Healthy Spirituality: The Antidote for the Constructed Self Syndrome

The antidote for the constructed self syndrome in church life is simple - simple, but not easy. The antidote is healthy spirituality.

Healthy spirituality is about one's personal relationship with God. Note: relationship, not belief in. One can believe in God without ever opening one's life to God. Relationship is about getting to know God and allowing God to know me - up close and personal. It is about allowing God to share my life and, in doing so, to shape it.

Healthy spirituality always leads to transformation - the transformation of heart and mind into the likeness of Christ, i.e., spiritual growth. It involves putting off the old self (the ego-based, constructed self) and putting on the new self (the true self), Ephesians 4:22-24. At the heart of this process of transformation, Paul says, is "being renewed in the spirit of your minds." He makes the same point in Romans 12:2 - "be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Healthy spirituality always involves growing in my understanding of God and God's ways. It involves growing in my knowledge of God.

Healthy spirituality involves putting on the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5) - learning to think and live from the perspective of Christ's self-giving, servant love rather than from the inherent self-serving spirit of the ego. And therein is the challenge.

The self-serving spirit of the ego is our default nature. Here's how this self-serving spirit works.

We were created with four primary emotional needs: the need to be safe, to belong, to be capable or have power, to be valued. The flip side of these four needs is fear - fear that these needs will not being met. We unconsciously live out of fear - fear of being hurt, of being rejected or abandoned, of being inadequate or powerless, of being less than and no good. The way we deal with these fears is by constructing an identity designed to get one of these four needs met. This one need is our primary emotional need. (The primary emotional need is different for each of us.) We operate out of the belief that if this one need is met, the other three will be, as well. We construct this identity by conforming to (or rebelling against) some external standard of right and wrong. As I have said before, this conformity always leads to comparing ourselves to others, resulting in feelings of being "better than" or "less than." Our relationships are governed by these comparisons as we live out of an us-them mentality. The result of this merit-based effort is our constructed self - our self-serving, ego-based self.

Healthy spirituality leads us beyond this constructed self with its ego needs and underlying fears. It leads us to find our sense of identity in our relationship with God, not in our merit-based conformity to some external standard. It leads us to find our peace in God's faithful love. It leads us to find our sense of belonging and value in God's claim on our lives as God's beloved child. It leads us to find our sense of ability (power) in who God created us to be, in the gifts the Spirit has given us, and in the Spirit's presence in our lives. Another way of saying this: healthy spirituality leads us to rest in and live out of grace. Living out of grace, we have no need to compete or compare. We can embrace all as God embraced us, with grace and forgiveness. We move beyond "better than - less than," us-them thinking.

But the ego-based, constructed self does not surrender without a fight. The way the ego seeks to win is through deception. It dresses itself up in religious garb ... by conforming to religious expectations. That way, it doesn't have to die. It just creates a religious veneer. It has the appearance of spirituality without the reality - without the transformation of heart and mind.

The constructed self syndrome in the life of a congregation is evidence that the ego has been successful in its deception. It has not died, just gone undercover. But a good dose of healthy spirituality will lead the ego-based identity or constructed self to die so that the true self - the person God created us to be - can grow.  

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life (their constructed self) lose it, and those who hate their life in this world (who the world has shaped them to be) will keep it for eternal life, John 12:24-25 (NRSV).