.” It seems that Paul is saying that who he thought he was no longer lives, but now he defines himself as Christ who lives in him. In other words, his ego is dead, and now he defines himself as Christ who lives in him.
We should be very careful of a gospel presentation that validates our individual sense of identity and the pursuit of self-gratification. Instead, it seems that the way that Jesus was inviting us into is the way of death, the way of the cross, crushing our ego so that we may become alive with Christ in us. So that we may say, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
This all might sound crazy and impossible, but that is simply because our modern world has been built around validating our ego for a very long time. And in the place of the timeless wisdom of self-transcendence, we have architected a paradigm for life that is built around preserving and inflating our ego. Simply put, we have forgotten that we need to overcome ourselves and instead spend our lives trying to feel good about ourselves. In order to truly value and embrace the gift of death and rebirth that Jesus invited us into, we must first remember the depravity of man. Every evil in the world originates from self-obsessed man trying to get what he wants when he wants it. And every truly good and lasting thing in the world happens when someone decides that the purpose of their life is not about getting what they want when they want it, and instead is a gift to be offered up. We don't see this very much, but when we do, the world is captivated. When Mother Teresa gave her life to caring for the sick and dying in Calcutta, we saw a glimpse of what it means for Christ to live in us.
The idea that there is any life outside of Christ is the illusion that we have bought into wholesale. The only way to find life is for Christ to live in us. This cannot be simply an idea of some spiritual alchemy that happens when we decide to believe in God. This is what happens when we take all that we are, what we think we want, and what we think we deserve, and we put it all on the altar, and we surrender the throne of our lives to God. It is not simply a matter of philosophical belief. It is saying yes to the death and rebirth we are invited into, and as we walk that journey of transformation, our ego dies, and Christ comes alive in us. If who we are is Christ alive in us, then that is our identity; we are now defined by what we are a part of instead of by what makes us different.
I think most people would say that we can look around the world today and we can see many evils and injustices that break our hearts. Why are people starving when there's plenty of food in the world? Why are there more slaves in the world today than there have ever been in human history? Why are we fighting wars that cost the lives of millions of people? Why do parents abuse their own children? Why are exploitative companies creating products that poison people's bodies and minds? The answer is very simple, our world is built and run by the false man, self-obsessed people pursuing their own desires and gratification at the cost of the world around them. It's easy for us to judge those people and call them evil. What is much harder is for us to recognize that the same self-obsession and self-gratification lives in all of us. I believe that when the Bible talks about sin nature, it's not talking simply about the things that we do that we shouldn't do. It's talking about the self-obsession inside us that leads us to want to do those things. We want what we want when we want it, and that is the fundamental sin nature. We make our life about “I” instead of about Christ. Until we recover a deep awareness of what our ego is costing us, we will be unwilling to truly pick up our cross and voluntarily let our ego be nailed to it so that Christ can live in us.
Those two words, crush ego, remind me that the greatest battle every man faces is the battle to overcome himself so that Christ may live in him. It reminds me daily that unless I pick up my cross and follow Jesus, I will be serving the whims of a self-obsessed nature that offers me cheap thrills and momentary gratifications in the place of true life. When my nine-year-old son said that my book was about crushing ego, God was giving me a very simple phrase to describe the most complex truth humanity has ever had to wrestle with.
- John Walt
