Human

The following post is part of a series describing my story of deconstructing my Christian faith and reconstructing it within orthodoxy rather than choosing to deconvert. Make sure to read up on Part 1 before moving on!

In January 2019, as I was sitting in the quiet and writing in my journal, an image came to my mind: I saw myself looking in a mirror, my face pristine, like a china doll, smiling a plastered smile back at me.

I thought I looked beautiful. I’d never seen myself look so “put together.”

Then, a piece of skin in the corner of my face began to peel away, slowly; and in one whole swoop, the china doll face I’d been staring at fell away to the floor — a mask — revealing rotten, oozing, decaying flesh behind it. 

And I knew instantly what it was — this was the true state of myself, my sinful nature; a thing that I’d hidden away in self-protection behind a false-self a long time ago.

A thing God was so mercifully showing me for the very first time after years of pursuing Him; “doing good and big things for Him”; doing a discipleship school; serving as a missionary; serving in my church; never (outrightly) rebelling; never doing anything wrong; never sinning…

Or so I believed. 

“Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered. On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.”

Church father, Irenaeus of Lyons

For the first time in my life, I was being exposed to myself – how far I was from the measure of goodness and perfection I had so vainly pursued.

You might be thinking, “no, Katelynn, don’t think such things about yourself. God doesn’t talk to us in that way, He’s loving and kind.” And to that I’d ask you to go read the Bible. Places to start could be, Psalm 32, Psalm 51, Matthew 23:27-28, the book of Romans, and anywhere in the Gospels.

My goal had never been God Himself, but His gifts. I saw clearly my own self-righteousness and my tendency to be judgmental.  In a moment, I didn’t know who I was anymore, what the Gospel was, or who I could trust.

I wanted nothing to do with the Christianity I’d been given, especially regarding the Spiritual things. I didn’t know what Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection meant for my everyday life, and I felt like a total fraud. I was disillusioned, devastated, raging, grieved, and severely depressed.

I wanted to walk away from all of it, not because I stopped believing in God but because I felt so confused and angry with Him for letting me fool myself for so long.

But never once as I sat in the reality of my sinfulness did I feel condemned by Him — I felt condemned by myself, but never by God. And though I felt betrayed, I had never been betrayed by God. I had betrayed myself.

This marks the beginning of what felt at first like a very rude awakening but was really the best gift God could ever give me. 

David Benner says in his book, The Gift of Being Yourself, that

those who are afraid to look deeply at God will also be afraid to look deeply at themself.

I came to realize that I couldn’t know God if I didn’t know myself, and I couldn’t know myself if I didn’t know God — for if I am made in God’s image, then who I am can only be found in who He is.

I began to think often about what Jesus says in Matthew 7:

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’ Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you [emphasis mine]. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!’

So, I couldn’t enter Heaven by participating in the spiritual gifts?

This felt like a shockwave to my system. If you didn’t grow up in the charismatic tradition, this might sound funny or strange to you. But just as there are forms of clear legalism within fundamentalism or more Reformed traditions, there’s just as much room for it in charismatic traditions.

As I thought more about this passage, my greatest fear grew to be to have the door to heaven shut in my face because Christ never knew me. This meant I had to let some serious walls down, ones I didn’t even know were there.

This meant I had to acknowledge that I’d been with the Pharisees every time they came around with the “right answers,” and Jesus called them out for lacking knowledge and love of God.

Or the older brother in the Prodigal Son story who “did all the right things” and believed he deserved more honor than his deviant brother because at least he had always been “good and right.” 

I would be remiss to believe that I am unlike them — better, more righteous than the Pharisee, than the older brother. The Pharisee and the older brother are a part of me.

When Jesus told Peter that he would deny Him three times during His trial, before the rooster crowed, who did Peter doubt? It was easier for Peter to doubt Jesus than it was to doubt himself — to look at himself as he really was and his tendency (which is also our tendency) to wander.

I vividly remember when I was in high school and in YWAM and there’d be some call to repentance — I would wrack my brain to see if I’d sinned recently, and I’d say to myself, “I don’t sin. I’m a good Christian. I don’t need to repent or ask for forgiveness.”

This narrative inhibited me from understanding my intrinsic need for a Savior — for the grace of God to ever become who I’m really supposed to be.

“Our true self is something we receive from God. Any other identity is of our own making and is an illusion. Knowing ourselves must therefore begin by knowing the self that is known by God. If God does not know us, we do not exist.”

The Gift of Being Yourself, David Benner

To be unknown by God is altogether too much privacy.

Thomas Merton

To be known by God means becoming exposed — seeing ourselves as we really are, and letting Him see us, too — and allowing the God who is love come so near to us while we sit in our exposure and give Him access to our whole selves, even the parts we’ve hidden away, so that He can love us back to our design. 

I think there had to have been some kind of “between moment” for Adam and Eve after they disobeyed God in the Garden and He sacrificed the first animal to provide them with a better covering for their nakedness than the fig leaves they’d chosen: they had to undress and look at themselves before they could put on His sacrifice.

They had to see themselves as they really were — the consequences and wages of sin already taking effect in their bodies, minds, souls, and the world, no justification of their own enough to cover them –— before they could be clothed in this life that God sacrificed and offered for them

A prelude to the Death and Life of Christ sacrificed and offered for us, once and for all.

I hide from myself because the reality of that depravity that’s lived in me is so tragic; it costs another’s life to cover my depravity.

This is an ongoing, twofold invitation. Be exposed, and let God do what only He can do.