The Church of Self
[24] Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. [25] Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. [26] If anyone serves me, he must follow me; and where I am, there will my servant be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.
John 12:24-26
When I first became a Christian, I was intrigued by the concept of idolatry. I had been to enough Sunday school classes with flannel board pictures to know that worshiping idols, a prohibition by God in the moral law[1], had to do with gold statues. In my childlike faith I never imagined that I was in fact breaking this same commandment—I didn’t bow down to precious metal objects! I was surprised to learn that I was in fact worshiping idols because they aren’t only concrete item. An idol is anything you worship, honor, or elevate as more authoritative in your life than God.
Humans were created to worship, intentionally designed to behold beauty and seek after the transcendent holiness and “otherness” of the Triune God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In our post-truth culture, it is popular to say that you are spiritual and imply that you aren’t religious. People want to align themselves with divine inspiration but not a set of ethical codes and the behavioral implications that come with them. They want to be in charge and not beholden to another’s definitions of right and wrong. When it comes down to it, our we’ve inherited an instinct that is predisposed to chase our own pleasures. The plague most affecting society today is a cult wrapped around worshiping self.
Since October I’ve been going through a spiritual drought. Though my sorrow has been largely circumstantial in nature, God is never absent in His sanctifying work. I’ve walked through enough valleys with Him to know that I won’t always see the reason for the season until I’m on the other side of what He is doing. Yet through those times I’ve always been able to pray and maintained an emotional connection to the God-head. In the past, my trials have typically been regarding idolatry, recognizing an area I’ve put before my relationship with the Father and obeying His calling to put it aside. I’ve given up jobs, relationships, financial rewards, my reputation, plans, and stability. Through it all, though I’ve had pain and fear, God has been my companion and I’ve actually felt closer to Him through my trials, building trust over time as He delivers and provides something better for me. This trial has been different in that my emotions are not involved. Prayer seems dry and I can’t often sense the Spirit’s work within me. In Mark 12, God calls us to love Him with our whole being-including our mind and strength and in His grace that has been enough.
It has been a lonely season where nothing in my faith repertoire has been working like it used to. My old spiritual disciples weren’t yielding the same results. I have begun to suspect that idolatry is still the issue. In fact, this newly revealed shiny idol might be one of the biggest strongholds keeping me from God. I fear that for most of my life as a disciple of Christ I have been worshiping myself.
The three verses from John 12 above describe what God is revealing about the true state of my faith. I’m so broken-record to keep thinking of life as pre/post COVID but please let me go there just one more time. Before all things shut down, I was pretty comfortable. I was living in the world and of the world more than I care to admit. Jesus tells us in John 17:14-15 to be a people who physically living on earth but are not to embrace with its values. Peter expounds upon this concept more when he labels us strangers and aliens[2] as disciples of Christ among the nations. We are a people in exile and churches our embassy. I blindly believed that I was living more separate from the world than I was. This global reboot has shown me I was much more entwined in the world’s ethos than I thought.
One of the things that has encouraged me to keep my blinders on is to observe how other believers are reengaging. It seems most deal with the trauma we’ve all experienced by doubling down on being part of the world. They are trying to redeem the last 2 years by throwing themselves into experiences they missed out on. The need for normalcy may tempt us to seek the world’s pleasures as the way to be happy again. Since I can see it so readily in others, it’s my first clue it’s also something I’m struggling with too, the whole plank and spec bit[3]. The way to abundant life is not found in indulging myself.
One area that love of self has infiltrated is my preferences regarding my weekly gathering with other believers. If I’m truly following Jesus than I should be thriving at a church that is gospel-centered and confessional; one that is following biblical ecclesiology, the way the Bible lays out how the church should function and what do when they gather to worship. But if I’m truthful, I’m feeling far from connected. At the end of last year, God told me to build up His house and not my own[4]. I was anticipating new ministry opportunities and serving others in a greater capacity but am coming to see that spiritual construction project had more to do with reflecting on the object of my worship: His house or mine?
You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the LORD of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house. Haggai 1:9
I was first drawn to Christ in my early 20’s as a way to make sense of my shattered childhood. A high-functioning codependent, church for me was therapy. I had so much pain and God was an unlimited vessel to deposit my years of rejection and unworthiness. Experiencing the unconditional love of God made me whole. The songs I sang were about largely about me, the sermons I enjoyed described about the good things I would receive and I could leave my past behind. I had purpose, community and dignity. I was important and needed. But what does faith look like when a Sunday service stops catering to the self? When making friendships doesn’t come easy, when the place they need you to serve is not your calling, when the literagy seem perfunctory and becomes routine. When the songs aren’t emotionally compelling and the sermons don’t inspire. Will you still worship? Can you still worship? It begs the questions, what have you really been worshiping?
Jesus uses hyperbole in verse 25 of our main text to say we should hate our life. That means that we should always be on guard of what we are really worshiping and never let our circumstances become our God. Yes, you can and should enjoy life’s blessings--the life of God is not a joy-suck! Heaven will be a party, a place of feasting and music and people enjoying all they were created to be without the burden of sin, fear of death, and separation from God. Yet it’s so easy to cross the line and chase after what we want as a coping mechanism to deal with life’s disappointments, boredom, and fatigue. I’m willing to die but finding it hard to be that grain of wheat. To follow Jesus right now is the road of self-denial and I’m drawing of years of faith and knowing what’s ahead is better if I stay the course. I trust this word, though I’m not living yet, if I can lay down my preferences I’ll be the worshiper He’s seeking: one of spirit and truth[5].
In John Mark Comer’s book Live no Lies, he argues that spiritual warfare (the situations we face where we must choose to worship God while being tempted by the devil, the world, and the flesh to exalt lesser things), is largely related to the ability to die to self. He says on page 253:
Until we come to the place where we genuinely trust Jesus…over our own intuition or feelings, and trust that God is a loving and wise Father with good intentions for our joy, death to self will remain an unwinnable war of attrition between the torn factions of our fragmented souls.
He goes onto explain that contrary to what we usually think, the Christian doesn’t escape death, as the process of sanctification is like many small deaths. Those small deaths produce the eternal life we can experience here and now as we have access to the Father through the all-sufficient death of Christ on our behalf. As the payment for sin has been made on the cross, we are to follow Christ’s example by laying ours down willingly to live as residents of the kingdom, as He did. The greatest evidence of Christ’s love for me is that His sacrifice. He continues to show His love for me by asking me to die to self, so I will really live.
Verse 26 promised that dying to self brings the presence and honor of the Father-this is true and authentic life and the life I want to grasp by putting mine aside. Once you’ve experienced that, there is simply nothing else worthy living for and self is shown to be the lower-case g god that it is. We are all wheat. I don’t intend to die alone but will reach toward the Son who can use my mortification to bear much fruit-fruit of the Spirit[6] and not my marred nature. I’ll gladly trade inconsistency for faithfulness, sorrow for joy, and irritation for patience and chaos for self-control. Will you join me?
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