My confidence is not in people;
it’s in Christ. Were it not for that, by now I probably would have been much
more deeply shaken when people who are leaders in my generation give me reason
to lose a measure of respect for them. However, it still grieves me deeply to
see that kind of thing happen, especially with leaders who are Christians.
Lies can be powerful, but the
Truth is stronger. Which is part of why I am not personally shaken in my
beliefs or my stance when I see someone else believing or teaching a lie. But
at the same time, witnessing that kind of thing always hits me squarely in the
heart, because it grieves me to see anyone deceived themselves and/or deceiving
others without knowing it.
I am currently in the middle of
the third book in Ted Dekker’s Circle
Trilogy, which have been my first introduction to his writings. These books
are amazing and have deeply encouraged me in my own writing because of how poignantly
and powerfully they display the Gospel through fiction and fantasy. Many times
while reading these books, even though I haven’t finished yet, I have paused in
awe as I witnessed within them something I have begun to glimpse in recent
years about writing and its purpose. The ultimate purpose of writing is to
communicate the truth, and fiction and fantasy provide an incredibly unique and—I
believe—needed (at least to an extent) opportunity to talk about things that
are real in terms of things that aren’t. Good writing will always, invariably,
express at least some aspect of reality—be it human nature, a particular society
or culture, whatever. But the most important thing any of it can point to is the
reality of the things of God—who He is, what He has done, how He interacts with
people, how He is at work in our world.
The Circle Trilogy contains a powerful and creative view of creation,
the Fall, Christ’s sacrifice, and the new life we now have access to. Which is
why I love them and part of why, when I found out Ted Dekker was coming out
with a new sort of mini-series, I trusted him as a storyteller and expected to
see the Gospel again within a different fictional premise.
He came so close.
But rather than the glory of
the Good News, in the latter part of Eyes
Wide Open, I instead found a painfully watered-down message posing in its
place. The moment I started to realize where Dekker was going with the story, I
started in shock and felt my heart tighten in a mixture of anguish and anger
from the blow.
If it was only about me, I
wouldn’t care this much. I learned a long time ago to “eat the meat and spit
out the bones” when it comes to reading. But it’s not about me. That anguish
and anger I felt? It wasn’t directed at Ted Dekker. It was directed at the
subtle lies the enemy has somehow woven into our culture and which I suddenly
realized Dekker had fallen prey to in some form.
Let me break away from this for
a moment to give some explanation surrounding things here. In Eyes Wide Open, one of the main things
Ted Dekker is confronting is self-image, which I agree with him is something that
a lot of Christians struggle with. One of his main characters is a girl who is
convinced she is ugly and who struggles with her external sense of image. I don’t
want to act like all girls wrestle with this same issue of feeling the need to
be pretty or beautiful, but I’ll admit that I, too, used to secretly lament that
I felt I was fairly plain-looking and not attractive.
I haven’t believed that in
years.
What happened? Well first, I met the One who looks not on the outward
appearance, but at the heart. Then, I realized just how vile and disgusting my
heart was. Over the years, my sin had ravaged the thing and turned it into an
icky, slimy, wretched, self-centered mess. But the same One who saw that even
more clearly than I did, had already done something about it. He stepped
into human flesh and lived a perfect life and died the death that alone could
atone for God’s own, just wrath over the wickedness that otherwise would have
forever separated me from His holiness. “He fought death, beat it, gave His
life to the public,” as Flame says in the song “Joyful Noise.” He conquered sin
and death and offered me new life in Him—His life.
Now my life is His, not mine. I
died to my old self, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. I
get to share my life with the One who gave it to me in the first place! And
right around that same time when I started to truly understand who He is and who
I am in Him, my feelings of insecurity slid to the back burner and then
gradually started to disappear. I stopped caring about what others thought of
me, because I was beginning to care more what God thought of me. And, not
because of my own merit or anything I had to offer Him, He loved me. He loves
me because of who He is, not who I am. He is
love. And Love reached down to fight for the soul of a feeble, rebellious, selfish
young girl so that He could draw her towards Himself, the only One who could
right what was wrong within that soul. He performed His surgery, removing my
heart of stone and transplanting His living, beating heart within my chest. It
was all Him.
And where I defined my
confidence and identity as coming from started to change from myself to Christ,
I found I no longer had to worry about what I looked like—my physical appearance
or people’s perception of me as a person—because it just didn’t matter anymore.
All I really started to care about was what God thought, and because of Christ
I am justified in His sight. God looks at me, and sees Jesus’ sacrifice that
has washed me clean and given me access to enter before Him and to commune with
Him. And at the same time, amazingly, He is aware of my sin and continues His
work of sanctifying me—leading me in repentance and helping me to love and
trust Him more with every step.
Returning to the book: in Eyes Wide Open, Ted Dekker presents a
message that is based on a somewhat-subtle distortion of the Gospel. And I don’t
think he did that on purpose in any way. The idea is rather prevalent in our “Christian”
culture today, firstly, that salvation is all about us. Don’t get me wrong; it is and it isn’t. Christ did not die
merely to let us feel better about things or to give us a better life, just
like He didn’t die just to get us into Heaven after we die. Jesus said He came
that we might have life, and have it abundantly. He also said He is the Life, and that the only way to
the Father is through Him (John 14:6).
See, something crazy happens at
salvation. You die to yourself so that you may truly live—experiencing Life as
it was meant to be, united with God. And, according to Scripture, you find your
life and your identity in the person of Jesus Christ. (I highly recommend reading
Romans—Paul explains all this much better than I can!) God doesn’t step into
your life to empower you to live like you want; He steps into your life to
empower to live like He wants—what He created you for, which also turns out to
always be what is best for us in the first place. Crazy, huh?
But see, there’s this lie that
has crept into some people’s understanding of all that. It’s loosely based on
parts of Scripture but not the whole—saying that because God created everything
good in the beginning, we’re still basically good at the core; the good’s just
been somehow clouded over by sin. Again, I recommend Romans—specifically chapter
3—for anyone wondering what the truth on the matter is. (Paul spends about half
the chapter explaining why nobody is good or righteous in God’s sight apart
from Christ.) This idea so many people have swallowed, though, says that our “real,”
“true” self is buried deep down there somewhere, and that it’s what God sees in
us and that He wants us to discover. It says that when the Bible talks about “dying
to self” it’s talking about rejecting the “fake” you, the sinful one.
But it’s not. It’s dying to you, your
desires, your life, your plans. That’s a hard pill to
swallow, which is probably why the more palatable idea offered by the above
ideology has become so popular. But when you truly die to yourself,
surrendering all that you are and offering it up as a sacrifice to God (by the
way, sacrifices die), that’s when you’re ready for real Life to set you free.
As often as we focus on ourselves, God did not create us to live an existence
that revolves around our own little lives. He made us to get caught up in
something much bigger—His existence, His story, His plans. To know Him. We have
to die to our own will, so that we can be set free to live in accordance with
His will—which is life and peace and hope and joy…eternal Life (see John 17:3).
A side-effect of the idea that
our “true” selves are good at the core is something that is voiced by one of
Dekker’s characters in Chapter 20 of Eyes
Wide Open: “You cannot love anything or anyone more than you love yourself
and you can’t truly love yourself unless you see yourself whole. If you
secretly disapprove of any part of yourself, you will secretly hate part of the
one who made you.”
Love yourself…nowhere is that commanded
in the entire Bible. If that was such an important component of what it means
to be a Christian or to be set free to live as God wants us to, don’t you think
He would have mentioned it at least once? Nope, again and again throughout
Scripture love is characterized by a willingness to offer up itself, to give of
itself for the sake of another. In fact, Jesus actually said that your love for
your self and your own life should look like more like hatred in comparison
with loving God, or else you are not His disciple.
I know that some people have acted like certain passages imply that we're supposed to love ourselves, and if you believe that's the case, I beg you to go back and read the context of those verses. See if that's really what God is saying there. Also, keep in mind that human reasoning about what a verse says or means will always, only, invariably be that—human reasoning.
We love others because God first loved us. It’s not dependent on us or our ability. Like everything else about our lives, when we accept Christ’s gift of salvation, everything comes to rely on not us, but Him. Our identity is wrapped up in who He is—for apart from Him we can do nothing, and without Him we are worthless and without hope.
I know that some people have acted like certain passages imply that we're supposed to love ourselves, and if you believe that's the case, I beg you to go back and read the context of those verses. See if that's really what God is saying there. Also, keep in mind that human reasoning about what a verse says or means will always, only, invariably be that—human reasoning.
We love others because God first loved us. It’s not dependent on us or our ability. Like everything else about our lives, when we accept Christ’s gift of salvation, everything comes to rely on not us, but Him. Our identity is wrapped up in who He is—for apart from Him we can do nothing, and without Him we are worthless and without hope.
But we have Him! Because of His
great love with which He loved us, Christ died to impart to us the Life that we
could not live apart from Him, and He gave us Life in abundance. We get to
trade in our identities—who we once were—and embrace who we are in Him—redeemed,
rescued, restored, made alive to God in Christ, bearing His Spirit whose fruit is
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and
self-control. “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh
with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:24). “I have been crucified with
Christ. It is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I
now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave
Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
It’s obvious that Ted Dekker is
addressing some major issues with Eyes
Wide Open—identity being one of them. For that, I do respect him. I don’t
want it to seem like I suddenly hate him or think he has terrible motives; I don’t.
But like all of us, he is human and capable of being deceived. My prayer is
that he would see the infinite beauty and know the peace that comes with the
truth that our identities are not to be based on anything outside of Christ. It’s
not up to us to do anything but believe and rely on Him. When we do that, we
embark on the most glorious adventure of all: the life we were made for, a life
spent knowing Him, more and more.
And the more you get to know
Him, the more you get to know the person He created you to be. For that person
cannot exist without Him, and will grow to look more like Him every day.
{Philippians 3:7-16}
“My identity is found in
Christ. Any other identity will self-destruct.” -Lecrae
