John Walt

The modern world is built around one thing above all else: The pursuit of more. This demand for more drives our industries and is the foundation of all our Western economic and social systems. Everywhere you go, if you listen closely, you will hear one subtle message whispered and sometimes screamed back to you, “You deserve to have what you want when you want it.”

It seems harmless enough, but this lie steals so many people's life energy and sucks them into patterns of thinking that few people escape from. It took me years to see and understand the implications of this lie and how it weaves its way into our brains.

“Every person wakes up every day wanting two things, power and control.” - Larry Mills

I believe there is a false you, and there is a real you. Our minds crave control, so we work constantly in the background to construct an identity, a story we tell ourselves and others about who we are. This identity we construct for ourselves is a false identity. It promises to protect us from feeling inadequate, alone, and unloved.

False Identity: The narrative we believe about ourselves.

If we can get past our fear and self-protection, then we can begin to see our true identity, who we were created to be. You can’t know the real you until you go through a transformation process. That process has two parts: dying and rebirth. In order to be transformed, we have to let the false identity die so we can move past our fears and insecurities and step into our true identity.

True Identity: Who we are actually created to be, whether we believe it or not.

Dying isn’t something only messed up people need to do, it is something all of us need to do. It doesn’t just happen once, it happens all the time. It gets easier over time, but I don’t believe we ever are done dying. Dying isn’t something that happens on its own, it’s something we have to seek out. So why is dying such a big deal?

The wall between us and God

I believe the primary wall between us and God exists in our hearts. The words used for heart in the Bible mean the mind, will, desires, thoughts, emotions, moral character/reasoning, and spiritual life. It is viewed as the core of human existence, where thoughts are formed, decisions are made, and faith resides. Understanding the original meaning of the words used for heart helps me see how big a role our minds play in keeping us from God.

We love God and want to follow Him and obey Him, but we usually don’t want to pick up our cross and follow Jesus up Golgotha. This picture of “picking up your cross” is usually explained as accepting the suffering, persecution, and shame that come with following Jesus. I think that explanation allows us to skip over a critical part of what Jesus was calling us to do. When Jesus talked about picking up our cross and following Him, it was a call to radical discipleship, to completely deny self-will and walk the same path as Him. I believe He was showing us the journey we all need to take to find what we truly want, what we were created for.

Jesus carried His cross up to the place where He voluntarily died so that we could have freedom and life. What do we need to do to access the freedom and life that He made available to us? What does it look like for us to walk the same path?

Most Christian theology says the path to salvation is to repent and accept God into your heart. Then, try not to sin, read the Bible, pray regularly, attend church, and be sure to tithe. Personally, I have gone into very few churches or Christian groups and been overwhelemed by how alive and full of freedom everyone is. Is there something more about what we are called to that we are missing? Is what Jesus did on the cross all about life after death, or is it also about how we find freedom in this life?

In the Bible, the phrase “eternal life” was a multidimensional concept that was understood as a way of life that extends beyond time. Eternal life is not something that begins when we physically die, it is a way of life we are called to now.

The eternal way of living

Every animal on earth spends all its time focused on meeting its psychological and biological needs. The same can be said of most humans? From the perspective of science, what makes us different than animals? Complex thought and high-level consciousness allow us to be extremely self-aware and capable of evaluating our lives and thinking.

All over the Bible, I see a consistent theme: Jesus is inviting us to let go of our self-absorbed lives and become like Him. How do we do that, and what does it mean? Religious practices alone have proven they are not the answer. I believe what He is calling us to do is use our gift of complex thought and high-level consciousness to choose to step out of our “animal brain” patterns of thinking and into a new way of thinking that is not driven by constant self-gratification. We have to die to what we think we want in order to find life and freedom. I believe it starts with rejecting the lie that we deserve to have what we want when we want it. When we get what we want all the time, we end up losing our freedom. Check out what Galatians 5:19-21 says.

“It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community.” - Galatians 5:19-21 MSG

In a seemingly backward sort of way, the path to what we truly want is choosing not to pursue what we think we want. It starts by pursuing the opposite of what we want: death. Isn’t that what Jesus was teaching? He who loses his life will find it (Matthew 16:24-26). Transformation is fundamentally simple, but putting it into practice is challenging. This is because letting go of our false identity requires putting our ego to death, and that can be very tricky.

Where the Ego Hides

This topic is complicated because there are so many places for the ego to hide. We can become a Christian and obey all the rules but still not be on the path of life and freedom. A person’s ego can be just as big if they are a Christian or an atheist. We may swap pride in wealth and status for pride in good works and impact. But it's the same sneaky pride and it keeps us from being transformed in just the same way.

The other danger is that many people simply whittle their ego down to a manageable size and keep it there. That's not the same as dying. Just because you have settled for a simple life and are content with the small level of control you have over it doesn’t make you bad, but it keeps so many people from truly being transformed. I almost think a big ego is a gift, it's so much easier to see where it's hiding and know for sure when it's dead or when it's rearing its head again. Seriously, people choose low-ego lives all the time and don’t realize they are still building their life around getting what they want when they want it. Your ego might want a cozy house, warm tea, and a good book, while mine wants a private jet and hundreds of millions of dollars. What is the difference if it keeps us from dying?

I believe picking up our cross looks like voluntarily walking up the hill and letting our false identity and ego be nailed to a tree so that we can come back to life as a new creation. I didn’t use to want this, I actually fought the idea for a long time. I know that what I am talking about here is the least appealing thing in the world. But when we see where our self-focused animal brain lives take us and compare that to the fruit of the path of life, it becomes much easier to embrace dying.

Discovering who we really are.

It’s very important that we understand there are two parts to this process, and if dying is all there is, we shouldn’t do it. The second part is coming alive to who we were actually created to be. That person isn’t obsessed with self-interest and self-preservation, that person is free and alive. That person can live in a flow state with God, self and others while doing the work they were created for.

Recently, my old identity (what I call my dragon) started showing itself in a big way. I read about someone my age who had become more successful than me in a similar field of work. I started comparing myself to them and wondering why they had been so successful and thinking about how I could take my success to the next level. Then I realized what had happened: I was feeding my dragon. I was resurrecting the part of me that keeps me from flowing with God. I stopped that line of thinking and began thanking God for His blessings, telling Him and myself how much I trust Him and how great a job He has done leading me and building my life. Before long, I found myself in the most beautiful place of connection and conversation with God. I realized my false identity had actually been coming back for a few days. I had been starting to feel frustrated and confused lately, and I wasn’t sure why. Once I started thanking God for the opportunity to die, another part of my pride passed away, and I got to just be with God. Once you taste the freedom of getting past your false identity, you really don’t want it anymore. What causes my false identity to come back to life is when I stop trusting God in some part of my life and start trying to take back power and control.

When you can, in some small part of your life, die to the false you, then you are able to begin discovering the real you.

Scott used to say whenever you face a situation where you aren’t getting what you want it's a great opportunity to die. Early on in marraige, I was blessed to be learning from Scott how to die. When Heather and I faced challenges, and I wanted things to look different, instead of getting frustrated and letting it come between us, I began to embrace it as an opportunity to die. Fast forward a decade, and we have such an awesome marriage. I look at so many marriages that are a constant struggle, and the cause is clear to me. Both people are trying to get what they want when they want it. It’s like a wedge between them, and it keeps them from what they both really want: a great marriage and life together.

Every area of my life has been marked by having to let go of what I thought I wanted and embrace dying. The fruit of that, is I have discovered a life and a way of living that is so much better than what it would have been if I had gotten to have what I originally wanted.

The biggest challenge we face with transformation is that we cannot let our false identity die because, in our shame, we do not believe we have a much better true identity. That ultimately is a trust issue with God. For me, I had to deal with that before I could embrace the death of my false identity.

In the midst of my struggle to trust God, Scott would often ask me a version of the same question: “Either the promises of God are true for you, or He is a liar. Which is it?” I wasn’t allowed to say with my mouth that I trusted God and simultaneously live my life as if it wasn’t true.

- John Walt