Six Forgotten Truths - No. 45
Western Christian Culture has forgotten hard but essential truths that were once foundational to the Gospel. We teach on these topics sometimes and read about them in biblical commentary, but we have often culturally forgotten to practice them. If we remove these truths from the teachings of Jesus, then it is no longer what He taught.
Throughout my writing so far, I have worked to explain and synthesize these forgotten truths and practices. Mental models are very helpful because they help simplify complex things and make them understandable and memorable so that we can come back to them over and over. I have worked to take the culturally forgotten timeless wisdom that should be foundational to our understanding of the Gospel and done my best to organize it into mental models that can help me remember them and apply them in my life. I hope you find these helpful.
This is by no means exhaustive and very likely incomplete. However I have found that the more I focus on these six forgotten truths the more the teachings of Jesus make sense to me.
Death to Self
In Christian culture, we talk a lot about picking up our cross and dying to self, but culturally, we seem to have forgotten what it truly means. I heard a comedian recently joking about how we use the idea of picking up our cross to help us cope with long check-out lines and annoying people. I don’t think that he is that far off. Our culture treats death to self as embracing the hard and unavoidable realities of life. That is not what it is. We have taken the central concept of the gospel and used it as a crutch to endure the relatively minor challenges of 21st-century life.
Death to self is about overcoming ego and self-obsession. It’s a deep and profound understanding of our limitations and dependence on God. When we can truly see ourselves for who we truly are, we see how small we are in comparison to the very large story we are born into. We are not the hero. Every person is made to play a part, but they are not made to be the center of the story. When we embrace death for what it really is, it pulls us out of the self-obsessed cultural way of thinking and living and enables us to see ourselves, others and God more clearly.
I wrote on this more in Notes 1, 7, 20, 21, 23, 31, 35, 43, 44.
Transformation
All of humanity’s greatest and most enduring stories revolve around the transformation journey of the main character. We don’t usually recognize that because we get caught up in battles, love, mystery, tragedy, good, and evil. Underneath the ups and downs of these great stories is the real story of a person discovering who they really are or who they are capable of being.
We love these stories because we are all made to be transformed. Transformation is the rebirth that can only come once our ego has died. It is the journey of becoming who we were created to be in the first place. This is not something that happens by accident; it requires complete commitment to partnering with God as He changes and transforms our hearts and minds.
When we embrace that we are born for transformation then we begin to shift out of our cultures obsession with achievement and can start to see our lives as a journey of becoming.
I wrote on this more in Notes 1, 6, 7, 11, 16, 17, 20, 25, 34, 42.
Restoration
Brokenness, pain, and suffering are unavoidable parts of life. Starting in childhood, we begin to experience wounding that starts to shape our broken sense of self. The wounding we experience causes us to question God’s trustworthiness. In order to become who we are created to be, we must invite God to heal our wounds and the lies they have caused us to believe about God, ourselves, and others. Restoration is all about making whole what has been broken.
In Christian culture we often talk about restoration and God healing brokeness but we struggle to actively pursue healing as a central part of our journey of transformation. I believe that is because most of us aren’t aware of our wounding and the way it affects our thinking throughout life. Our false identities are crafted and reinforced by the wounds we have received in our lives. We cannot be free of the old self, the false man, until we experience restoration. When we do, our armor is taken off, and our hearts are once again capable of the trust, love, and the presence we are made for.
I wrote on this more in Notes 2, 3, 5, 10, 19, 21, 27, 29, 36.
Mentorship
The journey of transformation we are made for is not meant to be walked alone. We need mentors to show us the way. This is what Jesus modeled for us through discipleship. Unfortunately, today, mentorship and discipleship have lost their true meaning. Our Western education system has almost completely removed true mentorship from our society. Our brains are designed to learn through mirror neurons. In order to live the life we are made for, we need to regain our understanding of the importance of mentorship.
We are designed to learn from those with wisdom what it means to be a child of God. Mentors are a critical part of the transformation journey we are made for, without them, many struggle to find the way. As a person grows into their true identity, they are compelled to help guide others. If we do not become the mentor then we are missing out on one of the most powerful and fulfilling parts of each of our callings. We desperately need to remember the forgotten role of the mentor as a foundational part of our faith communities.
I wrote on this more in Notes 1, 9, 16, 17, 20, 25, 40.
God’s Order
In our age of individualized and relative truth, we have forgotten that there is an eternal order to God’s creation. It transcends our understanding, theology, and beliefs, but we were made to live in alignment with it. The more we live in alignment with God's order, the more we experience the peace, joy, love, freedom, and way of living that we were made for. The less we live in alignment with God's order, the more we experience brokenness, disunity, loneliness, and destructive patterns of living.
God’s order is beyond our logic and understanding. The only way to live in alignment with God’s order is through divine guidance. We need a daily relational connection with God so that His Spirit may guide us into all truth. God’s creation is organized around identity, and we cannot experience the life we are promised unless we become transformed so that we can align with His order. We often substitute theology, which is ideas about God for relationship with God. Without relationship and connection with God we cannot become aligned with His order. The Spirit must guide us and transform us into people who can live in God’s eternal order.
I wrote on this more in Notes 8, 11, 13, 20, 24, 26, 28, 33, 39, 40, 44.
Kingdom Thinking
When Jesus began His ministry, He went out, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” 2000 years later, this is still true, the Kingdom of God is still at hand. Repent means change your thinking, turn around, and go another way. Jesus wasn’t just talking about belief in God, He was talking about changing how we think. The Kingdom of God stretches beyond our mortal lives, but we are invited to live in it now. Jesus showed us the way. In His Kingdom, the logic of the world is flipped on its head, the first are last, the meek inherit the earth, and to hate your brother is the same as murdering him.
If we want to live in the kingdom, we must have our minds renewed. Our entire lives, we've been baked in our culture’s way of thinking. The world’s thinking is so at odds with the Kingdom that it makes it impossible for us to live in the Kingdom now. We all must have our minds renewed to a way of thinking that aligns with the identity, way of living, and transformation we are invited into. Fundamentally, the first way of thinking that must be renewed is that the purpose of our lives is to become who Jesus would be if He were me.
I wrote on this more in Notes 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 22, 28, 30, 32, 35, 38, 39, 40, 42.
My writing over the last couple of years has revolved around restoring our forgotten understanding of who we are, the purpose of our lives, and how we must think in order to escape this strange new world. We live in a consumerist and self-obsessed society, and its ways of thinking have infiltrated our thinking and ethics. Instead of running away from it, we have accidentally incorporated it into our religion and spirituality. As a result, we now have a watered-down and often powerless expression of the gospel in the Western world. We must, at whatever cost, return to the forgotten truths so that we can see and receive the timeless invitation of the gospel.
- John Walt
