The human ego will take credit for any­thing it thinks will make it look bet­ter and deny any­thing that might cast a shadow on it. It over-estimates its power and impor­tance. Most of all, it takes credit for things that it does not know that it is not actu­ally doing. The debate that has raged in my soul lately has been one that totally calls my ego into ques­tion: What things hap­pen because of me and what things hap­pen in spite of me? Put another way: Could it be that God and the uni­verse work more through me than because of me?

I hes­i­tate want­ing to know the answer to that. It could be that it is a ninety-ten split in favor of my just being the pas­sive observer. Gifts are given not cre­ated. We receive them, and then it is up to us to use or bury them. Therein lies the real respon­si­bil­ity. Do I use prop­erly what I have been given? Another haunt­ing ques­tion is: Where did I get the idea that any of this is about me?

I would like to extend this prin­ci­ple on a grand scale: To what level are coun­tries and eras the result of human efforts alone? Are we not merely the expres­sion of some­thing greater? A national ego works like that of any indi­vid­ual. We imag­ine that we have defined our­selves and resist any­thing that is not the result of our own efforts.

As my inner sage pro­gres­sively comes to life, I see my life more as an avenue than the vehi­cle. The story is about God. We are just the sup­port­ing cast — maybe even lit­tle more than props. Our “orig­i­nal” lines may not have been orig­i­nated solely by us at all. The over­all script is greater than our lit­tle part. The drama is more inter­est­ing when I focus on the lead player and not my lit­tle lines. It is actu­ally quite a big show span­ning eons of time and involv­ing the entire universe.

There is great con­so­la­tion in real­iz­ing it is through rather than because. There is more to see when I get out of the way.

Twenty-one years seems like an awfully long time to become an adult. Full adult­hood is really closer to thirty-five. A per­son spends half a life­time get­ting into the game. That seems like a real waste. You don’t really catch what is going on until you are fifty. By the time you are sixty you have about fig­ured out the game of life and its cycles. When you hit sev­enty you can phi­los­o­phize about it. You finally mas­ter it and it is over. You die.

The rea­son that seems a lit­tle grim is that it is based on com­mon myths. One of those myths is that this is the one and only world — the myth that it all begins and ends on planet earth. Another myth is that of progress. Yes, you go through devel­op­men­tal stages. The lit­tle girl that makes mud pies even­tu­ally makes a Ger­man Choco­late Cake. Mod­ern and Post­mod­ern peo­ple are forward-looking at the expense of see­ing that per­fec­tion is at birth. Pure faith is dur­ing child­hood. Our purest essence is before we go out into the world.

“Unless you become like lit­tle chil­dren you will not enter the king­dom…” are the haunt­ing words of Jesus, spo­ken to adults that despised child­hood and wor­shipped adult spir­i­tual demise. We have the process back­wards. It is the inno­cence of the child, not the ways of the world that serve us best. Heaven is more the child inside than the man­sion in the sky. Devel­op­men­tal myths are tainted by our tech­no­logic world. We do not go from sim­ple to com­plex as much as we go from pure to cor­rupt. The body begins to turn on you about half-way through life. Ever notice that there just are not many sev­enty year old pro­fes­sional foot­ball play­ers still on the field?

The progress in process that lasts for­ever may just be the exact oppo­site of what you think is hap­pen­ing. It is no acci­dent that those liv­ing the longest seem to regress back to child­hood. The end is the begin­ning. The road between is a loop. Per­fec­tion is some­thing we have along. It appears to dis­ap­pear and then reap­pear. We live from trust to trust. Inde­pen­dence is the illu­sion between two states of helplessness.

Who you are right now, deep down inside, before you ever learned to read waits patiently while you learn some lessons from life. Don’t be sur­prised, after you die, that you sud­denly feel like a child again. The process in progress is really a progress in process. We are for­ever chil­dren loved by an eter­nal heav­enly parent.

Chris­tian­ity was designed to be an under­ground move­ment to counter what Paul called “the pow­ers of this dark world and…the spir­i­tual forces of evil in the heav­enly realms.” It is not exactly a secret soci­ety but it func­tions much like one. The insti­tu­tional church, through the ages, has often been a rub­ber stamp for some of the evil forces, but at its core it is the oppo­site. Denom­i­na­tions tend to line up along polit­i­cal lines of the major par­ties, but only to their embar­rass­ment in the end. The true church is never com­man­deered for any polit­i­cal pur­pose. It func­tions as antag­o­nist to the sta­tus quo. It is the wild card in his­tory that ulti­mately deter­mines the out­come of the game.

At any given minute, the state can take all church prop­er­ties, and has done so in the past. It can imprison and even kill church mem­bers, and often has through the cen­turies, but it can­not stop the call­ing by God of the com­mon per­son to be light in a dark world. The inevitabil­ity of phys­i­cal death stops all dem­a­gogues in their tracks sooner or later. It is not about who con­trols the masses but whose side you are on in the strug­gle of good and evil. Pos­i­tive spir­i­tu­al­ity can­not be stopped. Light inevitably over­comes darkness.

I live with a cer­tain detach­ment toward it all. I know I am here for only so many decades. Feath­er­ing my nest here is done a bit min­i­mally. The winds of time even­tu­ally blow the nest away. Com­fort and worldly secu­rity are both ter­ri­bly tem­po­rary. I look at political/social agen­das and just smile. They have no final con­trol over me. For those that under­stand the call­ing, the smile is the same. The peo­ple in the trance around us are fight­ing for a world they can­not ulti­mately have, while we are receiv­ing a bet­ter world that can never be taken away.

Liv­ing spir­i­tu­ally under­ground means hav­ing it all by hav­ing noth­ing. It means reign­ing by serv­ing and win­ning by los­ing. Jesus is the epi­cen­ter of the para­dox and its cham­pion. The smile of spir­i­tual resolve is con­ta­gious. The threats and heavy-handedness of insti­tu­tions are met with a grin. They can take what you have but never who you are. You have gone under­ground await­ing resurrection.

Take your ego off the line. Get it out of the stack of life’s poker chips. Take it off the wall of your office and out of your bank account. Detach it from your street address, your age, your mar­i­tal sta­tus, your looks, your per­son­al­ity, your his­tory and even your gen­der. Your self-esteem, your sense of self, your self worth, and all you are can­not be attached to any­thing you can­not totally con­trol. Since you can­not have total con­trol of any­thing but your view­point, work on that. Do not define your­self by any­thing that can be taken away.

This is one thing that is not eas­ier said than done. Your essen­tial self is more than happy to unplug from all of the expec­ta­tions you have placed on it (or allowed oth­ers to place on it). You are of infi­nite worth just as you are. That worth is robbed by our nar­cis­sism, greed, fear, com­pe­ti­tion, social dis­tinc­tions, and dis­trust of life. There is a core self that has a value beyond the entire uni­verse (accord­ing to Jesus any­way). There is no bar­gain­ing chip as big as your eter­nal self. Do not trade it in for tem­po­rary applause.

Self-worth is some­thing you never have to earn. It is more than your ego. In fact, it can be crushed by your our out-of-control ego demands. When you dis­cover that divine core and truly con­nect with it, you will dis­cover that it is uncon­di­tional love in its purest man­i­fes­ta­tion. It is who you were most as a very small child and what you responded to best before you fell into the world as it is. In all due respect to our insti­tu­tions, the fall from the Gar­den of Eden is very much the first day of school. From that day on, we are pit­ted against our­selves, oth­ers, face­less stan­dards, and a world that for­ever demands more than we can give. Its keynote is per­for­mance not love. In the name of com­pe­tence it set­tles for marks on paper at the cost of con­so­la­tion for the heart. Our careers are but exten­sions of the same tradeoff.

In the cycle of life, if you are for­tu­nate enough to have invested in wis­dom, you return to the real­iza­tion of what you knew and who you were before the world got you. You can fin­ish your years on earth bathed in pure light and more aware of the con­nec­tion with the source of love — who is per­fect love. You can fin­ish tak­ing it all off the line and just be. You can sit and watch the sun­set with bills unpaid and errands not run. For you, the world and all of its cares is pass­ing away. You are com­ing back to your eter­nal center.