The Divine Self
The beams of glory come from God, are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and he is the beginning, and the middle, and the end.
– Jonathan Edwards, The End for Which God Created the World
“We live in a culture of selfism—a culture that puts tremendous emphasis on self, on self-care and self-display.”
– David Brooks
During our road trip last summer, we listened to the Frozen II soundtrack nonstop (literally, nonstop). There is one line from the song “Show Yourself” that always sends shivers down my spine (spoiler alert?): “you are the one you’ve been waiting for / all of my life / all of your life”—for one thing, it’s a breathtaking musical climax. But it’s also an eerily pithy summary of the lesson behind much of what our children watch: you are the answer you’ve been searching for. Meaning is found within. You define truth. True freedom is the freedom to be whoever you want to be.
In his book The Second Mountain, David Brooks describes what he calls our “culture of hyper-individualism.” It is a moral ecology, he proposes, built on these basic assumptions:
the buffered self: each individual should live as they want as long as they don’t interfere with others’ rights to live as they please. Ideal society is one in which “people live unencumbered but together, each doing their own thing.”
the god within: the goal of life is to “achieve self-actualization and self-fulfillment.” To better express and “find” your unique self. “The ultimate source of authority is found inside.”
the privatization of meaning: it’s a mistake to accept received ideas; you have to come up with your own values and worldview.
the dream of total freedom: formation and flourishing happens in freedom, not obligation (to family, heritage, faith)
the centrality of accomplishment: you are measured not by conforming to code, or the “thickness” of relationships, but by what you have individually achieved. It’s okay to be self-oriented; “promoting the self is the prime mission.”
This moral ecology is what I’ve come to think of as “the divine self,” and the more I look, the more I see it everywhere. It is there in our selfie-culture and the statistical rise of narcissism in recent decades. It is the underlying clarion call behind the messages of many popular speakers and authors (some of whom I enjoy and gain insights from myself). It is present in the post-modern emphasis on self-written narrative as ultimate truth. It is played out in how we conceive of community and how we define success for our children.
There are problems that can emerge from all this, such as the logical inconsistency of hewing to self-determined moralism in some behaviors but universal moral codes in others, or the confusion of being told to, as Brooks puts it, “figure it out yourself based on no criteria outside of yourself.” We often fail when it comes to reaching our own standards of perfection, overcoming our own addictions and shames, or truly sacrificing our own interests for the sake of others.
The Bible operates on a completely different paradigm: what we need is revelation, intervention. Meaning cannot be ultimately derived from within but must be received from without. We are measured by grace, not accomplishment. Freedom is to discover the guidelines we were made to live by.
“Scripture describes man as so curved in upon himself that he uses not only physical but even spiritual goods for his own purposes and in all things seeks only himself.”
But the culture of the divine self can be so strong at times that it functionally seeps into our faith. We attend church on Sundays but define how we want to live the rest of the week. We evangelize by playing towards others’ “felt needs” rather than pray for revelation of their real ones. We have consumeristic approaches to church, shopping for services that meet our tastes or preferences. We read the Bible to get what we want out of it. We become frustrated if God does not answer our prayers in the way and time we determine is best. We embrace God not for his own presence and glory, but for the benefits he gives us. God becomes, not so much an opiate for the masses or a crutch for the weak, but another tool in our worship of self. And in the end, we suffer from the same inconsistencies, confusion, and failures that are found in the culture around us.
What we are doing is embracing God for the benefits that he gives, not for his own glory. And this is not a true embracing of God at all, but an embracing of the self. The foundation of our joy is not God, but ourselves. The source of our delight is not God, but ourselves. The crux of our hope is not God, but ourselves. The source of our power is not God, but ourselves.
To begin to embrace God for his own sake, and not as an extension of self-worship, is nothing short of a regeneration, a transformation, a new birth. It cannot be “achieved” just as an infant cannot achieve its own birth. It is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, creating in us the capacity and desire to savor the glory of God, bringing us more and more into a reality in which it becomes obvious that it is not about us or what we need at all.
