A semi- autobiographical discussion on the deception that prevents many believer's coming into a living experience of Union Life.

What is False Self Syndrome?

In an article entitled "See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition according to the elemental spirits of this world and not according to Christ. For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in Him, who is the head of all rule and authority." Col 2:8-10

What you are about to read is not the article that I had set out to write. However, as I worked on this paper, it became apparent to me that the Lord was easing me in a different direction. What follows, is cautionary tale written to prevent you from being distracted from entering fully into union consciousness. An early revelation of freedom from the law meant that I had lived free of condemnation however, for fully thirteen years. I had assumed that the Christian life and the life of Christ were two entirely separate things. I had understood that He had lived for me and now I had been given the privilege of living for Him. This was because I had only come to know Jesus in two dimensions. I knew Him as the God who was and as the God who will be. However, despite knowing at an intellectual level that He lived for me and as me then in order that he could live in me and as me now, I had no ownership of that experientially. He was still up there and I was down here, trying to get up there. Consequently, I was on offer and was taken captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition according to elemental spirits of this world and not according to Christ. However, I want to make it clear that I remain indebted to the dear brothers who shared with me the light that they had received, and certainly it is to be hoped that readers will view this study as objective and helpful rather than cathartic.

In our article entitled " Man Utd " we discussed what we called the real self an expression coined to define our new identity in Christ [2 Cor 5.17]. However, whilst it is correct to say that we cannot in reality be anyone other than who we are, if we do not know who we are we will try to become someone else. In the absence of a fixed understanding of our identity, we are want to fashion in our own vain imagination images and mental pictures of whom we ought to be based on how things appear to be. These high-resolution images are so real to us that we see them as our true reflection, and build our lives upon them but what we are looking at is not the true but the false self.

In plain language, the false self is the product of a deception. However, it is able to flourish because the canvass upon which our mental picture is drawn is one of illusory independence from God. In addition, this deception is perpetuated because it is reinforced in the home, the school system in the work place and extraordinarily [and most alarmingly] even in the church! These performance-based environments conspire to concretise in our minds appearance-centred living fostering self-consciousness and self-centredness. It is a fraud of epic proportions. However, it is one that is so effortlessly executed because our minds are so governed by appearances. Out thinking has been seared by negative believing [that is faith in evil and it triumphing in its purposes against us] rather than positive believing [that is faith in God triumphing in His love purposes in us] and in such desperate need of renewal [Roms 12:2]

We are so thoroughly programmed to respond to the way things appear that we react to what we see and sink rather than see God in what we see, enabling us to see-through and soar. The Bible provides us with some excellent examples of this. You may recall the case of Jacob, when his sons presented him with Joseph's bloodstained coat [Gen 37:32] they simply asked the question:

"This we found; please identify whether it is your son's robe or not. " And he identified it and said, "It is my son's robe .

Without hesitation, or deviation he buys into the deception setting in motion what Paul Knight, the director of our school for the Performing Arts calls "a scheme" based entirely on appearances completely abandoning in the dark that which God had shown him in the light [Gen 37:11]:

. "A fierce animal has devoured him. Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces. Then he tore his garments and put on sackcloth on his loins and mourned for his son many days. "

Now I have little doubt that historically, my response would have been even more irrational and hysterical, and that is because before I became settled in union I could not see God in everything. I was not yet fixed as a see-througher I was still a see-atter and consequently remained susceptible to placing the most negative construction on the things that he saw.

In the same way when left to draw his own conclusions man, even the saved man, intuitively seeks to construct his identity and find his meaning, validation and self-worth based on a deception. As long as we do not recognise our union with God we will live our lives by own resources for our own ends. We will be self-focussed rather than other-focussed as independent self-getting-selves.

To understand why this deception we need look no further than the fall:
Genesis Gen 2:15  Genesis 3:4-6
"The Lord took the man into the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, "You may surely eat freely of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die".  "But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die for God knows that in the day that you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food and a delight to the eyes and desirable to make one wise, she took and ate."

That day The Lord God introduced Adam to a new and chilling concept "Death" - the absence of the conscious presence of God. Soon he would be plunged into an abyss of self-consciousness dead to God and alive to sin.

The great deception of the fall was to convince man that by eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil man's eyes would be opened and he would be like God [Gen 3:5]. The deception was formidable; in essence, it was a shameless appeal from the self-getting beguiler based on appearances. So says the Devil, "You will not die, on the contrary, the reason that he does not want you to eat of the tree is that he knows that in the day that you eat thereof, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God." He wants to control you but I have come that you might have life ..

It is interesting that in the Gnostic tradition , Eve is depicted as paradigmatic of all those who seek knowledge and the serpent is cast in the role of the true god. In the Gnostic deception it is the Lord God who is cast in the role of the inferior god as he seeks to prevent her from entering into knowledge and thus awakening the human spirit and delivering it from its ignorance by recovering its knowledge of its true self as a part of God. The subtlety of the Gnostic deception is not wasted on those of us who have come to know union.

They had exercised free-will and in so doing chose to believe a lie, the one thing that God could not do and so they became "self-getters", instead of "self-givers" and in an instant died. In death, that is conscious separation, they took into themselves the very nature of sin & death. Now under rogue management [Jn 8:44] his seed indwelt Adam and his race with the inevitable consequence that they begin to reproduce the usurper's nature [Eph 2:3]. No longer God conscious, but now self-conscious, good and evil conscious, new words enter into their vocabulary. These new words articulate the new, alien and unwelcome emotions that have invaded their consciousness. Feelings they had never experienced during the bliss of God-consciousness surged through their minds; words such as "naked," "hid", "covering" & "afraid," tumbled from their lips as they scrambled to explain the sense of fear, confusion and inadequacy that now engulfed them. An all-pervading sense of foreboding consumed them. One negative emotion after another jockeyed to gain pole position in the grid of their mind - They were paralysed. Something new terrorised them. They felt a dreadful need for acceptance based meaning and purpose.

Experientially separate from God, man is left to seek meaning apart from God. This he does by the perverted redirection of his tremendous amenities and faculties which he now channels into self-getting and self loving. Having become partakers of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and his wife got both their desire and simultaneously received the consequence of their choices. Their eyes were opened and could see good and evil and they died in accordance with the Divine prohibition. The consequence was cataclysmic causing them to look on things that are seen, things that are transient and temporal, no longer on that which is unseen and eternal [2 Cor 4:18]. In this paradigm, they came to regard all things according to the flesh by their outer appearance [2 Cor 5:16]. This deception was genetically transferred one generation to another. So fixed did man become in it that when Moses mediated the law to men, a veil was placed over their hearts rendering them incapable of hearing the Law of God as a prophetic affirmation that, "thou shall not" rather than a punitive demand that "you had better not" if you do not want to be cut off from God.

Experientially separate from God, his mind is flooded by feelings of inadequacy and fear and hostage to an all-consuming desire for acceptance. He is compelled to do something and resolves to leave his mark by building something. This he does and this he continues to do. It is the history of fallen man to try and rebuild what God has once destroyed [Gal 2:18] It is this we call the mark of Cain. Banished from community a fugitive and a murderer he purposes to validate himself and in what he can build. Accordingly, we read "Cain built a city for his son Enoch." [Gen 4:17] Now intriguingly the name Enoch means "dedicated" the signature word of the self-life. So the child of fallen man sets in motion the fallen anti-structure by creating a dynasty for his son rather than managing what God has created as a son.

The perennial self-living for self-construction business, reaches its peak in Gen 11 when Nimrod, the supplier of the blueprint for all religious effort purposes to build a tower to reach up into heaven. Throughout the pages of the Bible, we see the dramatic consequences of the fall. To stretch our English football analogy to breaking point, Man Utd, has become Man City. Thus, the exchanged life is complete, a transaction whereby right persons became wrong persons, thus the Gospel can be understood as
Norman Grubb rightly asserted "The restoration of humanity to his rightful owner." This He did by getting the wrong man out and the Right Man in.
The Exchanged Life

Right Persons
 

Wrong Persons
 

Right Persons [Fixed]
Breathed into His nostrils the breadth of life Gen 2:7  Deceived & Bereaved Gen 3:6, Divine Promise Ezk 37:9  Believed & Received Life, 1 Jn 5:12; Jn 10:10 Prophetic Presentation, Jn 20:22

Made in His image ,Dominion, Authority, Good Works
 

New Nature [satanic], Dominated, Under authority, Works righteousness
 New Nature [Divine], Dominion, New Authority, Righteous works

Man could not affect his own rescue. If He could then Christ died for nothing [Gal 2:21]. However, knowledge of self would bring him to his recognition of his impecunious nature would cause him to realise his need for a Saviour [Roms 7:24]. The salvaging of self-getting man could only be successfully executed by an abandoned act of self-giving love, which would first pay the penalty for sin; death and would then through the resurrection life enjoin wrong persons in Himself to make them right persons reborn in Him. In Union Life, we hold that we are a part of God no longer apart from God but not a god apart from God. We are the visible expression of the invisible God, containers, vessels, branches, etc, not the essence but the image of the essence.

The illusion of separation has meant that experientially the false self has supplanted the real self. The ramifications of separation are far reaching. The impact on the believer is profound. Whilst he gives tacit accent to the indwelling Christ, in his sub-subconscious Jesus is God on the outside. He is abstract and remote and without an unconscious consciousness of union, he reinterprets Gal 2:20 through a self-living-for- God lens. Consequently, this illusory separation has left the Christian "filled" but "unfulfilled."
False Self  Real Self
"Christ no longer lives (as the source of life) but he lives and the life he lives he lives by his faith in the Son of God, who he loves and gives his life for."  It "is no longer I that live, but Christ that lives in me and the life that I live I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me

It was in search of a cure for this emptiness that many Christians including myself to join the Pentecostal/Charismatic renewal so called, attracted by its promise of a more thrilling filling. Like many, I had wearied of the anaemic Catholicism of my childhood. However, in later years, I would come to appreciate the wisdom and insight of the much-maligned Catholic mystics, such as St John of the Cross-, Jeanne Guyon, and Teresa of Avila.

A series of traumatic personal events, managed, in a God meant it for good way [Gen 50:24] served to wash me up on the shores of Pentecostalism in search of answers. What I saw there appeared to me both muscular and exciting. It seemed to me to be alive. I imagined that at last I had been given the key to unlock the great secret to the successful life.

However, to my dismay this deception was in many ways greater than the first. What I had bought into was a Christian self-improvement programme to which the secret we were told was the Holy Spirit. He would fill me if I was earnest and desired Him. He would empower me to live for God. He would help me to live the Christian life. He would help me to become holy. All I would ever need is more of Him and the pastor dispensed him. It was a curious arrangement but one that I accepted uncritically. However, quickly grace reservations began to surface. I had been trained to attribute them to the Devil and so ignored them instead pursuing the Christian life so-called. I sought his filling, my life was improved, I was reformed but.it was still me living my life.

Having entered into a career in Pentecostalism I was determined to be a success. I threw myself into it. In fairness, the life I adopted or adapted was not without its benefits to others and me. However, in truth for 13 years it served to divert my attention and proved an effective anaesthetic. However, despite increasing the dosage through rededication and recommitment it wore off and ultimately the existential questions resurfaced. Something inside demanded an answer. Like a dripping tap the question kept on repeating itself "Who am I" or to put it in Bible terms "Last Adam where are you" - "I was made for more than this - I made for Him?"

I was now living for God and I thought that such a noble choice would make me free but instead I was in prison. My active service had put distance between my family and I and worse still the seeds resentment were being sown between them and God. I was torn apart and burnt-out. I too was growing disillusioned. In my zeal to serve God, I had missed it and sacrificed my family in the fire of my own ambition. If I am honest I can say now that it was in my Christian service that I lived and breathed and had my being." In addition, it had not worked - I was not living the life I had signed for. Elder brother syndrome began to creep up on me [Lk 15] In my darker moments I now privately believed that John's Gospel contained a misprint, 15:5 should read, "because of you I can do nothing."

Slumped over my desk one night I randomly opened my Bible and the words that looked up at me crushed me "Who has bewitched you [Gal 3:1] However, I was at the height of my carer in Pentecostalism. I tried with all that I had to suppress the question. Some little while later my anxiety turned to turmoil when I heard the still small voice of the Lord speak to me again. On this occasion, I was basking in the afterglow of my gift to communicate having been the speaker at a convention in Sao Paulo where I had wooed and wowed a crowd of some 4,000 people. The very next day when the main speaker had just instructed our team to begin to minister to the people and my colleagues had plunged headlong into a sea of 7,000 hysterical bodies He spoke to me, "How much is too much Paul?" In an open vision I saw my wife, alone, desperate and destroyed.I stood beside her, dressed in a designer suit with a designer smile and my latest book under my arm. The contrast was horrifying..

The question was deafening "How much is too much" In an instant I saw the price that my wife had paid. I dropped to the floor and cried uncontrollably I was undone.

I had sold out my family and thought that that was the price to pay for being "sold out " for God. I had thought that I was living the Christian life; yet it brought me less and less joy. In fact, the more I tried to live for God, the less rewarding the life of dedication that I had chosen became. It was an almost perverse paradox. I could not understand it. I had been raised to believe that the sanctified life was a life of separation. I had misunderstood; sanctification is about separation, but separation from separation. On reflection, I can see that God had lifted the veil that had hitherto had covered my heart and I saw for the first time the startling reality of union.

Back in my hotel room, I lay on my bed I was in turmoil. I lay awake the whole night pondering these things. My 40th birthday was rapidly approaching and for a moment, I wondered whether I was entering into a mid-life crisis and that by the morning I would be back to "normal" - After a sleepless night it was clear to me what I must do. I would resign and then having made the break wait for His prompting. I did not have to wait too long - He gave me one simple instruction "I want you to grow a church by grace alone."

Immediately my corporate mind switched to overdrive. I dredged up from my memory bank every Church Growth seminar that I had attended in Bible School and searched for every book and article that I could find on the subject. I dusted off my copy of Evangelism Explosion and drew up a target list of all the people that I thought might like to join us. Then God spoke to me again."What are you doing?" "Umm I am planning Lord" I could sense that that was not a good answer. He reminded me that what he wanted was a church established on the principle of grace alone. I had taken that to mean that he wanted me to only teach justification by faith, but no, that was not what he meant. What He meant was that it was to be built by Him alone. His plan for me was to co-operate with Him, not incorporate for Him. The church that would emerge [eventually] was to be organic & spontaneous.

That was in July 2000. Up until then, I had known at an intellectual level that I was one spirit with Him. I knew that Christ "was my life" but that summer I discovered the life of Christ. I had only understood salvation as my giving my life to Him - I had not realised that salvation was Him giving His life to me. Ironically, I had been developing a reputation for being an accomplished teacher of the Christian identity but, in truth, I was like Apollos who, though full of fervour and passion for God, a sound teacher who could explain freedom from the law and the divine exchange needed the way of God explained to me more accurately. In recent days, He has been gracious enough to send my Aquilla & Pricilla to me in the written form of Norman Grubb & Dan Stone and in the physical form of Dee Dee Winter & Linda Bunting.

That summer as never before the Lord began to apply His cross to me and as He did He began to reveal His life in me [Gal 1:16]. I began to see that I had been set apart from before I was born [for union] but, like Paul, in the absence of enlightenment I was deceived and sought to cultivate a righteousness of my own, a righteousness that I too now considered rubbish [Phil 3]. To my dismay I realised that what others thought was the model Christian life was actually a backslidden compromised existence. Having begun in the Spirit I was now trying to live the Christian life by self-effort.

I had reduced the Christian life to something I did rather than a Person who I now was. My successful church career had validated the deception. From the ashes of Brazil, the Lord was about to bring forth the real self, the unexpected -self the new creation. I was suffering from a condition that I have since diagnosed as false self-syndrome. FSS [See article entitled "False Self Syndrome its causes and its cures" www.thegraceproject.com] FSS is a pandemic it is a condition that makes sufferers actually think that they are independent selves. When full-blown, the condition leaves its victims in such a highly deluded state that they actually believe themselves to be capable of living the Christian life.

How thoroughgoing the deception is - even when freed we remain susceptible. We recall the words of the apostle Paul has it right, writing to his beloved churches in Galatia he asks in almost flabbergasted terms, "Who has bewitched you" [Gal 3:1] The great anguished lament of the "Christ Planting" apostle was that he was again in labour, "until Christ is fully formed in them." [Gal 4:19] What had happened to his beloved converts?

You will no doubt be familiar with the background to the Galatain controversy. Agitators, claiming to have standing among the brothers in Jerusalem came to the region of Galatia with the single purpose of unhinging the work that Paul had established. The strategy they chose for the undermining of his work was ingenious but relied entirely for its success on the false self. They informed the people that whilst they were saved by grace as Paul had said, that was only a starting point; they must now go on to perfection. The pathway to perfection was circumcision and adherence to the Law of Moses [for the contemporary setting read baptism, be filled with the Spirit, tithe and live by the Sermon on the Mount]! The assault began by questioning Paul's apostolic credentials:

Paul is a renegade
He is a wolf in sheep's clothing
What denomination does he belong to?
Don't you know that he persecuted the church - He is not to be trusted, he is trying to put you in bondage, whilst we want you to be free.

He raised his hand to the Lord's anointed when he attacked Peter at Antioch
How can he have the audacity to tell you that you do not need to be circumcised when he knows full well that all Abraham's sons were circumcised [circumcision is pre-law .sound familiar - the old tithing chestnut?]

He himself is circumcised

Ask yourself one question. Why did he circumcise his companion Timothy? Believe us when we tell you he wants to exclude you.

Circumcision was the decisive factor . here is the basis of their attack

The reason he does not want you to be circumcised is that he knows that when you do "your eyes will be opened and you will be like him." It was the satanic deception which first was employed so successfully in the Garden of Eden [Gen 3:4]. The very same thing that had happened to me - they had been deceived.

They were already perfect.
They were already partakers of the divine nature
They had no need of circumcision

Just like Eve before them and me after them they had been deceived. Upon receiving the Gospel they had become partakers of the silent "I" the essential "I" of the Spirit. Moreover, herein lies the force of the deception. It persists because the "I" remains silent. Anyone who has ever studied English grammar knows how difficult a language it is to learn. One of the problems is the special rules you have to memorise. The word deceived is a good example. "I" always comes before "E" except after "C". In English grammar, this is what is known as a silent letter." In other words, the "I" is not pronounced.

In the same way, the great secret of the Christian life is the silent "I" for the "I" is the Spirit. God is Spirit [Jn 4:24]. Invisible, unknowable, except from His manifestation through His creation, [Roms 1:20] supremely through His Son, and subsequently through His right sons, the church. He is the silent "I" in Eve after Christ the I is silent, but because she was not conscious of her union relationship with Him she was deceIved."

"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm then and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Look, I Paul say to you, that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again, to every man who accepts circumcision that he is bound to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace." Gal 5:1-4

Don't allow yourself to be deceived and bereaved, simply believe whom you have received