The Two Cosmic Lies that Devastate the Human Heart – Part 3, Lie 2 “You Can Make Yourself Good Enough. You Can Become Like God”
The first lie – “you are not good enough” – is what I believe about myself. The second lie – “but you can become good enough through your own efforts – you can become like God” – is the way I deal with the first lie; it can become the framework or context within which I live my life. The first lie baits the trap; the second lie springs the trap and we are caught in a downward spiral of sin and selfishness.
The most fundamental need of every person is to feel connected, to belong, to be valued. To be valued is to overcome separateness. But as we will see, there is a place (or person – Jesus) to find true value and valuing that leads to life; and another place (or persons – self and satan) to find false value and valuing, that leads to death. Not everything in life has equal value.
As I wrote in the previous post, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil (and there cannot be good or evil unless there is freedom to disobey), their eyes were opened and they became aware of their separateness – separate from God, from each other, and from the world around them. Separation is isolation, loneliness, helplessness, and powerlessness. When we are separate we are vulnerable and anxious.
“The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness” (Fromm, ‘The Art of Loving’, pg. 8).
“The desire for interpersonal fusion is the most powerful striving in man. It is the most fundamental passion, it is the force which keeps the human race together, the clan, the family, society” (Fromm, The Art of Loving, pg. 15).
Fromm says we find this fusion in love. But what is love? In our culture it is a word that has many different levels of meaning – most of them superficial. Instead, I prefer the word, “value”. When we feel valued we feel significant and connected, no longer separate. When we are valued, our deepest need is met – we feel safe and secure. Value is the antidote to existential anxiety and fear. And when we live in a culture of value – valuing and being valued – we are basically living with each other and Christ in the Kingdom of God – because real value can only come from Him.
On the other hand, devaluing is generally perceived to reinforce the lie, “You are not good enough” and deepens our sense of separateness and anxiety.
When we believe the lie, “I am not good enough” for the many reasons (and more) I wrote about in the previous post, in our anxiety and separateness we search for our value in our own power – or in the ‘power of self’ – because the second lie says, “You can become good enough in your own power. You can fulfill yourself. You can be like God.” And if that is true, then I will no longer be separate and anxious, because I will become the ‘author’ of all things in my life. I will be in control! I can order my own life. I will have nothing to fear. So, my goal is to feel and be so valuable that I no longer live with anxiety, shame, guilt, powerlessness and hopelessness, and fear. My goal is to be ‘free’. And the lie tells me I can do this if I will just work hard enough, if I will just surrender my life to this pursuit. Unfortunately, “my work, my way” only leads to more sin and bondage, and ultimately death.
Human beings know that they need ‘more’ – more life, more joy, more hope, and more peace. We know that we need to be new creations. But how to be recreated, how to find this new life? The second lie says, “No problem, you can do it yourself.” In other words, you can resurrect yourself and be like God (or, in New Age language, “you can become god or divine).
But the Bible tells us that there is only one way “to be born again”, or maybe I should say only One Person who can make us new – Jesus. When He is our value and our source of value, we will have life and have it in abundance. In Christ, we can be spiritually delivered from years of demonic oppression, and healed emotionally. In Christ, we find our value and, in the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, He can create a culture of value and power in us and through us.
Satan does not want us to know this truth. So, satan lies. The purpose of these lies is to prevent us from worshiping God and becoming new creations and disciples of Christ – living and operating in the world with His power and authority, releasing the Kingdom of God into the kingdom of the world, pushing back the darkness, redeeming the time and space that satan has usurped, and defeating the power of evil.
Lie 2 says you can become good enough through your own efforts, apart from God. This is pride, the source of all sin and evil in the world:
Pride is the place where the human heart is entirely dependent upon self for all value, comfort, and safety.
How do human beings search for value, after the seed of “you’re not good enough” has sprouted in the soil of our fallen hearts and been watered by devaluing? How do we try to make ourselves, “good enough” in our own power, apart from God? We do it by selecting an “ultimate thing”. That ‘thing’, whatever it is, tells us, “I will totally fulfill you – make you valuable – but you must totally surrender to me.” And when we believe this, because Lie 2 tells us this is possible, we enter the ‘slippery slope’ through what Jesus calls the “broad gate”. As I said in a previous post, many of these selections begin when we are children.
In general, every ‘ultimate thing’ human beings select to find our value falls into one of four categories: performance and accomplishments; power and control; sex and lust; and greed and covetousness, especially for wealth and possessions. These are the idols of the present age, and they are just as powerful and idolatrous as the carved and forged idols of the Old Testament. None of these things fulfill us – we may find temporary value, but we always need to go back for more. When we look to an ultimate thing for our value, our quest is never ending. We will never know peace.
Here are some excerpts from an article I found on an Internet news site written by J. Warner Wallace, a former cold-case detective in Los Angeles and a Senior Fellow at the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He is writing about murder, but basically he is describing the basic categories of ultimate things (I add a 4th – performance and accomplishments). He writes:
“You might think that there are a million reasons why someone would commit a murder, but there are only three possibilities (as I wrote above, I see 4). At least one of these three motives is the driving force behind every homicide, theft, burglary and robbery. In fact, these three motives lie at the heart of every (author’s emphasis) conceivable crime or misdeed. Human behavior is motivated by: financial greed, sexual – or relational – lust, and the pursuit of power.”
Wallace also writes, “Episodes of perceived disrespect and embarrassment (devaluing, my words) are often the motive for murder.”
The lie opens the door for our hearts to come into union with a ‘thing’. That union fulfills our need for value, security, comfort, even pleasure. But it is a counterfeit union – it seems bright and shiny – but it is like fools gold. In the moment it seems to be what we need, but soon we need ‘another fix’ – more power, more wealth, more stuff, more sex, because it never satisfies. But the greatest tragedy is that the thing has replaced the One we were made to be in union with – God. There is a place in our heart meant only to be filled by God. But under the influence of the lie, we have allowed something else to slip into that place ahead of God – to replace Him. God asks us, “will you be in union with me, or will you be in union with satan”? Too often the answer we give God is, “satan!” But few willingly come into union with satan. Satan is a liar. He is also an accuser and a deceiver. When we cut ourselves off from the Living God, we bring ourselves into union with satan. “What? No way!”, most people would say. We are deceived! Tragically, this in one of the consequences of living these lies. More on this in the next post.
What follows is a discussion of some of the major ‘ultimate things’ we put our faith in as we search for our value in the world:
Performance and accomplishments. When we perform academically, in sports, in business, or our career, work, our hobbies, artistically, or many other ways, we find the world admires us for these accomplishments. We find the approval that overcomes our separateness. Success makes us feel good. Fame or the respect of our peers is like a drug that, at least temporarily, brings a sense of peace and security.
Many need to live up to a self-imposed standard of performance to ‘fit in’ and be accepted. Often the standard is perfection, which opens the door for shame, disillusionment, despair, drug and alcohol abuse, cutting, and in some tragic cases, suicide. When I am unable to live up to a standard of perfectionism, the belief that I am ‘not good enough’ is reinforced. This either causes me to give up or work harder.
Wealth and Possessions. Wealth and our possessions give us comfort and security. Big houses, fancy cars, big boats, and other possessions become our source of value. I have had my share of wealth and possessions. I know the sense of security that wealth gives me. I also know it is a false sense of security because depending upon any number of events over which I have no control, I can lose my wealth and possessions literally overnight. Our hedges against loss are insurance and a diversified financial portfolio.
But as I write these words I am struggling to understand the strong hold that wealth and possessions have on most human hearts. It almost seems to me that the heart of fallen man is conditioned to want these things. The ‘need’ for value is part of our spiritual DNA. But I also wonder if the hearts of most of us are spiritually programmed even before we are born to desire wealth in particular. Whatever the reason, human beings spend an inordinate amount of time chasing wealth and the possessions that wealth allows them to accumulate. And of course, we never have enough or we get tired of what we do have, and need to change it out for the latest new thing (including, sadly, our spouses).
How do we know if our value comes from our wealth or possessions? We have a hard time letting go of our money and our possessions and our ‘wealth’ is where we invest our time, talent, and treasure. You don’t have to be wealthy – those who spend their lives ‘dreaming’ of wealth and possessions fall into this category as well. “If I only had ________, I would be ‘fulfilled’.
Power and control. Many feel more valuable when they have power over institutions, organizations, and other people. When I have power, I have control. When I am in control, I feel safer and less anxious. I call the shots. I can dominate. I place manipulation in this category as well. When they don’t have absolute or delegated power, people use manipulation to get what they want or need. Manipulation is another form of power.
Sex and lust. For most people, sex has an inordinate power over human hearts. Adultery, pornography, today’s hook-up culture, sexual exploitation being exposed by the #me too movement, and sexual slavery all rise up out of this ‘ultimate thing’. In the Old Testament, temple prostitutes were common in Baal worship and the worship of the Queen of Heaven, the goddess Ishtar. In these examples sex was formally accepted as part of worship. Judging from the hypersexual culture in American today, sex is still a potent ‘god’. The intimate nature of sex, the coming together of two to make one (what does one plus one equal? It equals one!), provides one of the strongest ways of overcoming one’s feeling of separateness, even if only for a moment.
Not all lust is about sex. Humans develop intense desires for all types of things – all usually associated with an object that we perceive will give us value and overcome our feelings of anxiety and separateness.
Conformity. We can feel valuable and significant when we conform to the culture around us in how we dress, how we talk and act, and how we think. We are included, not excluded and separate. We are part of the pack or tribe and there is tremendous value and power in that.
Bullying or feeling good about ourselves by devaluing others. A bully always operates out of a spirit of ‘not good enough’. By putting other people down (physically, verbally, or with writing) the bully makes himself feel more significant. The bully’s value comes from devaluing and dominating others. I make others smaller, so that I can feel ‘bigger’ – more valuable—in comparison. I can also demean others in my mind – seeming to value them to their face, but behind their backs criticizing them to make myself feel superior.
Believing we are better than others – narcissism. Another way to feel valuable is to believe that you are better than anyone around you, that you ‘know it all’. This sense of superiority is one root of dehumanizing and devaluing others. This warped sense of value can be fostered by parents who continually tell their children how great they are; or, at the other extreme, can be a manifestation in children who were constantly devalued through abuse of some type. In both cases, this can lead to a mind-set of superiority, which can be very difficult to change.
Criminality. I think people who lie, steal, cheat, and even murder are looking for their value through these illegal activities. They are seeking wealth or power. Of course, sex plays into this category as well.
Covetousness. There is a reason “thou shalt not covet” is the 10th commandment. In a sense, this is the foundational commandment, the one on which all the others depend. When we covet something – wanting to take what someone else has, wanting to acquire what someone else has, or wanting more than the people around you have – you have made the thing you covet the source of value. “If I only had ____ I would be fulfilled”.
In a recent study, researchers asked two questions: “Would you rather have $200,000 if everyone around you have $1,000,000?” or “Would you rather have $100,000 if everyone around you had $50,000?”. Most of the respondents chose the latter. Their value came from being better than those around them.
Medication. This way is not about finding value. It is about trying to shut off the voice in your head repeating, like a broken record, “You are not good enough, you are a loser, a failure; there is no hope for you”. When the ways listed above are unavailable for various reasons, or they don’t work, people turn to drugs, alcohol, food, or sex to achieve a short-term high. I believe viewing pornography is so widespread because it provides a short-term outlet for the shame and hopelessness associated with the voice, “You are not good enough.” Sadly for many men and women, pornography leads to a deeper sense of shame, isolation, and loneliness.
For some, sports and entertainment are a way to find relief from the lie. Perhaps adultery falls into this category.
These ways, and more, of finding value are the consequence of believing the lie that we can find our value in our own power, and “become like God”. These are the ways of ‘self’, seeking value apart from God. When we make any one of these ways our ‘ultimate concern’, they become idols and we enter into union with this idol, instead of God. The result is sin and all of its evil manifestations.
In 1668, the Englishman and Puritan Thomas Watson wrote a little book titled, ‘The Doctrine of Repentance’. “Repentance”, he said, “is never out of season.” He wrote the following about finding our value in an ‘ultimate thing’, which he called our affection, in our endeavor to become like God:
“In particular, let us lament the corruption of our will and our affection . . . the will distasts (an old word that means, ‘dislikes’) God, not as He is good, but as He is holy . . . we will do whatever goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven (Jeremiah 44: 17). The greatest wound has fallen upon our will . . . Let us grieve the diversion of our affections. They are taken off from their proper object. The affections, like arrows, shoot beside the mark. At the beginning our affections were wings to fly to God; now they are weights to pull us from Him . . . Let us grieve for the inclination of our affections. Our love is set on sin, our joy on the creature . . . How justly may the distemper (meaning ‘disorder’) of our affections bear a part in the scene of our grief? We of ourselves are falling into hell, and our affections would thrust us thither (meaning ‘toward that place’)” (Watson, ‘The Doctrine of Repentance’, pg. 74).
Our ‘affections’ are the things that give us our value – ‘the ultimate thing’. Placing our ‘affection’ on an ‘ultimate thing’ is idolatry, basically synonymous with pride. Recall that pride is the place of entire dependence upon self for all our value, safety, and comfort. In his wonderful book, ’Humility’, Andrew Murray writes:
“And so pride – the loss of humility – is the root of every sin and evil. It was when the now-fallen angels began to look upon themselves with self-complacency that they were led to disobedience and were cast down from the light of heaven into outer darkness. Likewise, it was when the serpent breathed the poison of pride – the desire to be as God – into the hearts of our first parents, that they too fell from their high estate into the wretchedness to which all humankind has sunk. In heaven and on earth, pride of self-exhalation is the very gateway to hell” (Murray, ‘Humility’, pg. 16).
Idolatry or pride is Sin (capital S, singular). Sin is the source of all sins (little s, plural) like anger, bitterness, hatred, unforgiveness, gossip, slander, envy, greed, murder, strife, deceit, malice, and every kind of wickedness and evil. As Murray wrote, pride or believing the lie and depending upon self to find our value, our safety, and our comfort, is “the very gateway to hell.” It is the source of all human evil.
Finally, I want my readers to understand not just what I am saying, but also what I am not saying. In Paul’s first letter to Timothy, Paul, writes about people who are looking for value in money – who are coveting:
“People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6: 9, 10 NIV).
While Paul is specifically talking about money, I believe he is also referring to the many ways people look for their value apart from God. Money is “a root”, not “the root”. There are other roots. I have listed some of them above. Paul is writing about people “who want to get rich . . . eager for money.” Paul is telling Timothy that some people will wander from the faith because they will turn away from their value in Christ, to seek their value in their own way in the world.
But not everything on the list above is sin and evil. It depends upon your heart. Having money, working hard at a job, creating beautiful art, being in positions of authority, driving an expensive car, or living in a big house are not sinful or evil as long as they are not the ultimate things that give you your value; as long as they are not the things you worship, the objects of your affections, the idols in your life. And it is not just the ‘rich’, but the are poor can ‘lust’ after wealth. Jesus does seem to be saying in the parable of the rich young ruler (Mark 10: 23 –27) that the wealthy have a greater chance of loving their wealth more than they love God. “But all things are possible with God” (Mark 10: 27).
“Moreover, when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and be happy in his work – this is a gift of God” (Ecclesiastes 5: 19 NIV).
Later in his letter to Timothy, Paul writes:
“Command those who are rich, in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share” (1 Timothy 6: 17, 18 NIV).
Apparently some in Timothy’s church are rich. Paul does not condemn them for their wealth (or, I think, their expensive car or huge house) but reminds Timothy to tell them that they must not look for their ‘ultimate value’ in those things, but to find their value in God. And those who have wealth should share willingly and be generous. Having wealth is not the issue. The question is: does your wealth have you?
In this part I have discussed the second lie – “you can make yourself good enough, you can be like God” – which is essentially the meaning of pride. Of course, this lie rises up from the first lie – “You are not good enough” or all it’s various synonyms. By planting the seeds of these lies in the hearts of Adam and Eve, and thereby transferring these seeds into the heart of every human to be activated by devaluing, satan believed he had a fool-proof plan to draw us away from the worship of God, into the demonic worship of self. As Watson wrote, We of ourselves are falling into hell, and our affections would thrust us thither (meaning ‘toward that place’). By getting us to worship self, satan set about overturning God’s plan for His good, ordered, and organized creation by drawing us out of union with God and one another. What satan didn’t count on was the cross and the death of God’s Son to redeem sinners and bring them into His Kingdom in due time. For this reality, satan has no antidote; he has been completely defeated!
In Part 4 of this series I examine the consequences – the price we pay – for seeking our value in the things of the world in the power of self, apart from God.
Blessed to be (mostly) free,
John