Let’s Talk About Us

A Self(ish) Spirituality Reflection for Lent on Luke 4:1-13

Photo by Matheus Bertelli

STRANGE RELIGION

All it takes is one family member or friend to transport you to a radically different planet. I have three such guides.

My son and daughter-in-law are teachers in Shanghai, China. My wife teaches students from Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, and Korea (among other nations) online. Sharing their experiences has opened my eyes to a startling reality which had never registered in my mind quite like this: there are masses of people in our world on whom Christianity has had very little impact. There are cultures that have never been significantly influenced by Judeao-Christian narratives. Yet here in the West we act as if the entire global population operates from the same Christian framework that we do. I know that the Christian religion remains the largest religion in the world^¹ but that doesn’t mean that everyone shares the same values and perspectives—even among Christians there are massive differences in beliefs, practices, values, and culture.

But on this side of our planet, most of us have grown up with a strong cocktail of Christianity mixed with capitalism and individualism. What happens when you mix these three ingredients? You get the world we have—and it impacts even those who have no relationship with the Christian Church. In the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, much of Europe, and the countries that are influenced by the colonialism of these nations, we are taught to see ourselves and our world through a Christian lens. Religion—including atheism—is viewed as a competition for truth that can only have one winner to rule them all—because when our religion dominates, it proves that our God is greatest. And, on a personal scale, we are simultaneously told to deny and idolise ourselves.

This strange and often toxic religious worldview arises from one common but simple mistake. We believe that religion and spirituality are all about God. We are taught that our religion was created by God and passed down to us through Scriptures that were dictated by God so that we can please and placate God and persuade God to bless us. But none of it is really about God at all. It can’t be. By definition, God is beyond our ability to define or understand.² And, if God truly is as great as we sing, there is very little of value we could ever offer to such a God. Yet we often remain imprisoned in primitive views that see God as requiring sacrifice, perfect devotion, unquestioning acceptance of certain doctrines, and complete obedience to specified practices and moral codes. These religious norms and doctrines were developed by human beings for human beings; to direct and coordinate human relationships within human societies—and the ideas, concepts, and language about God that we have developed are unavoidably metaphorical and speculative.³

IT’S NOT ABOUT GOD

The fundamental truth about spirituality—one that is blatantly obvious if we will only allow ourselves to see it—is that religion is not about God at all. It can only ever be about us. It is not about placating, praising, pacifying, and pleasing God so much as it is about learning to live the kind of life for which God created us, the kind of life that aligns with God’s character, values, and purposes. Or to express this in language more akin to that of the Christian religion in which I grew up, God is not trying to change us to be less ourselves and more like God. Rather God is seeking to empower us to be more fully, healthily, and authentically US—personally and collectively. This means that an important facet—if not the whole—of any spiritual path is the work we do to understand ourselves in relation to the world and others, and how we show up as ourselves in our lives and relationships. The worship of God is not primarily about God, but about how relationship with God changes us and empowers us to become whole and healthy human beings.⁴

This brings us to Lent, the season of repentance, change, transformation, or conscious evolution—pick your descriptor. On the first Sunday of this season, the Lectionary takes us into the wilderness with Jesus as he is tempted by the devil. While these temptations may seem to be about Jesus’ relationship with God, they are really about Jesus himself. They are an account of how he wrestled with the religious, social, and political pressures of his world to identify and embrace his most authentic self. His ministry, after he left the desert, was all about helping others to learn from his teaching and example how to be their God-created, God-beloved, God-imaged selves and how to relate to one another in healthy, positive, and creative ways. Jesus’ temptations, and the ministry that resulted, were a direct assault on the twin lies that our Western, Christian-ish culture tells us about ourselves.

LIE 1: THE SELF IS NOTHING

A few years ago, a colleague in ministry asked for my opinion about a prayer in our Methodist Communion liturgy. It’s called ‘The Prayer of Humble Access’ and it contains these words: “We are not worthy to gather up the crumbs under your table, but it is your nature always to have mercy and on that we depend.”⁵ He was concerned about the ongoing impact of words like these in our Christian liturgies and how they undermine our sense of self and worth. I had already been wrestling with similar thoughts and was comforted to know that I was not the only one.

As Jesus fasted and prayed in the wilderness, he was confronted by “the devil”. I doubt that he encountered a literal red being with horns and a pointed tail. Rather, I suspect that the diabolos (accuser or slanderer) he faced was the voice of all the accusations he knew his society would level at him and all the internal doubts that plagued him. Jesus was born under dubious circumstances. He had a humble occupation. He was not a Pharisee, not a Saducee, not a scribe, a lawyer, or a rich and influential person in any way. Who was he to suggest that he could be a preacher, a prophet, or someone who talked about God and God’s reign? Didn’t he need more? Didn’t he need to capture people’s attention, to become an influencer, to amass millions of followers and earn a way into the exclusive club of the rich, famous, and powerful?

These are all the same lies that the voices in our heads tell us and many of them originate from a religious culture that seeks to control us by undermining our self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-belief. The belief that our self is nothing is strengthened by our misinterpretation of Jesus’ call to deny ourselves and by songs we sing with lyrics like “Rid me of myself…”⁶ There is this “worm theology” that tells us we have nothing good within us, that God would hate us if it weren’t for Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice. And so we come to believe that any thoughts, feelings, desires, and dreams we may have are inherently evil. We are told to ensure that we seek only what God wants and not what we want, as if the two are mutually exclusive. But when faith undermines our Selves in this way, it becomes destructive. It is a short step from denying the self to projecting our self-hatred onto others. Those who cannot love themselves cannot love others. Those who have no awareness of themselves cannot hope to understand another person’s perspective. Those who have been told they are unacceptable to God naturally gravitate toward legalistic religion that gives them simple boxes of obedience to tick, and that can help them to feel better than others. And those who have been scared into faith by a violent God easily do violence in that God’s name.

Unfortunately, Lent is often viewed in this light. But the purpose of Lent is to metaphorically journey with Jesus through his temptations. In the wilderness, Jesus was not seeking to wipe out his sense of Self. Rather, he was seeking to connect with his deepest, most authentic Self, to identify and embrace who he was and to set his sights on who he would become. This is the work we are invited to do during Lent—to silence the voices that tell us that we’re not enough, that we always need to prove ourselves, and to realise that our Self is God-given, sacred, valuable, and beloved.