I was out of hope.

At 24, I knew I had no more backyard left to bury my guilt. Though I didn’t consider myself bad, I knew I was a failure at being good.

I’d come to realize that attaining self-directed “goodness” is a useless strategy.

Having grown up with a German Catholic heritage, my perspective on life in general centered on get-it-done, follow-the-rules and do-it-right-or-don’t-do-it-at-all thinking. Religiously, I’d assumed God operated from this same “be good” approach, so I worked hard to be good (enough) and put my all chips on the hopes that he’d grade on a curve.

Uh, … no.

So here I sat, a hopeless failure at being good. But hope came in a flood to my hopelessness when I read Galatians 2.21:

“If we could be made right (a.k.a. being good) by following the rules, then Christ died for nothing.”
(my paraphrase)

I didn’t understand it, but I knew it was true—at levels I didn’t know existed and couldn’t explain. Instantly, my world went from black-and-white to full color. I didn’t know what to do, so without thinking I stood up with my arms raised and shouted to God, “You got me!”

I left behind the idea of achieving self-directed “goodness” … or so I thought.

The Rest of the Story

My journey took a hard right turn into newness of life; wonderful beyond description. “Born again,” the Bible called it.

But as renewing and transformational as it was, I still couldn’t shake an old self-perception of being a failure. For 40 years—including a seminary education and 15 years of vocational ministry experience—I lived with the familiar nagging of accusation and doubt that I didn’t quite measure up.

I knew I was saved, but I viewed myself as a saved failure. I assumed it was my “flesh”1 influencing me, or that it was spiritual attack from the enemy—neither of which, frankly, offered much freedom.

I wondered what it meant to be “free indeed” (John 8.36). I resigned myself to the belief that this indeed-level freedom would eventually come in heaven.

Looking back, I see now what I didn’t then: I believed Jesus had forgiven me, but I still interpreted myself through the same old lens. I’d embraced being a “new creation” in Christ (2 Corinthians 5.17), but held on to the one thing my salvation wouldn’t change: my old identity.

Unknowingly, I was living with two active and opposing perceptions of who I was.

Two Selves?

On paper, having two active self-perceptions may sound like some kind of schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder (DID). But it’s not.

At the core of these two self-perception options is one central question: What do we believe about being a dependent being? Fundamentally, ontologically, are we relying on God to define us, or are we self-defining?

God created us to “image” him, to be utterly dependent upon him. However, sin involves the inherited belief that we are independent: that we have the ability to generate our own identity, meaning, purpose and passion from within ourselves.

The implication of this dependence/independence issue is profound: We don’t have the ability to 1) define who we are, 2) make sense of our reality, 3) understand our purpose or 4) generate a holy passion for living out that purpose in God-aligned ways.

According to Scripture, we never were meant to.

God designed us to receive all these from him—a concept Jesus reiterated to his disciples, which he described as “abiding”:

“… apart from me you can do nothing.”
(John 15.7)

In my case, I was operating (unconsciously and unawares) from my old identity: independently trying to live out my new dependent identity in Christ. It sounds silly to write it that way, but that’s what was happening.

I was living out the belief that I could (with the help of the Holy Spirit) achieve self-directed “Jesus-ness”2—which, of course, is impossible; nonsensical. In truth, I was failing … at something that no human can ever achieve.

All this contributed to that unshakeable nagging and doubt.

• The enemy was telling me I was failing because I was a failure—a lie that I accepted all too frequently.

• The Spirit of God was telling me I was failing because my belief about who I was (and who God is) was unrenewed—a truth I’d never explored.

My understanding of what Jesus had saved me from was too narrow.

Problem: Our Limited Perspective on Sin & the Gospel

Western patterns of thinking often narrow our perception of the gospel. We typically view sin and salvation through rational, logical and sequential lenses. Through these lenses:

• “Sin” = doing bad things

• “Gospel” = the transaction of Jesus’ death as payment for “sin”

• “Belief” = the “gospel” content that we grasp intellectually

“Salvation” becomes accepting the gift of justification (where Jesus’ death pays the penalty for sin), while holding on to our old, independent identity.

We add Jesus to our old life.

This perspective misses the broader and more holistic contexts of identity, restoration and reconciliation.

Solution: “Sin” as separation & “Gospel” as Reconciliation

In my last article—What’s Actually Broken in Us—I laid out how the Fall didn’t just cause humanity to begin doing bad things, it disconnected us from the source of life itself. Living in full dependence on God was replaced with a rebellious, independent identity that distanced us from him.

So sin isn’t just unrighteous behavior and being in a state of unholiness; it’s separation from the source of all righteousness and holiness.

Seeing sin as separation helps us see how the gospel’s over-arching emphasis is reconciliation. The gospel reconnects us to God. And since our independent identity is what separated us from him, it can’t contribute to our reconciliation.

So instead, God gives us a new identity—one being conformed into the image of Jesus.

In other words: When we trust in Jesus, God doesn’t upgrade our old self. He gives us a new self, and calls us to live in it.

Practicing New Identity: Denying, Putting Off & Putting On

This is why Jesus said:

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
(Mark 8.34)

My experience is that we usually interpret “deny ourselves” to mean penitence or self-sacrifice, to deprive, loathe or shame ourselves. Or even worse, to believe that we’re unworthy.

Which misses Jesus’ point altogether.

He goes on to clarify what he means:

“For whoever wants to save their [self/soul]3 will lose it, but whoever loses their [self/soul] for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
(Mark 8.35-37)

Read these verses again … but this time from the perspective that Jesus is talking about the two options of self-perception—who we think we are and who we want to be—which is either …

• Our old autonomous, independent self, or …

• The new dependent self that God created us to be—who he wants to live with to accomplish his kingdom purposes.

Jesus’ point is that reconciliation with God requires abandoning the old independent identity that separated us from him.4 It means losing sight of who we were, shutting ourselves off from its independent interests in order to accept and embrace our dependency to God in Christ.

Paul describes this as “putting off” the old self and “putting on” the new.

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
(Col. 3.9-10)

You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
(Eph. 4.22-24)

Holding on to the old self is the futile thinking habits of being separated from God. It makes people darkened in their understanding, ignorant and hardened in their heart, making them insensitive to God.

They become increasingly insensitive to God’s presence and influence. So their only way forward is to give themselves over to ever-increasing sensuality, which leads to over-indulgence, impurity and greed—which is idolatry.5

For Paul, this putting off and on is an intentional thought habit believers should lean into. He says to set our minds on things above, not on earthly things (Col. 3.1). We’re told to count our old self as dead to us, since we’re no longer bound to it (Rom. 6.8-14).

Implications

There are several significant implications we need to consider.

Misplaced Trust

We can’t live “free indeed” with two competing self-perceptions. Accepting our new dependent identity without also denying our old, independent self confuses what we trust.6

Sometimes we trust God. Other times we trust ourselves. And even when we trust God, it’s often partial and selective—we aren’t fully convinced he’s trustworthy.

Becoming Double-Souled

This contributes to us being “double-minded” (James 1.8, 4.8)—a term that literally means “double-souled” (“minded” is psychos, the same word translated as “life” and “soul” in Mark 8.35-37).

The result is instability. We trust God for eternal salvation (conveniently, since it’s outside our control anyway), while struggling to trust him for today.

Self-Identifying as Slaves

Perhaps the most insidious and indicting implication is that trusting ourselves means choosing to live under our old self’s power and influence. Though free, we prefer slavery.

This is an identity statement: Instead of living as free-indeed beings, we self-identify as slaves.

Putting On into Practice

I’m choosing the alternative. I’m setting my heart and mind on heavenly things, and learning to deny the old self’s influence over me.

In Jesus’ words, I’m losing my identity—in order to gain it.

Being a disciple is less about becoming a better version of ourselves, and more about learning to live from the identity God gave us in Christ. Let’s do this, together, and then make disciples that do the same.

Peace be with you …

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Footnotes:

We all know that there’s more to life than we usually experience. It’s a steady awareness that life was meant to feel … more. More whole, grounded and alive than it often does.

This awareness immediately drives us to ask: What can we do about it? But although this is a natural question, it’s unfortunately the wrong question—it assumes we already understand the problem.

“What can we do?” is a strategy question. And if we haven’t identified the actual problem, no amount of strategy will help us.1

And it most likely will hurt us—especially when it comes to making disciples. Because the church won’t have anything to offer a world longing for more if it has no solution itself.

We can’t fix a problem we haven’t identified.

What’s Really Broken?

This is where it gets a bit tricky. Because our Western Christian orientation quickly blames sin as the problem, and just as quickly points to the gospel as the solution.

This isn’t wrong, but it is too narrow in scope. After all, if we’re so settled on sin as the problem and the gospel as the solution, why does our longing persist?

Here’s the reality: While sin is indeed the problem (and the gospel is indeed the solution), we don’t fully comprehend the scope of the problem of sin, and what sin actually broke.

And because we don’t know what’s actually broken, we don’t understand what the gospel actually fixes.

Sin As Separation

Our longing for more in life reflects a reality Scripture describes in simple but far-reaching terms: separation.

The Fall didn’t just cause humanity to begin doing bad things; it disconnected us from the source of life itself. Living in full dependence on God was replaced with distance from him.

That separation existentially reshaped us. Rest became striving, peace became uncertainty and openness became vulnerability. Life’s “normal” patterns trace back to that shift, even if we don’t recognize it:

• We try to secure our own sense of worth.

• We manage outcomes we can’t control.

• We search for meaning in temporal things.

Defining sin as “falling short of God’s glory”—our typical Western definition—turns our focus toward behavior: our failure to live up to God’s standard of holiness. But defining sin as “separation from God” reveals that our unrighteous behavior is an outcome that flows from something deeper.

Sin isn’t just unrighteous behavior and a state of unholiness; it’s separation from the source of all righteousness and holiness.2

Identity: What We Were Made For (and What Changed)

In my previous article—You Were Designed to Depend—we explored what it means to be created as dependent beings. We were designed to receive our identity, meaning and purpose from God, not to generate them from within. That dependence wasn’t a limitation; it was the structure of life itself.

When separation occurred, our identity shifted with it.

• Instead of receiving who we are, we try to define ourselves.

• Instead of living from connection, we live from independence.

That shift didn’t just change what we do; it changed what we believe about ourselves. We’ve learned to live as if we direct our life, expecting God to help us be who we want to be—even as we feel the weight of sustaining it.

Reconciliation: What the Gospel Fixes

If separation is our problem, then the solution cannot simply be our improvement.

So the gospel addresses the root issue by restoring what was broken: our connection to God. Through Jesus, reconciliation with God becomes reality—not only as an eternal hope, but as a present truth; not only as status and classification, but as relationship.

This is so much more than being forgiven of our sins. It means being brought near, reconnected to the source of life itself (Ephesians 2.13-18).

A New Identity to Receive
(and Freedom From the Old One)

Being connected to God doesn’t upgrade our identity; it gives us an entirely new identity (2 Corinthians 5.11-21). Scripture describes living in this new identity as “putting off the old self” and “putting on the new” (see Ephesians 4.22-24, Colossians 3.5-10).

To receive our new and dependent identity, we must actively abandon our old, independent one. This is a mix of paradoxical actions:

• Letting go of our right to live independently and autonomously (literally “self-rule”)—something we’ve done all our lives …

in order to …

• Grab hold of a life of dependency and letting someone else direct us (specifically, the Holy Spirit)—something life and the world have conditioned us to be afraid of.

But this raises an important—and often confusing—question: What happens to our old identity when we let it go?

A complicating factor is that getting our new identity doesn’t eliminate the old one. Romans 6 confirms that in our baptism with Christ, it was our old identity’s power over us that died, not the identity itself. We’re no longer bound to live from the old self (though it still compels us to).3

In other words, we now are free to practice a new kind of responsibility: to choose which self-perception we will live from—independent, or dependent.

Collective Identity: Restored Together

Another part of our problem is that sin not only separated us from God, it separated us from each other.

Our new identity addresses this problem because it’s simultaneously individual and collective. Scripture consistently describes us in communal terms: a body, a family, a household, a people, a kingdom. We are individual reflections of Jesus, and at the same time members together of that body.

So our new identity not only eliminates our independence from God, it eliminates our independence from each other. We are uniquely distinct from each other, yet intimately interdependent with each other. We reflect our triune God in that we who are many are also one—and neither our individuality or our unity is compromised.

The writer of Hebrews captures this reality in a way that challenges our assumptions:

Let this sink in: The heroes of the faith that preceded us are made complete through our collective practice of faith today.

The gospel isn’t manifested in isolation, as some kind of individual transaction. We’ve been brought into something that’s bigger than us: An identity that’s interwoven, collectively and across time.

We are the body of Christ.

Where Do We Go From Here?

So … We now have our new identity—but we still live with the pull of the old one. So how do we actually live from what’s now true?

My next article will address how to practically live out the gospel of our reconciliation by putting it into practice. Specifically, this involves putting off the old self and putting on our new one that looks like Jesus.

Peace be with you …

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Footnotes:

You weigh your options, and make your decisions. You define your path. Your create your strategies and carry responsibility for what your life becomes.

That’s normal. It’s what you’ve been taught.

Especially in the West—and even more so in the U.S.—we’ve been shaped by a story that prizes independence, self-sufficiency and personal agency. We’re taught to stand on our own, figure things out and make something of ourselves.

There’s discipline in that. Initiative. Responsibility.

But there’s also something underneath it that we rarely stop to question. Because even when things are going well, there’s often a subtle tension running beneath the surface. A low-grade anxiety. A sense that something’s slightly off—even when we can’t quite explain why.

We carry more than we expected to carry. We feel responsible for more than we were designed to manage. We worry about failure. We’ve lived it so long it feels natural.

But what if it isn’t? What if independence isn’t just a cultural value—but a misalignment with how we were created? What if the tension we feel isn’t random?

What if it’s the result of trying to live independently … in a reality that was never designed for it?

We Were Never Meant to Be Self-Generating

The opening pages of Scripture present a reality that’s both simple and profound. God creates humanity in his image—the imago Dei—not as isolated individuals, but as a unified humanity that reflects him.

This isn’t just a statement about value or dignity. It’s a statement about function: Human beings were created to reflect God, not to generate their own identity.

But that’s not how we tend to think about ourselves.

We often assume identity is something we discover within—something we define, refine and project outward. Something we aspire to and build over time.

The biblical picture turns that assumption upside down.

We were designed to receive our identity, meaning, purpose and passion from outside ourselves—from God. Not with God’s help. Not partially. Not independently.

Completely dependent.

As Richard Lints puts it, our identity as image bearers is inherently dependent: An image has no identity apart from what it reflects. But he goes further, clarifying what that actually means for how we live:

“People, who are created as divine image bearers, are also capable of reflecting the created order. Thus humans may be said to have a reflective identity. In some sense they find meaning outside themselves by virtue of what they reflect.”1

That phrase—reflective identity—gets at the heart of it:

• We don’t design ourselves, God does.

• We don’t generate meaning; we reflect it.

• We don’t originate purpose, we receive it.

• We don’t define ourselves from within, we become who we are by who we’re connected to.

Which leads to something we don’t naturally want to accept: We don’t have the capacity to define ourselves independently.

We were never meant to.

Dependence Isn’t a Weakness—It’s Reality

If that feels unsettling, you’re not alone. Dependence sounds like vulnerability. Exposure. Risk. It feels like losing control.

In many ways, it is.

But it’s not a flaw in the system—it is the system.

Jesus makes this explicit in one of his simplest and most familiar illustrations:

“I am the vine; you are the branches … apart from me you can do nothing.”
(John 15.5)

We tend to hear this in terms of Western interpretative themes. Like productivity, for example: as if Jesus is saying “You won’t be very effective without me.” Another is intimacy, as if we’ll experience higher levels of connection with him by emotionally drawing near to Jesus.

Both of these interpretations miss the boat, however. They end up sustaining a false perspective that Jesus is some kind of superpower, or on-call genie; a lifeline when we need him most.

Jesus is actually saying something far more fundamental: A branch doesn’t just struggle to produce fruit on its own—it has no life in itself at all. It doesn’t even qualify as a branch when it’s disconnected.

Picture the contrast. A branch filled with grapes—alive, full, fruitful—isn’t impressive because of what it produces on its own. It’s impressive because of what it’s connected to. The life of the vine is flowing through it, producing something the branch could never generate by itself.

Now picture a branch cut off from that vine. It may still look like a branch, but it’s already lost its identity. No matter how much effort it exerts, it can’t produce fruit. Not because it’s trying poorly—but because it’s no longer connected to the source of life.

That’s not just an agricultural metaphor. It’s an identity statement. We don’t occasionally depend on God. We are dependent, as an existential reality.

The only question is whether we recognize it—or try to live as if it’s not true.

The Kind of Life We Can Barely Imagine

Before anything went wrong—before sin, shame and fear—humanity lived in this state of dependence. And they weren’t even aware of it.

Adam and Eve weren’t trying to depend on God. They weren’t striving for it or working to maintain it. It was simply reality. They lived in complete trust, with no competing allegiances and no internal conflict.

They were both fully known and fully exposed—“naked and without shame.” There was no fear of loss, no instinct for self-protection; no anxiety about the future. They had no need to generate their own identity or meaning, because everything they needed was already being received.

They lacked nothing.

Perhaps most striking of all, they had no awareness that independence was even an option. That’s how complete their dependence was.

Why This Feels So Foreign to Us

That kind of life feels almost impossible for us to imagine—not because it’s unrealistic, but because it’s unfamiliar.

We live in a world where independence is assumed. We plan our lives, manage our outcomes, hedge against risk and protect ourselves—physically, emotionally, relationally, financially. Even (or particularly) spiritually.

Underneath the ebbs and flows of life, we retain control of our identity. We see ourselves as fundamentally self-directed people who include God, rather than dependent beings whose first belief is that we receive everything from him.

This is where the distinction becomes more than theoretical. Do we see ourselves as independent beings who occasionally depend on God? Or as dependent beings who have no identity apart from him?

This isn’t nuance. It’s the difference between managing a relationship with God and being defined by it.

The Weight of That Choice

This is where the tension shows up.

Because if we’re honest, most of us don’t want to be dependent. We might say we do, or believe we should be. But the idea of receiving our identity, meaning, purpose and passion only from God can be threatening.

What happens to our control? Our plans? What happens to the version of ourselves we’ve worked so hard to build?

These aren’t abstract concerns. They expose something deeper: We don’t just struggle to practice dependence—we struggle to desire it.

And that resistance matters. Because if dependence is who we were created to be, then our hesitation reveals how deeply we’ve come to identify ourselves as independent.

Why This Matters More Than We Think

At the same time, there’s something in us that resists dismissing this entirely.

We feel it in moments we don’t fully understand—when life slows down just enough for us to notice that something’s missing. It’s that subtle, persistent sense that we’re carrying more than we were meant to carry; that we’re responsible for more than we were designed to manage.

We’ve learned to live with it, so it feels normal. But what if that tension is the result of trying to function independently in a reality that was designed for dependence?

That possibility shifts how we approach everything. Because it means the issue isn’t primarily what we’re doing—it’s how we’re existing. So the invitation in front of us isn’t to become more disciplined or even more “spiritual.” It’s to reconsider something far more foundational: what it means to be human.

This invitation is about shifting away from seeing ourselves as independent individuals, who generate our identity and meaning from within and then incorporate God into our lives. It’s about seeing ourselves as dependent beings that reflect what we’ve received and live together as extensions of him in our world.

That’s not an easy shift to explore. It presses against instincts we’ve relied on for most of our lives. It challenges assumptions that feel obvious—even necessary. But if dependence is who we were created to be, then this isn’t optional. It’s reality—whether we embrace it or not.

And that raises a simple but weighty question: Are we willing to explore what it means to live like it’s true?

A Simple Practice: Relearning Dependence

Before moving on, it’s worth slowing down enough to engage this personally—not as a concept, but as a reality.

Set aside 5–10 minutes with no agenda and no checklist. Sit quietly and ask:

“God, what does it mean that I was created to receive all of my identity, meaning, purpose and passion from you?”

Pay attention to what surfaces—not just your thoughts, but your reactions.

• Where do you feel resistance?

• Where do you feel curiosity?

• Where do you feel discomfort?

Don’t rush to resolve it. Just notice it.

Then ask:

“What part of me still wants to define myself on my own?”

Let whatever comes to mind surface without forcing or controlling it—and certainly without judging it.

Then move to the next question:

“What would it look like for me to depend on you—not occasionally, but completely?”

You may not have clear answers, and that’s okay. This isn’t about solving something. It’s about becoming aware of something that’s already true.

Finally, ask:

“How can I pass this on to others, and make disciples that receive their identity, meaning, purpose and passion from Jesus?”

This is the ultimate outcome of being dependent: being able to reproduce this same identity in others, for the sake of the gospel and the kingdom.

Final Thoughts

We don’t become dependent.

We are dependent.

The question is whether we’re willing to see it—and explore what that means. Because if this is who we were made to be, then everything about how we live may need to change.

Peace be with you …

Leave a comment

Footnotes

“I don’t care about knowing how my brain works … I just think.”

This was one church leader’s initial reaction to my content on the church’s thought habits. “I have to fight off the urge not to care.”

I appreciated his transparency … and I understand his point: If we’re satisfied with how we think, why take the time to check under the hood of our thinking?

But that reaction actually proves the point—because the way we think has already shaped what and how we want to engage. Saul, Israel’s first king, is a sad but real life example of this.

Note: This is a paid-subscriber follow-up to a previous article, The Lens We Don’t Know We’re Looking Through. It provides a biblical example of the disastrous effects of false paradigms.

Subscribe if you want to have access to this article (and future articles like it).

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In the last article, The Unseen Thinking Drift, I explored how Western culture has been shaped by a subtle but powerful shift in our thinking habits—a drift toward left-hemisphere’s rational processes, and away from the right hemisphere’s intuitive perspective.

What if that same shift has quietly made its way into the church? What if our environment has changed the way we’ve learned to think about faith?

If we’re the proverbial frog in the kettle, when do we recognize that the ever-warming water we’re swimming in is killing us?

Could we even recognize it—given that our ability to recognize is the thing that’s shifted?

A Familiar Voice

It’s telling that most of us know the famous line from the poem Invictus, even if we don’t know where it came from:

“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”

This image resonates with Westerners. It portrays the values of individual grit and the pursuit of achievement—indeed, in the U.S., these are iconic national virtues.

Yet this creates a tension: What happens when a culture that worships independence shapes a church called to dependence?

The Shift in How We Think About Faith

Faith in Jesus is built on dependent abiding, trust and submission. Jesus’ words are direct: “Apart from me you can do nothing.”

Yet the church in the West shifted from this dependent abiding—not in our stated beliefs, but in how we process and live those beliefs. We now predominantly approach faith as something to understand, define and apply.

Of course, understanding, defining and applying aren’t wrong. But when they take the lead on faith, faith becomes less about trust and more about information and methodology. And since those produce results, they don’t feel like a departure. They actually feel like clarity and growth.

That we’re unalarmed at how easily this approach supports an independent, “master and captain” identity should tell us something.

The question is: Does it?

Losing Wisdom

This shift wasn’t a conscious decision to move away from God. It was, however, a lack of wisdom: We allowed ourselves to be conditioned by the world.

Embracing independence opened the door to loving the world’s thinking. Just as the Israelites intermarried with pagan wives and came to worship their gods, we intermarried our thought processes with the world’s. As a result, we now have come to think like the world.

So how did this happen?

The Cognitive Coup d’État

Imagine a wise leader of a country. She sees the big picture and knows what matters most. She is supported by a highly capable executive who organizes and executes plans. Over time, the executive becomes so effective that he begins to assume the authority of the leader he served. Others respond, seeming to affirm the exercise of authority as the right move.

But things eventually become unstable. His management lacks foresight. His leadership becomes reactionary and expedient. His decisions are based on retaining control. He becomes intolerant of perspectives that aren’t his, and suspicious of others’ motives. He tightens his inner circle to include only those who will unquestioningly obey him. Diplomacy suffers as relationships abroad grow competitive and combative. Ultimately, the citizens suffer most, as life becomes anxious, fragmented and individualistic.

His executive competencies—so capable in partnership with the wise leader—become incompetence at actually leading.

In a similar way, the part of our thinking designed to execute faith has taken the lead over the part designed to comprehend faith. What we can explain now feels more real than what we are called to trust; what we can manage feels more valuable than what we must receive.

The Drift Has a History

This shift made its way into the church gradually, shaped by the same forces that shaped Western culture as a whole. If we look for it, we can see the pattern across history:

• Centralization of authority under the bishops (2nd–3rd centuries)
  The bishops in the major cities began to mirror Rome’s leadership. They gained increased influence and reinforced hierarchy, positional authority and control.

• Council of Nicaea (AD 325)
  The first empire-wide council defined doctrine in a formal creed—centralizing, formalizing and enforcing doctrinal clarity (including excommunication for non-compliance). It was convened by the emperor (not the church).1

• Institutionalization of clergy ordination (4th century+)
  The division between clergy and laity becomes formalized, marking the boundary of authority and faith practice in the church.2

• Imperial alignment after Constantine (4th century+)
  The church became embedded with political and social power, normalizing institutional support and external authority.3

• Establishment of Empirical Christendom (4th-15th centuries)
  The church was established and the “gospel” was advanced through the exercise of social, political and military power.4

• Monasticism (4th century+)
  This was a reaction against the church’s institutional rigidity and perceived loss of genuine spirituality. Interestingly, Monasticism was largely set apart from the laity, who commonly regarded monks as spiritual guides and sought spiritual vitality through them by proxy.

• Scholasticism (5th-15th centuries)
  An educational approach that sought knowledge of God through logical analysis and disputation, emphasizing precision and intellectualism while deemphasizing deepening virtues and character.

• Humanism and the Renaissance (14th-16th centuries)
  Humanism emphasized human potential, individuality and human agency. The Renaissance advanced both humanism and scholasticism. It and revived classic literature and Greek philosophy, inspiring diplomacy, inductive reasoning, national identity, independence, individualism, intellectualism and spiritual freedom.

• Rise of scientific reasoning (early modern period)
  The systematic method of acquiring knowledge through methodical observation, skepticism, hypotheses and experimentation. Its acceptance strengthened the belief that truth is defined by what can be measured and explained, cementing the practical trust in rational analysis over intuition.

• Reformation (16th century)
  This was the broad response to the Catholic Church’s abuse of power and corrupt authority, as well as the recovery of the Scriptures as spiritually authoritative. Most of the reformers were operating from a humanistic mindset, and leveraged scientific reasoning in their interpretive approach.

• Denominationalism (16th century+)
  Following the Reformation, Protestant groups began distinguishing themselves from each other and separating over perceived doctrinal and interpretive issues, creating the proliferation of divided denominations that exist today.

• “I think, therefore I am” (16th century+)
  Rene Descartes’ famous quote becomes a defining statement in modern philosophy, and is widely recognized as the basis for understanding. Curiously, Descartes believed true knowledge is only available through radical doubt of self-existence and identity.5

• Enlightenment (17th–18th centuries)
  Based on humanism and scientific reasoning, this movement promoted individual liberty and judgment, religious tolerance and progress. It spawned the concepts of constitutional forms of government and eliminating state-enforced religion.

• New World expansion and colonization (16th–19th centuries)
  Separated groups took advantage of the opportunity to establish like-minded colonies apart from government authority. Kingdoms colonized (and exploited) other peoples to expand their influence (often in association with the church), to gain access to resources and export their way of life.

• Formation of the United States (18th century)
  Independence and the pursuit of self-determination became cultural virtues, and deeply shaped how faith is practiced.

• Industrial Revolution (18th–19th centuries)
  Efficiency and production-oriented output—along with the centralization of money and power—became dominant social and personal realities. It has drastically reshaped how people see their worth, value and contribution to society as a whole.

Admittedly, this might be painting with a broad historical brush. But my point is show how the church was largely reactive in all these social movements and philosophies.

It’s interesting to wonder, in these movements:

• What if the church had thought with the mind of Christ?

• What if we’d chosen meekness over power, or unity over division?

• What if we’d loved, instead of … not loved?

How might it have shaped human history?

The sad reality is that, more often than not, the church was influenced by society rather than being an influence. And so our thinking has been shaped by a world that increasingly trusts independence, the elevation of human reasoning, analysis, certainty and control.

What It’s Produced

So now, in the church, we see:

• An emphasis on knowing about God more than knowing God.

• A preference for teaching that explains rather than forms.

• A need for certainty, even where Scripture invites trust.

• Discomfort with mystery or unresolvable tension.

• A tendency to measure spirituality by activity and output.

• The belief that right methods produce right outcomes.

• A reliance on systems and strategy to produce spiritual growth.

• A subtle individualism that prioritizes personal interests over shared identity.

• A perception that the church is an organization, not a family.

At its core, this shift in thinking is about functional trust—what we’re actually trusting. The list above is the product of beliefs: We believe we are independent beings who partner with God, rather than dependent beings who live in and through him.

“I am the master of my fate …”

Even if we’d never say it, we live as if it’s true.

What Do We Do With This?

The goal is not to fix things ... yet.

The goal is to see, with spiritual eyes. To recognize that what feels normal may not actually be whole, and to sit with that long enough for it to surface what is true.

If there has indeed been a drift, then changing behavior without genuine repentance (a change of mind; changing the way our minds think) could actually be destructive.

This is ultimately heading toward identity transformation, toward examining the patterns we have inherited and the assumptions we have normalized.

And if we are willing to see it, it may lead us somewhere we’ve not yet been willing or able to go: Back to our original identity, where we all began.

Peace be with you …

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Footnotes:

In the last article, Your Faith and the Two Sides of Your Brain, we looked at how the brain focuses attention in two different ways—one intuitively, utilizing identity, trust, relationship and context, and the other rationally, utilizing analysis, clarity and control.

That distinction matters more than it might seem, because this difference in focus isn’t just personal—it’s cultural. And because it’s cultural, we’re being conditioned. We’ve been formed to think this way, together; over time, across generations and through the development of Western society itself.

If that’s true, then the way we think isn’t neutral and objective (though, ironically, it increasingly feels like it is). Remember the nature and impact of paradigms: Our thoughts shape what we see, what we trust—literally, our very perception of reality.

That leads to a question most of us don’t stop long enough to consider: What if the way we’ve been conditioned to think is quietly pulling us away from the kind of life—and the kind of faith—God intended for us? And what if that drift has been happening for, say ... 1,800+ years?

This article is about making that drift visible.

What Feels Normal

If the idea of “cultural drift” feels abstract, it becomes clearer when you look at how we actually move through everyday life. Consider, for example …

• How we engage with information. We scroll, react and form opinions quickly. We rarely pause long enough to sit with something, turn it over or consider what we might be missing. Reflection feels inefficient and unnecessary, and slowing down feels unproductive. When we do engage, it often becomes polarized—less about understanding what’s true and more about taking a position.

• How we engage with attention. We expect immediacy. We grow uncomfortable with ambiguity and patience. We prefer microwaving our thoughts instead of crock-potting them. We embrace the clear, explicit and definitive—even when reality isn’t.

In the process, we aren’t just consuming information; we’re being shaped by the way we consume it. Consider that, historically, commodities were things like land, energy and goods. Today, the most valuable commodity is your attention. Entire systems are designed to own it, shape it and exploit it.1

This isn’t just about distraction; it’s about formation.

A Pattern Beneath the Surface

These patterns aren’t random. They point to something deeper—a consistent way of approaching the world that has become normal for us.

In the framework from Your Faith and the Two Sides of Your Brain, this is what happens when the left hemisphere begins to take the lead on our thinking. It’s exceptionally good at narrowing focus, isolating details, creating categories and producing certainty. It gives us precision, language, systems and control. It allows us to analyze, define and act with confidence.

But without the right hemisphere’s input, the left hemisphere tends to reduce what it encounters into parts. It prefers certainty over mystery, answers over comprehending and efficiency over depth. When that mode of thinking becomes dominant at a cultural level, it begins to shape not just how we see—but what we see.

What It Produces

A culture formed this way will ...

• Value what can be measured over what can be experienced,

• Trust data more than intuition,

• Prefer quick conclusions over slow understanding,

• Substitute debate for dialogue, and

• Engage in relationships transactionally.

At first, this feels like progress because it produces results, efficiency and clarity. But over time it creates unintended consequences—that come with significant downstream costs:

• We’ve become remarkably efficient—and increasingly fragmented.

• We’re more connected than any generation in history, yet more isolated.

• We have access to more information than ever before, yet struggle to make sense of it.

• We can communicate instantly across the globe, yet find it difficult to truly understand one another.

• Our pace has increased, but our depth has evaporated.

At the same time, a subtle but persistent desire begins to surface: the desire to control. We want control over our outcomes, our environments and our futures. And this desire is reinforced constantly by the systems we live in.

Fear—sometimes overt, often subtle—is used to motivate action. There is always something to be concerned about, something to prepare for, something to guard against.

The proposed solution to fear is almost always the same: Take control. Buy this, learn that, take these steps, protect yourself. Over time, this becomes instinctive, and we begin to trust what we can control.

Which, incidentally, is a principal expression of idolatry:

Selah ...

A Long Time in the Making

This didn’t develop overnight. According to neuroscientist and philosopher Iain McGilchrist, Western culture is exhibiting a long-term shift toward left-hemisphere dominance in how we process reality.

He traces this pattern across major movements in Western history—the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and into modern and postmodern thought. These are part of a larger trajectory in which the analytical, controlling mode of thought increasingly takes precedence.2

Importantly, McGilchrist outlines what a society would begin to look like if this pattern continued. Here’s a sobering (and long) list of patterns he highlights.3

• Knowledge would be reduced to information, while wisdom would be sidelined as too vague or impractical.

• We would engage with the “bits” of knowledge that can be grasped and elevated in importance, and the big picture would become the sum of the “bits.”

• Empirical data would be trusted more than lived experience, intuition or common sense.

• Credentials, systems and formal structures would replace knowledge gained through experience.

• The world would become increasingly virtualized, with representations of reality substituting for reality itself.

• Work would shift toward documenting, measuring and justifying activity rather than actually engaging in meaningful work.

• Technology would flourish as a primary means of controlling and manipulating life for our purposes.

• The living world would be treated as mechanical—something to be used, optimized and exploited.

• Human beings would be valued based on how much, how quickly and how consistently they can produce.

• Perception would become more binary, favoring “either-or” thinking over nuance, tension or degrees of meaning.

• Morality would increasingly be defined by utility and self-interest rather than by truth or virtue.

• Society would become depersonalized, with relationships shifting from cooperation toward competition and exploitation.

• Individual identity would give way to group-based identity categories, often placing those groups in opposition to one another.

• Suspicion and mistrust would increase—both between individuals and between citizens and governing authorities.

• Governments would expand control, justifying it by the need to need to reduce threats.

• Compliance would be emphasized over personal responsibility and discernment.

• The desire to be “in control” would intensify, along with anxiety about anything that cannot be controlled.

• Entertainment and sexuality would become increasingly explicit and objectified, as a preoccupation of society.

• Anger and aggression would rise in public discourse, as empathy and understanding diminish.

• A general erosion of self-control and personal agency would emerge, alongside increasing passivity.

Feels ... familiar, doesn’t it?

If McGilchrist is right, then what we’re experiencing now isn’t random. It’s the latest phase of a centuries-long shifting—and it has shaped the way we think.

Closer Than We Think

It’s easy to see this as something happening “out there,” in the world; in culture, media or politics. But the far more important question is: How it has shaped us, and the way we approach faith?

We can approach faith as something to analyze, define and manage. Something to understand clearly, categorize accurately and apply effectively. In doing so, we can prioritize clarity over trust, certainty over dependence and information over transformation.

In that framework, faith becomes something we grasp rather than something we live within. It feels normal because it aligns with the way we’ve been conditioned to think.

But “normal” doesn’t mean neutral.

The Assumption Beneath It All

Beneath all of this is a quiet assumption: We’re responsible for securing our own lives.

We assume we must understand enough, control enough and manage enough to be okay, and that if we don’t take control, things will fall apart. This assumption rarely presents itself as a lack of faith; it presents itself as responsibility—which is precisely what makes it difficult to recognize.

It shows up in how quickly we move to create strategy and define expected outcomes; in how we fix, solve and secure. It shapes what we trust, what we fear and how we respond to life’s uncertainties. It centers everything on ourselves—not in an obvious or defiant way, but in a way that assumes we are responsible for making life work.

Consider: How does this mesh with the truth that our creation in God’s image means we are designed to be fully dependent upon him? Or that, in Jesus’ words, we can do nothing on our own (Jn. 15.5)?

Again, selah ...

What Do We Do With This?

The goal here isn’t to reject analysis or clarity. Those are good gifts that are essential for navigating life. The question is whether they’ve taken the lead in ways they were never meant to—and whether they’ve shaped not just how we think, but what we trust.

A few questions can help bring that into focus:

• Where do you feel the strongest need for control right now?

• When you face uncertainty, what do you instinctively reach for first—a fixing strategy, or trust?

• When you encounter an ambiguous or paradoxical issue, how often do you slow down to ponder it instead of settling for a resolved perspective?

• In your faith, do you find yourself trying to dictate outcomes, or learning to live within something you don’t fully control?

These questions aren’t meant to be answered quickly. They’re meant to be noticed. Because awareness is the first step in recognizing whether there has, in fact, been a drift.

Where This Leads Next

The last lines of the poem Invictus capture the spirit of our modern Western age. It’s a declaration that feels both empowering and unquestioned:

There is strong evidence to confirm the drift in Western thinking, passed down over centuries to successive generations. And while we might not consciously and boldly claim Invictus’ declaration, there are sufficient signs evident in the Western church that the same drift has unconsciously shaped us as well.

If we are honest, humble, courageous and faithful enough to see them.

We’ll start there in the next article. For now, it’s enough to recognize that the way think may be shaping more than we realize—and in ways we never intended.

Peace be with you …

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Footnotes:

Having trouble relating to the prospect of “idolatry” in the Western church? Does it seem impractical or low-priority? Maybe even alarmist?

That’s exactly why you need to keep reading.

Note: This is a paid-subscriber follow-up to a previous article, Hiding In Our Blind Spot. We’ll uncover additional understanding on how idolatrous beliefs find their way into our thinking, and explore some practical insight on how to expose them.

Subscribe if you want to have access to this article (and future articles like it).

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God calls to be good stewards of our thinking. Unfortunately, my experience is that the church in the West—despite the best of intentions—is showing evidence that we don’t understand how to steward our thinking in practice. We often equate “healthy thinking” with having more knowledge, but these are actually vastly different. And as a result, though we have more access to more information than ever before, we demonstrate a lack of wisdom.

This, as we’ll see, isn’t just an extraneous philosophical observation—it reflects a tectonic shift in how we think.

While there are many contributing factors to our situation, the solution is actually pretty simple—once we realize the actual problems. There are two primary dynamics in play:

1. We don’t understand how we think.

2. We don’t understand how our brains actually work.

As a reminder, my last article addressed the first issue (and here’s a link to it):

It highlighted a reality few of us recognize: Our brain and our mind are distinct, yet they work together as we live as embodied spiritual beings.

• The mind is us. It thinks, believes, chooses and feels.

• The brain is the physical organ our mind uses, processing thoughts as electrical impulses across synaptic connections.

The brain (like a car) must respond to the mind’s direction (the driver). But problems arise when our mind allows our brain to drive autonomously. When that happens, we assume “we” are thinking—but we’re really just a passenger.

Understanding this dynamic is essential for grasping what follows: how our brains actually work.

Two Sides to the Brain’s Story

The cerebrum—the largest part of the brain—includes two hemispheres that process thoughts in very different ways. Both are involved in nearly everything we do, but how they participate reflects God’s remarkable design.

Before exploring the differences, we must abandon the old “left- vs right-brained” idea. The notion that some people are “left-brained” (analytical) and others “right-brained” (creative) is an oversimplification that has led to misunderstanding.

We have one brain with two distinct, complementary hemispheres. Each supplies what the other lacks. These differences aren’t theoretical—they shape how we interpret reality, truth and even perceive God.

Here’s a table that shows the differences:

The right hemisphere “sees the forest.” It’s oriented toward big-picture awareness—intuition, connection, meaning, identity, relationship, mystery. It’s goal is achieving coherence and contentment (joy and peace).

The left hemisphere “sees the tree.” It’s oriented toward analysis—rational process, details, language, structure, certainty, execution. It’s goal is achieving clarity and certainty (functional knowledge).

Because the right hemisphere sees the forest, it’s better suited to comprehending reality as a whole, understanding truth in context, experiencing relationship and processing our sense of identity. It’s designed to initiate thinking.

Because the left hemisphere sees the tree, it’s better suited to explicit and detailed knowledge—how things work. It uses words, systems, strategy and actions to do something usable. It’s designed to execute thinking.

Interestingly, the right hemisphere is more associated with unconscious processing to do its work, while the left hemisphere is more associated with conscious processing.

In a healthy pattern, the right hemisphere leads and the left hemisphere serves. But when this order breaks down—especially when the brain begins driving autonomously—some interesting and potentially damaging patterns can develop.

1) We Can Become Unteachable

When the left hemisphere dominates, it prioritizes certainty over coherence, and what’s consciously known over what’s unconsciously being revealed. It narrows focus.

It is naturally skeptical, mistrusting ambiguity and anything that can’t be proven. It becomes confident—sometimes overconfident—in its conclusions. When that happens, learning shuts down … not because there’s nothing left to learn, but because we think we already know.

This doesn’t make the left hemisphere wrong—it makes it incomplete when operating alone.

Connecting this to repentance and renewal, it becomes clear why left-hemisphere priority is insufficient for developing the mind of Christ. The left hemisphere isn’t naturally inclined toward change or growth, especially when it involves stepping beyond what is already known.

It isn’t comfortable taking leaps of faith on its own.

Yet repentance and renewal require openness—a willingness to reconsider what feels settled. Without this, the left hemisphere retreats into the castle of self-protection, confidently defending what it already knows.

It becomes unteachable.

2) We Can Become Unwise

Being unteachable makes knowledge dangerous, because it’s easy to mistake rational knowledge for intuitive wisdom. Wisdom isn’t accumulated knowledge, it’s integrated knowledge. Wisdom leverages existing knowledge in new and varied contexts.

Wisdom emerges when left-hemisphere knowledge is reintegrated—deepened through reflection and connection. It enables us to navigate new paths with confidence (almost as if we’ve been there before).

But when thinking remains confined to rational analysis and information, it never matures. It stays abstracted from our reality, identity and experience with God. We accumulate information, refine arguments and pursue precision, yet fail to become wise.

And without wisdom, our thinking becomes fragmented—accurate in parts, but disconnected as a whole.

3) We Stay Unrenewed

Here’s where it becomes more personal.

There are thoughts in your brain—about life, God, yourself and others—that were formed long ago. Some came from experiences, others from wounds or teaching.

Many remain unexamined. They operate 24/7 beneath your awareness, shaping how you interpret everything. If they’re never brought into the light, they continue to drive your life—without you realizing it.

They seem normal, and even trustworthy. Yet they may be false, dysfunctional and perhaps even destructive.

Seeing repentance as a one-time event won’t renew them. Practicing repentance as sorrow or regret won’t renew them. Experiencing and expressing emotion alone won’t renew underlying thoughts and beliefs.

4) We Lean On Our Own Understanding

Eventually, all of this converges into a single unhealthy thinking posture: Self-reliance.

We rely on what makes sense to us—what feels certain. We trust in what aligns with our existing framework. Without realizing it, we filter everything—including God—through that lens.

Our thinking becomes calloused to the Spirit. Our hearts harden as we’re pulled into the gravity of self-reliance and autonomy.

This isn’t obvious, intentional rebellion. It’s quieter and more subtle. We intend to be faithful, but we redefine faithfulness—from responsive trust to religious adherence. We self-protect and control as a way of life.

Even as we give our allegiance to God.

We’re still thinking, believing and acting—but now we do so within a system we unconsciously chose and yet would consciously deny.

And this also happens to be a cultural issue for the world in which we live.

This fourth pattern is the most concerning, and is where we must turn next.

State of Mind

Here’s my proposition: The church in the West has entered a phase where thinking has shifted predominantly to the left hemisphere.

I’ll develop this in future articles. For now, understand that this shift has unfolded gradually over centuries, largely unnoticed. We’re now seeing the effects in both thinking and behavior—which is where I will go in my next article.

But for now, I ask you to reflect on the state of your mind. Consider these questions, for example ...

Which seems more “real,” tangible and trustworthy:

• Theological constructs, opinions of Christian thought leaders, Bible resources, creeds and traditions
  or

• The voice and fellowship of the Holy Spirit?

When you hear “church,” what comes to mind first:

• An organization that sponsors weekly spiritual activities and affirms your personal doctrinal positions
  or

• The collective of those who’ve followed God across history?

Which better describes the meaning of “abiding”:

• Practicing spiritual disciplines and personal devotions
  or

• Living as a branch that’s dependent on the Vine?

When you hear “identity in Christ,” do you think of:

• Your forgiveness and justification through the cross
  or

• Being a living and personal expression of Jesus?

What resonates most when you hear “be sanctified”:

• Working toward holiness to please God
  or

• Remaining in your state of declared holiness?

What defines “leadership”:

• Exercising power and positional authority in a hierarchy
  or

• Influencing through serving others?

The degree to which you struggled to choose the second bullet on each question is an indication of just how left-hemispherical we’ve become in our thinking preference. All this discussion about the mind and the brain, the brain’s two hemispheres ... it isn’t philosophical intellectualizing. It’s practical, tangible—even existential.

There’s more to explore, and it’s easy to get lost in the details. But I’ll close with a paraphrase of God’s consistent instruction from the Bible about thinking well—using both hemispheres in alignment.

Notice the pattern: One thought establishes context, the other executes. One grounds in truth, the other uses that truth to move to action.

Contemplate it—and ask God to show you how to think more effectively.

Peace be with you ...

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Consider This: What if HOW you think matters more than WHAT you think?

At first glance, the opening question can feel backward. After all, Western Christians have been trained to prioritize what we think: right doctrine, correct beliefs and accurate interpretations. We assume that if we can get the content of our thinking right, everything else will follow.

But what if the deeper issue isn’t the content of our thoughts, but the process that produces them?

Think About It

We don’t usually think about how we think. We just think.

Thoughts appear, conclusions form, decisions follow—and we move on. It feels natural; automatic and reliable.

But underneath that sense of normalcy is a hidden reality: Your thinking isn’t neutral—it’s patterned. And those patterns are being shaped continuously (usually without our awareness). As we saw in my last article, our paradigms not only impact our thoughts, they can actually determine them.

Here’s a link to the article if you want a refresh:

This is why Jesus began his ministry preaching the need for repentance—metanoia, literally “change the mind” (Mat. 4.17). And it’s why the renewing of our minds produces transformation (Rom. 12.1-2).

But what exactly is changing when we ‘change our mind’? To answer that, we need to check under the hood of our thinking.

By the way, for more insight into both the need and the opportunity for mind change facing the church, I recommend Alan Hirsch and Rob Kelly’s book:

Mind + Brain

To begin, we need to make a basic distinction: Your mind and your brain are not the same thing.

Your mind is the part of your spirit and/or soul that thinks, believes, chooses, and feels. It’s tied to your identity, your will and your ability to direct your affections.

In contrast, your brain is the physical organ that processes those thoughts. It stores patterns. It builds pathways. It reinforces what is repeated. Every thought you think leaves a trace. Every repeated thought strengthens that trace. Over time, your brain becomes wired to think in certain ways—not because those ways are true, but because they are familiar.

That distinction changes everything, because it means that your mind may not always be functionally in charge.

Even though it feels like it is.

Car and Driver

Think of it like this: Your brain is like a car, and your mind is like a driver.

The brain responds to input—the same way a car responds to the driver’s input by accelerating, turning and braking. But the car isn’t designed to choose the destination, it’s designed to help the driver get to the destination.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

But something subtle can happen: If the mind becomes passive, distracted or unaware, it lets the brain drive autonomously. Not because it has intention—but because it has opportunity.

And if the brain has been allowed to operate this way for an extended period of time, the repetition and reinforcement make its thoughts feel directive. And the more the mind becomes a passenger, the more it feels like we’re doing the thinking—when in reality, our brains are.

Increasingly, this is where most of us live. We assume we’re driving, but we’re mostly along for the ride. 1

So where does this leave us? Well, there’s good news, bad news and really bad news.

The Good News

Here’s the opportunity that we rarely realize: Your brain is changeable. It responds to your mind’s direction. When you intentionally choose a new thought—and then return to it, reflect on it, act on it—your brain begins to reorganize around it. New pathways form, and old ones weaken. What initially felt unnatural becomes familiar.

This is a biological process known as neuroplasticity, where your brain creates and begins utilizing new synaptic connections at scale. Unfortunately, it isn’t instantaneous. It takes time, attention and repetition to become established and substantial enough to override the pathways supporting the old thinking process. After all, those neural networks—many of which have been used and reinforced for decades—are vast and immeasurably interconnected. 2

But the principle holds: Your mind drives your brain—one thought at a time. That’s ultimately what makes repentance and renewal possible. Not as a momentary event—but as a patterned response of obedience.

The Bad News

But there’s also a problem: If your mind isn’t actively directing your thinking, your brain will seize its autonomous opportunity. And many of those autonomous thought patterns weren’t formed in a neutral environment. They were shaped by experiences—many of which are painful, confusing, or incomplete.

This means your brain often presents thoughts that feel legitimate and true … but aren’t. And because those thoughts seem automatic, we rarely question them. In fact, we assume they are true and accurate, and so we swallow them hook, line and sinker.

The Really Bad News

Over time, these repeated, unmanaged thought patterns become deeply embedded physically. Connections become faster, more efficient and more automatic. Neuroplasticity strengthens what’s used most. So even false or negative beliefs, fears and distorted assumptions can feel neurologically “normal.”

Eventually, thoughts don’t feel like options anymore—they feel like reality. We trust them, using them to create the paradigms that then shape what we think about God, ourselves and our reality.

It’s here that repentance (“mind change”) becomes difficult—not because it’s unavailable, but because it’s unfamiliar. To change your thinking at this point doesn’t just require new information, it requires interrupting what feels natural.

And that’s uncomfortable.

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, if our minds don’t drive our brains, our brains simply won’t change. They’ll lock into false patterns of thinking that don’t align with either God’s identity or our own. And the more it progresses, the deeper down the rabbit hole of false thinking we’ll go.

Internally, we’ll experience reality tangentially. Life will seem ... off—with no clear explanation or solution. We’ll feel hindered from receiving new spiritual insights. Joy and peace will be elusive.

Behaviorally, we’ll be driven to unhealthy habits, self-focused consumption and greed. It may drive us to rigid religiosity or hyper-intellectualism. Or it may drive us to the mental cul-de-sac of ambivalence, where nothing matters (or so we tell ourselves).

We won’t have the mind of Christ.

So how can we take control of our brains?

What to Do

You can’t change thoughts you don’t know are false and that you’re not aware of. So the first step is mind-blowingly simple—but absolutely essential: You must believe.

Believe that God designed your spiritual mind to drive your physical brain. Believe that your thoughts need renewal, and that God is motivated to produce this.

The second step is equally basic and necessary: You must prepare.

Prepare yourself—from an identity and posture of dependence—to be open and receptive to the changes God desires to reveal. And embrace the reality that you need more renewal than you think you do.

For me, I capture these two steps in a simple prayer:

“Lord, I want to be like Jesus. I believe this is your desire for me. Please show me anything in me that doesn’t look like him.”

The third step is practicing the discipline of reflection, which will disrupt your brain’s default patterns to allow space for your mind to begin driving your thinking.

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

1. Start with a truth. This lays a thought foundation. Something like, “Jesus loves me” or “God is pleased with me” works great.

2. Notice your thoughts. Not just what you think, but how quickly you accept it as true or false. Expect some thoughts to be positive and others to be negative (e.g. accusatory or fearful). Watch for what gets exposed, like attitudes, assumptions and self-perceptions.

3. Interrupt the automatic. When a thought feels obvious or certain, pause. Get curious about where it came from. Don’t move to closure or action step (yet).

4. Return to truth relationally. Reflect again—not just as information, but as something to be experienced and integrated.

5. Repeat intentionally. New patterns don’t form from single thought. They form through repetition.

This won’t take long—often just 5 minutes is sufficient to disrupt your brain’s “normal” thinking patterns. If you journal, you may find it helpful to capture what comes out of the process and detect patterns in your thinking.

Also, don’t be surprised if at first this feels silly or unnecessary—perhaps uncomfortable; maybe even scary. Your brain doesn’t want to conform; it resists repentance and renewal because it’s extra work.

Reflection is a disciplined step of engagement that recognizes renewal as a process, and repentance as an action step in that process. Repentance is a change of mind—literally, a change in how your thoughts operate.

It steps out of automatic thought patterns enough to become aware of them. It re-evaluates what has historically felt certain. It engages thinking differently, allowing you to be dependent upon God in ways you weren’t aware of.

And then repeating that choice until it becomes your brain’s new pattern.

Back to the Question

So … what if HOW you think matters more than WHAT you think?

If how you think ultimately shapes what you think, repentance and renewal aren’t just about correcting wrong thoughts. They’re about transforming the process that produces them. They’re ongoing, practical, embodied opportunities to think differently. To live differently. To become who God made you to be.

That’s game-changing.

The question isn’t whether you’re thinking. You are.

The question is whether you’re aware of how you’re thinking—and whether you’re willing to purposefully change it.

Because if you’re not, something very dangerous can happen. And for the church in the West, it may already be happening.

It may have already happened.

To fully grasp the gravity of that possibility, there’s one more thing we need to understand about how our brains operate—specifically, how they process reality in two distinct but connected ways.

To be continued ...

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Consider This: What if what you THINK you see isn’t really what you SHOULD see … or what you COULD see?

As stated previously, I’m currently in a series laying out the premise for my next book project, tentatively titled Mind Your Faith. This is a continuation of that series.

From Declaration of Dependence we see that we were originally designed to reflect God. Literally, pre-Fall humanity WAS the image of God (Gen. 1.26-27). This imaging of God highlights the first of three macro-perspectives that I call Identity.

Then in the last article, Hiding In Our Blind Spot, we saw that our ability to perfectly image God was corrupted when Eve and Adam chose independence over dependence. This touches on the second macro-perspective: Idolatry.

This article will focus on the outcome of these two truths, with some interesting spiritual maturity and Great Commission opportunities for the Western church. But first, a story ...

Sunglasses

The screen was black, which didn’t make sense. I was riding in the passenger seat of my friend’s car. I could hear music, but no map was showing—which my friend seemed unconcerned about. When he asked his wife in the back seat for clarifying details on when to turn, it confirmed my suspicion that the screen must be broken.

My entire perspective changed when I happened to tilt my head to the side. Suddenly I could see that the infotainment screen was actually working perfectly. It was a bit humbling to realize the problem wasn’t the screen, it was me. Or more accurately, what I was using to see the screen.

I couldn’t see the reality that everyone else could; the truth right in front of my face was hidden from me by my own perception.

This is the kind of polarizing effect that paradigms have on our thinking. Paradigms, as we shall see, are a major part of the third faith minding macro-perspective: Ideology.

So What Are Paradigms?

Paradigms are mental models that become established in our brains. They are a cognitive frame of reference we use to perceive and engage in reality. Even more specifically, they’re what we use to define reality as we perceive it. Paradigms effectively become the lens we use to “see” the world and how we exist in it.

Polarized sunglasses are a great illustration for how paradigms work. Polarized lenses only allow light waves from a single direction to pass through the lens, filtering out glare and reflections that come from all different directions. Likewise, paradigms filter out thoughts and perceptions that don’t align with the paradigm.

Paradigms are part of what allow our brains to function efficiently. But this efficiency brings some realities we must be aware of.

What’s the Big Deal With Paradigms?

Paradigms can actually determine our perception of reality. They are largely the reason why two groups of people can look at the same data and see entirely different things.

They’re part of why you can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink, and why old dogs don’t learn new tricks. They’re what drives our tendency to operate from either a fixed or a growth mindset, but not from both (see Carol Dweck’s popular book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success). Paradigms are why we habitually exhibit things like prejudice and biases (negatively), or kindness and respect (positively).

We see the evidence of paradigms in the Bible. It was paradigms that drove the Israelites’ behavior during the time of the Judges: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Jdg. 17.6). Paradigms were why Jesus taught in parables: to filter for those whose paradigms were willing to see him and the evidence of the kingdom of God, and to filter out those who weren’t (see Mt. 13.10-17).1

That last point leans into what is most concerning for us. Unhealthy paradigms (that aren’t based on the truth of God’s identity and that don’t align with faith in him) can harden our hearts against God. Unmanaged paradigms that aren’t continually renewed become self-protective and perpetuating. We end up thinking in ways that validate and reinforce the paradigm, making it progressively challenging to consider alternative thoughts.

And all the while, they’ll convince us that our perceived reality is true.

This leads to a dangerous scenario: If we DON’T break out of our false and unhealthy paradigms, we may get to the point where we CAN’T break out of them.

Gulp.

Clearly, paradigms deserve our attention. But first, a caution ...

How Paradigms Aren’t Changed

We can’t fully understand—much less change—our operative paradigms through interacting with them at the intellectual level. In fact, we often won’t even know they exist.

Think of it this way: Paradigms effectively are the lens we use to “see” the content of our conscious thoughts. In the same way that we see the object and not the lens we look through, we’re often not even aware that a paradigm is in play.

Paradigms are formed from and maintained by an array of strongly entrenched (and primarily unconscious) beliefs, convictions, perceptions, experiences, fears, relationships and influences. Which means we can’t manage our paradigms only through conscious, rational thinking processes. In fact, trying to change our paradigms (assuming we even know they’re present) without dealing with the root issues that formed them is limited at best and, at worst, faith-damaging and conscience-wrecking.

How Paradigms Are Changed

Paradigms don’t exist in isolation. They operate within a broader mental framework that shapes how we think, interpret and act. That broader framework is what I’m calling Ideology, of which paradigms are a part of. While this might be an atypical use for the word, “ideology” describes the holistic integration of active thought processes in our brains. Ideology, as it turns out, isn’t a set of beliefs; it’s a set of desires—deep motivations that organize what we believe, how we think and how we act.

Ideology encompasses four primary things:

1. The content and organization of our thoughts—what we think we know and where it all comes from.

2. The way we operationalize that knowledge in our world (i.e. our behavior, language, habits, goal-setting, strategy, etc.).

3. The way our thinking and behavior reinforce what we come to believe is true.

4. The role of our physical brain—the organ in our body that interfaces with our spirit-soul-mind-heart, in order to live in an embodied way.

Ultimately, we must get our minds around (pun absolutely intended) two realities:

1. Our Ideology Reflects Us — It is a manifestation of who we think we are and what we believe to be true and real.

2. Our Ideology Either Blinds or Reveals — And we’re largely responsible for whether we choose to be blind or see the real world.

The health of our ideology—both personally and collectively, as the church—is deeply dependent on healthy thought disciplines. A proposition I’ll be making and reinforcing over the course of this series is that the church in the West has embraced the world’s thinking habits over the course of its history. These habits are destructive and contrary to our identity in Christ, in ways we simply don’t “see.” They block our ability to make disciples that look like Jesus. And they are undermining our gospel witness and limiting our contribution to the kingdom of God.

In short, we’ve simply become lazy. We’ve learned how not to think in biblical ways that allow us to be good stewards of our brains.

Closing Thoughts

Let me leave you with some closing thoughts on paradigms and ideology:

• Having paradigms isn’t bad or wrong. God designed our brains to utilize them. The concern with paradigms is more centered on 1) What the paradigms are based on (e.g. Spirit-aligned truth), and 2) How we are stewarding our thoughts so that our paradigms are serving us, rather than us serving them.

• There are things we’re just not seeing. In the case of unhealthy paradigms, it is our own thinking that makes us blind to things we could see—or should see.

• We need a reorientation in perspective. Like turning my head 90-degrees to see the car’s screen, we have to be willing to experience an Overview Effect to force our brains to back out of our ideology enough to engage in thought patterns we didn’t use previously.

• Dealing with our ideology takes some courage. We’ve grown comfortable with our paradigms, and so we trust them to operate for us. But even healthy, well-intentioned paradigms built on biblical orthodoxy can begin to work against us if we use them ineffectively and don’t submit them to the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

Clearly there’s a lot here to unpack—which is why this will take a series of articles. But despite the complexity of our paradigms and ideology, the way forward is surprisingly simple.

In fact, it’s so simple that most of us miss it.

Or dismiss it.

I know I did.

In the next article, we’ll begin exploring the one truth that allows us to step outside our paradigms long enough to see them—and, eventually, to change them.

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This is a paid-subscriber follow-up on Declaration of Dependence, a February 17th article where I unpacked the implications of humanity being God’s image. This article (and future Digging Deeper articles to come) is designed to drill into some of the more critical points.

I’ll use quotes from the article to explore deeper understanding and application as individual followers of Jesus. In encourage you to use this as a prayerful reflection guide.

Here’s a link to the original article, if you want to review before moving on …

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Consider This: What if the greatest threat to the church isn’t opposition from outside, but substitution from within?

In my last post, Declaration of Dependence, I highlighted how God created humanity as his image bearers—the imago Dei—with the unique quality of being fully dependent upon him. In other words: He’s the object we are designed to reflect. So reflecting him perfectly requires that we contribute nothing to the image.

Practical translation: We were made to receive all our sense of identity, meaning, purpose and passion from him, not from within ourselves. And to do this requires comprehension of our embracing an identity of dependence.

Here’s the link, if you want to review the article before continuing:

In this article, I will explore the consequences the previous article creates—specifically, what happens if we choose NOT to declare our dependence. The answer is compelling, especially for the church: idolatry.

Idolatry is not primarily about worshiping idol figurines. It is about creating and maintaining a false perception (an “image”) of God. And because we are created as God’s image-bearers, having a false perception of God automatically creates a false perception of ourselves.

What we (specifically the church in the West) must come to terms with is that we have inherited a pattern of faith that incorporates the idolatry of the world we live in. We have adopted the world’s contemporary perspectives and thinking patterns regarding identity. The process has been gradual over the course of many years, but the cumulative effects now put us in a tenuous and dangerous position.

I get that such a message to the Western church (that considers itself faithful) carries a sting, and sounds sensationalistic and hyper-spiritual. But I encourage you to see and hear it differently. This isn’t a charge of insincere devotion, it is a diagnosis of something deeper.

Idolatry is one of the most common of human tendencies. It should not escape our notice that God included it as the focus of the first three of the Ten Commandments. It was present throughout most of the nation of Israel’s history. It was active in at least two of the seven churches in Revelation—only 40 years after they were started (from Paul’s training in the Hall of Tyrannus in Ephesus in Acts 19). It’s a tendency we can fall into as easily as we fall out of bed in the morning.

And speaking of falling …

The First Idolatry

It should be a warning siren to us that the most striking example of idolatry happens in the first pages of Scripture. The serpent tempted Eve and Adam into a subtle but massive change of perception:

• “God is keeping knowledge from you—so he isn’t who you think he is.”

• “You can acquire this knowledge if you take charge of yourselves—then you’ll be able to realize your potential.”

Interestingly, both were half true (as is usually the case for the enemy’s deceptions):

• God, of course, did know that their eyes would be opened. He was absolutely holding back revelation from them—because it would be destructive for them.

• They, of course, didn’t know all that God knew. And gaining the knowledge God was withholding was easily within their grasp—BUT …

  • Having this knowledge wouldn’t make them like God, and in fact …

  • They were already like God in every way that truly mattered.

Both attacks were distractions (the Deceiver’s go-to strategy) that drew Adam and Eve’s attention away from the core issue: Their comprehension of identity. This corruption of belief is the primary, two-part mechanism of idolatry:

1. A false perception of God (i.e. we see God as less than he is).

2. A false perception of ourselves (i.e. we see ourselves as more than we are, and so we trust in ourselves).

It is this mechanism, wielded by the craftiest deceiver of all time, that we must actively guard against. For we are not immune to it, even given the dedication of our religious fervor—which is actually part of his strategy for distracting us.

But, Jesus Is Lord and Savior …

I hear the reply forming in your mind: “But we’ve declared Jesus as our Lord and Savior. We stand redeemed in his completed work on the cross and the redemption in his blood. We have the Scriptural Canon, which we uphold and teach in our vast array of seminaries, schools and churches. We have the legacy of theological orthodoxy. We have the Holy Spirit guiding us into all truth and the Great Commission to inspire us.”

And what you might be thinking subconsciously, “We’re more intelligent than that. We’ve progressed beyond the point where we would embrace idolatry.”

I’ll concede that, generally speaking, the Western church’s beliefs are sound at the conscious and rational level. But what we don’t recognize is that conscious, rational beliefs don’t actually define our perception of reality. Our unconscious and intuitive beliefs do.

For example, it’s our unconscious beliefs that produce things like …

• Anxiety despite belief in God’s sovereignty,

• Self-reliance despite professing trust, and

• Identity rooted in religious or spiritual performance.

That unconscious level of belief is what’s most concerning.1

In other words, our conscious, rational thoughts aren’t lining up with what we unconsciously, intuitively believe under the hood of our faith. The conscious and rational beliefs can easily become mere details the Deceiver uses as distractions. He’s skillfully kept the Western church in an entrenched pattern we rarely recognize.

Just as the Israelites historically fell into worshiping Baal as a part of worshiping God, we too can fall—have fallen—into incorporating the identity and thinking patterns of the world into our faith practices.

And it’s killing our witness as the church.

Think Again

We would do well to give the prospect of idolatry some serious consideration—and perhaps from a different perspective than normal.

To begin with, we must understand four things about it:

1. Our zeal, history, theology and resources won’t prevent idolatry. They bring very little to the table in dealing with idolatry, and may actually make us more vulnerable to it.

2. Idolatry is inherently deceptive. We will only see it when we look in our blind spots—which requires admitting that we actually have blind spots.

3. Idolatry has a frog-in-the-kettle dimension to it. It comes on gradually, insidiously. It often seems positive in the beginning stages. Meaning: We don’t realize we’re in trouble until things have gotten really bad.

4. We’re incredibly susceptible. If living in Eden without a fallen identity didn’t prevent Adam and Eve from stumbling into idolatry, what does that say about our situation?

To give an example of how “thinking again” can help us assess idolatry, consider how the Western church might typically engage with the topic. Clearly, we’d view idolatry as sin. But in doing so, our first glance at idolatry passes through the lens of our traditional and widely-accepted definition for sin: “missing the mark.” That is to say, Westerners tend to define sin as falling short of God’s perfect righteousness and holiness—which, not coincidentally, also appeals to our Western guilt-innocence worldview.

To evaluate whether the claim of our idolatry is accurate or not, our next thought is to look for evidence of idolatry behaviors (e.g. “Where are we making idols?” “When are we worshiping demonic spirits?” “How are we not affirming Jesus’ authority as Lord?”). And using this paradigm, we don’t find evidence of idolatry and so dismiss the charge.

Hopefully, you’re beginning to see the susceptibility in our thinking. Our working definition (i.e. belief) of sin doesn’t allow us the opportunity to consider idolatry from the fuller biblical meaning of sin. We unknowingly overlook the historical Hebrew context that defines sin broadly, not just as “missing the mark,” but also as “missing the way” and “missing what is sought or expected.”2

The result: Our pragmatic and inherently Western concept of sin (while true) creates a blind spot—one where idolatry can flourish apart from our awareness.

To see our reality and our tendency toward idolatry, we must rethink how we see ourselves. Idolatry is primarily a matter of spiritual identity, not spiritual behavior.

Starting from the foundation of our created identity as reflectors of God’s image, now broaden your perspective to define sin more holistically. View sin as being separated from God. This perspective reminds us that our lack of righteousness and holiness are actually the outcome of sin, not the mechanism of sin.

This perspective also highlights the source of sin: humanity’s rebellion against God. And this rebellion was caused by the corruption of God’s identity in our minds, followed closely by (or simultaneously with?) the corruption of our own identity.

We chose to stop seeing ourselves as dependent image bearers, and chose instead to see ourselves as independent beings who function on their own.3

Idolatry Is Part of Our Inherited Nature

My primary point with all of this is that we are idolaters by nature. As physical descendants of Adam and Eve, we inherit their independent identity and separated condition. And so sin’s first inclination in us is toward idolatry—even if we’re covered by the blood of Christ.

The real issue with our sin condition (e.g. the “old self” of Eph. 4.22) isn’t that it is unholy and unrighteous, but rather that it’s fully inclined toward independent autonomy and self-reliance.4 So our natural understanding of God—who we intuitively believe him to be in our minds—is corrupted. Apart from faith and the Holy Spirit, our old self rejects him, desiring and trusting in other things (see Rom. 1.20-23, Eph. 2.2-3).

The beliefs supporting our old and corrupted identity are deeply ingrained in our brains, and simple declarations of faith in Christ aren’t sufficient to change them. And so it’s here that God’s Spirit must do his work of renewal, which in turn produces our transformation … assuming, of course, that we choose to participate in it.

We’ll discuss this renewal more in due time. But before we go there, we must come to terms with how our brains actually work—both for us and against us. That’s where we’ll go next.

In the meantime, I encourage you in the next week to meditate on our identity in Christ as simple reflections of our Creator, nothing more, nothing less. Contemplate on the wonder and immensity of God, and then (like Jesus) continue to see yourself as wholly and wonderfully dependent upon him.

Peace be with you …

Consider This: You can measure the substance of something by the kind of void it leaves behind when it’s taken away.

Have you ever wondered what it means—really means—to be made in the image of God?

In the first pages of the Bible, we see arguably the most important event in world history: God creating his image bearers. It’s phenomenal in its scope and purpose.

At one point nothing existed. In the next moment, everything we now see, feel and touch came to be—out of nothing. Like vapor from our mouths on a cold winter’s day, it all appeared at God’s call.

Yet while everything in creation was good and reflected his glory, no part of it reflected his nature. So God created Adam and Eve as one, in his own “image” and “likeness.” Together they represented him, “ruling” over creation, exercising dominion and stewardship as an extension of God himself. And God called them “mankind” (NIV) or “man” (ESV); or in Hebrew: āḏām (Gen. 1.26).

Humanity has been referred to as the imago Dei (Latin for the “image of God”). They were the only part of God’s physical creation that represented his invisible, spiritual reality. Said plainly: If you wanted to know what God was like, all you had to do was look at humanity in its original form.

It shouldn’t escape our attention that God never explicitly told us how humanity bears his image—that is, until Jesus appeared in human form (Heb. 1.3). Given that God’s intention for his followers is to become image bearers of Christ (Rom. 8.29), Jesus’ identity now gives us a tangible connection to our own identity.

Jesus is a yardstick, if you will, that we can use to measure …

1. Who we were,

2. Who we are now, and

3. Who we will be.

Because our identity is not self-generated; it is received and reflected.

Being Imagers

In the same way that Jesus is the exact representation of God’s nature in a fallen world, humans were the exact representation of God (without the divine qualities) in the pre-fallen world. Prior to the Fall, Adam and Eve knew God completely and trusted in him alone. There was no distraction, no competition for allegiance or trust—a scenario that’s about as far from our current experience as we could imagine.

Humankind as the imago Dei was perfect. However, in this perfection there’s a corresponding vulnerability: Their connection with God worked perfectly, so long as their trust and desires remained directed toward God.

It’s not a flaw, it’s by design. Humans couldn’t be like their Creator without the will to choose the object of their devotion and relational trust. Otherwise, we’d be robots who neither bear his image nor function as his representatives. Richard Lints captures this point well:

“It is appropriate to say that human identity is constituted in relationship to God. It is also true to say, asymmetrically, that God’s identity is not rooted in his relation to humanity … as an image is dependent upon the object for its identity, so the imago Dei is dependent upon God for its identity.”1

Lints’ point is that our “imaging” of God is one-way. Our identity is dependent upon God’s identity, but God’s identity is not dependent upon ours. We are “imagers” of him, not the other way around.2

This puts us in the position of absolute dependence upon God. And the moment we stop being dependent upon God, we lose our created ability to reflect him adequately.

Remaining in this posture of faith, trust and obedience to God is an existential necessity. It is our normal life and reality as the imago Dei. Again, Lints hits home with this thought:

“People, who are created as divine image bearers, are also capable of reflecting the created order. Thus humans may be said to have a reflective identity. In some sense they find meaning outside themselves by virtue of what they reflect.”3

We are made to find the whole of our created identity, meaning, purpose and passion outside of ourselves—completely and solely in our creator.

And therein lies the key: We don’t automatically default to God as the source of our identity, meaning, purpose and passion. God leaves it to us to choose; the focus of our desire. Which points us back to Jesus as our yardstick for who we are now (and who we will be).

Declaration of Dependence

Jesus was unwaveringly clear when it came to the source of his identity, meaning, purpose and passion. He consistently deferred his desires, putting them in submission to the Father’s will. This identity defined reality for himself and everyone he came into contact with. It was his organizing principle for life: Everything he did orbited around it.

Using this as a contrast with our current experience exposes the tendencies we exhibit in our lives. Jesus embraced dependence, but we’re afraid of it. Jesus found security in dependence, but we resent it. Jesus saw dependence as strength, but we see it as weakness. Jesus came to be less than, but we pursue greatness. Jesus looked to the Father for guidance, but we’re masters of our fate and captains of our souls.

Where Jesus declared an identity of dependence, we have declared independence. It is the identity we inherited from the Fall.

The reason the human existence is so fraught with confusion, fear, frustration and fragmentation is that we were never created to live independently. Adam and Eve chose to forego their responsibility to rule over creation, letting the serpent (as a part of creation) deceive them into embracing a false reality of prideful independence: “You can be your own god.”

The relevant point for us to comprehend is that being dependent on someone else to know and live out our identity, meaning, purpose and passion is our created nature. It’s human. It’s normal, and good. It’s part of what makes us children of God and followers of Jesus.

Jesus not only modeled it for us, he told us plainly: “Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15.5). We don’t have the capacity to find our identity from within ourselves, any more than we have the capacity to fly or breathe under water. If we deny this, then we are choosing to live in a false reality.

So What?

The truth of our dependent identity has many significant implications that we’ll unpack in due time. But for now, we must understand how foundational the truth of our created identity of dependence is to our everyday life.

We must understand how deceptively, insidiously easy it is to adopt the posture of independence—outwardly following God but inwardly trusting in self. It’s possible to create whole religions around this perspective … which pretty much describes most of human history.

We must understand how deeply the world is committed to the concept of independence. Especially in our modern, Western culture, everything we encounter in life rewards and incentivizes it—everything! That’s why we cannot love the world or anything in it, because it will not support or assist us in living dependently.

Ultimately, independent behavior flows from an independent identity. Independence is not just a posture; it’s the soil in which idolatry is cultivated.

If we don’t understand what it means to be dependent, then we’re rejecting who God made us to be and his will for our lives. We don’t really believe that he knows what’s best for us. We don’t really trust him; indeed, we can’t trust him.

If we don’t understand what it means to be dependent, then we don’t understand what it means to be like Jesus. And if we don’t understand what it means to be like Jesus, then what in God’s name are we doing? Who do we think we’re worshiping? Why do we pray “in Jesus’ name”? Whose disciples are we making, his or our own?

If we don’t want to pursue dependence because it sounds weak, vulnerable and lame, then let’s stop spending so much time and money pretending to be what we’re not and go build a Tower of Babel instead.

But…

I have a better hope for Jesus’ church.

I believe we can embrace dependence, by faith. I believe we can experience the Overview Effect that comes when we see God and ourselves from a more accurate vantage point.

If we take time to reflect, we can see that our longing for intimacy with God is actually the void left behind when humanity lost its dependent identity. In declaring independence, our dependence died.

But in Christ, we get it back once again. Being dependent is our witness. It validates God and points to him. It is the only context for the gospel. Being dependent is faith.

At this stage, my encouragement for you is simple: Reflect and meditate on having an identity of dependence upon God. With child-like simplicity, revel in and celebrate that God made you fully and completely dependent upon him for all your sense of identity, meaning, purpose and passion. All of it … all the time, for all time.

And don’t let this be a one-time, passing, token acknowledgement. Let it be an organizing principle. The more we reflect on this truth, the more our goals and behaviors will align with it. The more we embrace this truth, the more of the false identity, pride and autonomy will be revealed and put off.

It takes time to renew our perception of our identities. The roots of the old, independent identity run deep and wide, and are feeding off streams of falsehood we don’t consciously know about. So don’t expect overnight results.

But the more dependent we see ourselves, the more we will realize what it means to be made in the image of God.

What would you do if you became aware of something quietly and insidiously weakening the Western church; something it neither sees nor expects?

Two years ago, I began seeing it in my own life, and it sent me into deep reflection and repentance, and dropping off Substack for a season (see my post, Back From Arabia). Now, profoundly changed personally, I face the challenge of communicating it to a church that I fear is too preoccupied to hear a message it doesn’t think it needs to hear.

After all, that’s the way I was … before I heard the message myself.

The Overview Effect

When NASA started sending humans into space, they experienced what’s come to be known as the Overview Effect. Their entire way of looking at life and their perception of reality—and of themselves—shifted dramatically and permanently after looking down on the Earth from space.

The overview effect results in profound cognitive shifts, often in the form of feelings of awe, unity and a renewed sense of responsibility. Some astronauts gained “an instant global consciousness ... an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it” (Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14, 1971). Others said they no longer see national borders, and struggle to see the reasoning behind the usual international disagreements (Jim Lovell, Apollo 13). ISS astronaut Chris Hadfield poignantly summarized it: “You see the world as a whole, and no perspective that you’ve ever had before can match that.”

The astronauts didn’t receive new information. They received a new vantage point.

This is the opportunity awaiting the church in the West: We have the opportunity to experience our own overview effect of who God is, who we are as his image bearers and what in the world God is up to. We have been operating from a limited perspective, unable to see things as they truly are. And so we live and minister ineffectively, separated from what God is doing around us.

Be encouraged: There is a vantage point from which can get the perspective we need.

But also be aware: Getting there will require some changes that very few of us have ever considered before.

The Crossroads

The Western church is at a crossroads. We must come to terms with the reality that, for most of our history, we have been practicing a uniquely modern and Western practice of idolatry. By idolatry, I don’t mean the worship of pagan statues. I’m referring to the functional reliance on something other than God as the source of life and identity.

As harsh and Chicken-Little as this may sound, it has come upon us as most idolatry “opportunities” do: gradually, insidiously, deceptively and—I fully believe—unintentionally. Despite the best of our intentions, the church in the West is following Jesus with an active mindset of independence from him.

“Idolatry” may sound like a hyper-religious, alarmist rant. I assure you it is not. I didn’t discover this by analyzing others. I discovered it because God exposed it in me. This message comes from significant personal repentance, so I hope you hear it as a solution to a longing you’ve been trying to fulfill for years.

This solution requires a dramatic transformation of how you see yourself—your identity. This may feel threatening at first, like: “You are less than you think you are.” But the “threat” is actually a loving invitation from God. Because only in realizing that we are less than we think we are will we discover that we are more than we ever thought we could be.

Where This Is Going

I realize that the claim of idolatry requires some substance to be credible. To that end, there are three themes I use as the scaffold for building the case for the need for our overview effect: Identity, Idolatry and Ideology. Each is a full topic on its own, but it’s the interaction of all three that gives us the perspective we need.

Identity

Identity is the essence of who we are, the most basic existential aspect of being human. Identity answers the question: Who am I, before I do anything? It is the organizing principle for life, creating the coherence we need to comprehend reality.

Human identity has two dimensions: 1) an individual dimension, and 2) a communal dimension in relationship to God and to other people. Both the individual and communal dimensions of our identity are operating simultaneously (a critically important fact truth we usually miss).

God has an identity as well. His name (“I am that I am”) reveals his self-evidence. In other words, “God is”; he exists. His identity is a proclamation: There’s no time or place where God isn’t God. That “God is” means he’s not something we invented, he’s something we orient ourselves to.

We were created in God's image, so our identity is intimately and inescapably tied to his. So misunderstanding God's identity automatically confuses our own, and misunderstanding our identity automatically confuses our perception of God's identity.

It’s this skewed perception of identity (both God’s and ours) that is the foundation for idolatry. In short, we don’t have an idolatry behavior problem, we have an identity perception problem.

Idolatry

We usually think of idolatry as pagan societies carving images to deify things like animals, stars or emperors. As a modern society, we presume that we’ve progressed beyond such primitive ways. But this exposes our functional ignorance of idolatry.

Idolatry is elevating a person, object, idea or desire to a place of functional authority in one's life—replacing God as our source of all identity, meaning, purpose and passion. “Functional authority” means the thing we most rely on for our stability and effectiveness in life, which usually defaults to things that we can control.

This control exposes idolatry’s true engine: self-reliant autonomy; the work of our own hands. The most typical expression of identity is combining the functional trust in self with the outward religious trust in God. The Old Testament prophets, for example, admonished Israel not for worshiping Baal instead of Yahweh, but for worshiping Baal as part of trusting Yahweh.

In Western cultures that run on independent, individualistic self-actualization and materialism, it’s insidiously easy to seek God’s help as we pursue being the masters of our fate and the captains of our soul—in Jesus’ name, amen.

Ideology

I use the term ideology to describe the paradigms we live by, which are based on identity and the practice of (or rejection of) idolatry. Ideology includes not just what we think, but how we think and how we apply those thoughts in our lives.

Ideology is based on the function of our physical brains—it’s not just philosophical, it’s neurological. Our brains are not neutral instruments; they are historically conditioned pattern-forming organs. The way we have learned to think shapes not just our perception, but our very ability to perceive.

Without renewal and consistent attention, our brains are rarely neutral and unbiased. This area of renewing our minds is perhaps the most significant change facing the church. Will we be willing to correct our thinking habits that we presume to be healthy and aligned with truth?

So What?

I anticipate that the Western church’s idolatry will be the primary focus of my writing for the near term. I will be working through the variety of issues related to identity, idolatry and ideology that will be a part of my upcoming book project, Mind Your Faith. I invite you to explore them with me.

Idolatry is a bit of a paradox: It’s childishly simple in principle, yet massively complex in practice—which makes it easy for our enemy to weave his deceptive influence below the radar of our attention.

The subject of idolatry is, of course, a serious one, with an obviously ominous overtone that should be considered soberly. At the same time, I can attest to the truth that repenting from it has been the most invigorating experience of my spiritual life.

I’m confident that I’m not alone in these kinds of experiences. And I’m confident that by embracing its overview effect opportunity, the church in the West will be in position to be used of God in ways it has never seen before.

Let us strive, by his grace, for such an outcome.

Have you ever had a season of life that profoundly reorients you at almost every level? That’s what the last two years have been for me—which is why I haven’t posted in the last 12 months. So apologies for what may have seemed like a communication dropout. Let me explain …

After Paul’s Damascus Road experience, he went to Arabia for a time to (apparently) spend time with God and reorient his identity to Christ and his reality to the gospel. I’ve had a similar experience. The months since January 2024 have been the most intense and rich experience in my 40+ year faith journey.

I’ll unpack this more in upcoming posts, but suffice it to say that it’s been a bit of a personal burning bush experience—I’ve been on some holy ground. God exposed many things about my identity I’d not seen before. And since our identity is a reflection of God’s identity, my misconceptions about my identity drove misconceptions about his identity.

In short, I wasn’t seeing God as he really is. Which was … which is … humbling; and reorienting. It’s been consuming in virtually every way, culminating in a new book project: Mind Your Faith—which I’ve just wrapped up the first draft of the manuscript.

I’m finally at a point where I can begin talking about it. So here we go …

Some Background

For some time, I’d been wrestling and reflecting on a thorny subject that has troubled me (and many others) about disciple-making efforts in the West:

Why does the rate and quality of disciple-making in the West seem to lag behind the church in the rest of the world?

Since 2009, when my wife and I began purposefully devoting ourselves to a DMM (Disciple-Making Movement) ministry approach, I’ve heard many explanations as to why we don’t see sizeable movemental fruit in the U.S. and other Western cultures: “We’re just too …”

• “… Busy (whatever that means)”

• “… Distracted”

• “… Time-poor”

• “… Materialistic and self-centered”

• “… Lacking commitment”

• “… Focused on sports”

• “… [FILL IN THE REASON]”

All these reasons have a ring of truth, but also seem obvious—and unsatisfactory. That’s because they’re actually symptoms, not the root cause. They’re behaviors, but not the beliefs that drive our behaviors.

So the question of why we don’t see the fruitful multiplication of disciples and churches continued to haunt me. Like The Matrix’s line, it was “a splinter in my mind.”

So What Is The Root Cause?

In January of 2024, God began to answer the question—interestingly, by exposing how the root cause was showing up in me. He revealed that my unwillingness to trust him was blocking the work he wanted to do in my life.

For someone who’s been personally invested in the kingdom of God at a fairly high level for most of my adult life, to have my level of faith questioned was … a bit unnerving.

In its simplest form, the message I heard was this:

So I received that message, and started asking God to reveal what areas of my faith needed to be strengthened. My prayer was simple: “Show me how and where my life doesn’t look Jesus.”

God faithfully began to answer that prayer, and actually hasn’t stopped since.

Perhaps the best way to describe it is “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty” (Isa. 6.5). God revealed so many ways I’d been resisting him in the years of my faith journey—areas of transformation he’d been inviting me into but that I’d chosen not to join him.

To meet with God like this is a ruining experience—a wonderful, restorative undoing of all that needed to be ruined. In many ways, he “named” me, showing me aspects of my created identity I’d been denying (mostly out of fear and control). He showed me the identity I’d been trying to create on my own, hidden beneath layers of self-interest I never realized were there (and again, motivated mostly by fear).

It all culminated in the revelation that I’d been expecting God to help me be the master of my fate and the captain of my soul, in Jesus’ name, amen.

He’d been patient with me over the years, but now made it clear that the only way forward—should I choose to accept it—required a change. A big change.

New Directions

By the end of 2024 God began creating the idea for Mind Your Faith. A number of things came together that I’d never seen before, everything from brain function to identity to church history to sociology, psychology, philosophy, politics—even AI. There is a common thread between all of them, and the common thread involves

1. Jesus (no surprise), and

2. The church in the West’s lack of preparedness to step into its identity in Christ.

In fact, the book reveals that the Western church has slipped into practicing idolatry—unintentionally and unawares, but deliberately and religiously.

Of which I was chief.

I realize that many believers will recoil or eye-roll at the proposition that they’re committing idolatry. But here’s the deal: My experience so far (for myself and for others who’ve engaged with the content of Mind Your Faith) is that …

• Seeing the mechanism of idolatry for what it truly is, and

• Understanding how it has slipped in the side door of the church unnoticed, and

• Realizing how we’ve given it permission to shape our perspective of who God is and who we are as his image bearers, and …

• Defining the gospel according to those contexts …

… is actually freeing, simplifying and life-giving. It brings the clarity we’ve been searching for on the thing that’s been holding us back from walking in the Spirit with unity, joy and peace.

I’m confident that many (not all, but many) will have the same experience.

Moving Forward

I’ll begin soon to post some of the more significant concepts here. So be on the lookout. So the overall direction of this site will shift accordingly. I’ll still be touching on leadership, but the focus will be more centered on our identity in Christ—individually and collectively as the bride of Jesus.

I’ll also be reinstating my paid subscriptions (I’ve had them paused for the last 12 months), so that those who are ready can engage further in the content and have more access to the material.

Here we go …!

Lee Iaccoca famously quoted, “The speed of the leader is the speed of the team.” In an age where “time is money,” it’s easy to interpret this as “Leaders should work faster.” But increasing the speed of ineffective leadership means spending more energy to achieve bad results faster. I suggest rephrasing Iaccoca’s quote: “The manner of speed of the leader is the manner of speed of the team.”

Speed is good. Efficiency is better.

In This Article:

• Speed might be an asset, but efficiency always is. You can’t scale inefficient leadership.

• Leadership efficiency is about maintaining speed. The less energy required to keep moving the team forward the better.

• If you don’t delegate well, you’ll never lead efficiently–and neither will your team.

Key Application:

• Master 4 key leadership behaviors to ensure you’re maximizing your time and energy for the greatest possible outcome.

Note: This article is an excerpt (Chapter 25) from my book, Taking the Lead: What Riding a Bike Can Teach You About Leadership. If you like this sample, click the link to pick up your own copy. Enjoy!

The Faster You Can GO, the Faster You CAN Go

You expend a lot of energy in cycling. A 30-mile ride averaging 20 mph will burn about 2,000 calories. When you burn this much energy you develop a keen awareness of efficiency. You want to get the most out of every effort because even a very slight gain in efficiency becomes significant when it’s multiplied by thousands of pedal strokes, resulting in huge gains. As I discuss in Chapter 9 – By the Sweat of Your Brow, in cycling, efficiency is king.

This means things such as keeping your upper body still; any side-to-side movement is wasted energy that could be channeled into the pedals. It also means not using muscles that don’t contribute to the cycling stroke (your lower back muscles, for example).

But the greatest gain in efficiency comes from being in the right gear. If you’re in a gear that’s too high for your current speed and road grade, you end up pushing harder to get through the stroke. If you’re in a gear that’s too low, you spin the pedal around with ease but the lack of resistance means you haven’t moved the bike forward. Either way, you burn energy that doesn’t translate into forward momentum.

Not good.

Enter the measurement of cadence. Cadence is the speed of your pedal stroke in revolutions per minute. Each cyclist has a cadence “sweet zone.” While this zone varies with each individual cyclist and their body makeup, keeping your cadence somewhere between 87-100 rpm will ensure your pedal strokes will give you the highest output at the lowest possible energy expended.

To beginning riders this can feel abnormally fast. The comfortable cadence is probably in the mid 70’s to the mid 80’s so mid 90’s seems excessive at first. But just a little bit of practice and experimentation with the higher range soon wins the day. It takes some concentration and practice of watching the cadence reading on your trip computer and knowing which gear to be in for a given situation. You can quickly get comfortable riding in this range.

This sounds like a yogism, but in cycling, going faster lets you go faster. When you’re in the right gear with decent speed and a high cadence, the increased efficiency means you are able to go faster—with greater consistency and for longer periods of time. The faster you can go, the faster you can go.

In leadership, the point is not (necessarily) to go faster. As a leader, speed is often—though not always—an asset. But efficiency absolutely is. Efficiency in the leadership stroke is what you’re looking for because it’s so easy to expend energies that don’t move you forward. All your practice, discipline, training and execution need to be as efficient as possible. You need to get the most out of every conversation, every strategy, every directive, every meeting.

Here are a four key leadership behaviors to improve the efficiency of your leadership stroke …

Read more

Today is day #2 of Donald Trump’s second presidency. Some are excited that he’s back in office and optimistic about what he’ll be able to do, while others are dismayed and anxious about what’s to come. Regardless of your opinion of POTUS #47, the reality is that his election is evidence of an ever-growing social trend that we would do well to recognize—and respond to.

In This Article:

• The biggest mistake with positional authority is assuming it’s equivalent to leadership influence. It is not.

• Over-relying on authority is a sign that you’re motivated by fear (not courage, confidence or certainty), and that you’re NOT motivated by a purpose beyond your own interests.

• The social trends are increasingly tipping toward authoritarian-style leadership; this is a moment of truth for faith-driven leaders.

Key Application:

• Start using authority the way Jesus did.

One quality about Trump is evidently clear: He’s positioned himself to unquestionably be the one in authority. And he’s not shy about using the authority that comes with the position to accomplish his agenda.

Many look at this approach with alarm—and perhaps not without reason. But we should note that Trump is actually the latest exhibit of a social trend that has been developing for some time: Influence comes through domination.

And to achieve domination, everyone else has to lose.

Consider the trend in power displays shown in not just presidential debates, but things like Senate and Congressional hearings and TV news reporting interviews in the last 25 years. Even a casual observer can see that these are now more about show than substance.

As a data point, I personally remember the 1980 presidential debate between Reagan and Carter, featuring Reagan’s infamous “There you go again” quip. At the time, it set a new standard for how to counter the other side’s argument in a debate. Today, it seems pretty vanilla:

Over the next four years, I fully expect the Democrats to pivot in their presidential candidate strategy and execute a plan to out-Trump the next Republican candidate. It will be interesting to see what is talked about and how it all falls out.

The Leadership Point

Of course, power displays and leadership authority grabs are nothing new. But for faith-motivated leaders, we should be aware of this trend and be mindful not to fall into its trap.

Not only that, we should purposefully practice the alternative.

Jesus was incredibly explicit in his followers’ approach to authority in leadership:

But Jesus called [his disciples] and said, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions use their authority over them. It must not be this way among you! Instead whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matthew 20.25-28 NET)

It is my observation and conviction that Jesus’ followers today still have a ways to go in practicing this effectively, primarily because we simply do not understand it.

We don’t know how to think, behave and influence others from the identity of being a servant/slave. We have precious few models of it. And since most of the structures and processes in our society don’t promote servant leadership, it is distinctly counter-cultural.

Added to that is the reality that human nature, in general, is self-focused. It’s only through spiritual maturity that we can break free of our natural gravity that keeps us in orbit around our own self-interests.

So getting to servant leadership—first as an identity, and second as an intentional leadership behavior—takes intentional effort.

I hope to convince you that it’s a goal worth pursuing. But even more, I hope you can be convinced that maximizing your influence through serving others makes more sense than capping it through domination.

The Big Mistake

The biggest mistake with leveraging positional authority is assuming it’s equivalent to leadership influence. It is not.

Using the authority that comes with your title/position/status to control the activity and well-being of others may look like influence, but it’s actually fear-based insecurity. And it’s the weakest excuse for leadership you’ll ever see.

Think of it this way: whether you’re a CEO, parent, pastor or boss, which has more lasting impact …

• Forcing someone to do something because they have to, or …

• Inspiring/compelling/challenging/inviting someone to do something because they want to.

This is the essence in Dwight Eisenhower’s quote:

“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”

Using authority to achieve domination demands submission and compliance. It punishes opposition. It’s primary play is control.

Should there be times when your kids or your direct reports simply trust you and do what you ask? Of course.

But have you created the environment that generates that kind of trust?

Are you sure?

What’s Your Motivation?

Over-relying on positional authority is a sign that you’re motivated by fear, instead of being motivated by a purpose beyond your personal interests. The former looks like control. The latter looks like courage, confidence and conviction.

Dominating is the easy way out. It’s self-serving, because it puts others in a position where they have no alternative but to submit. That’s what a playground bully does.

It’s fear-motivated because the alternative to domination is leaving open the possibility that people won’t follow you—which would mean a loss of control: scary.

And what does that say about your identity, if people won’t follow you?

The curious thing about being a dominating leader is that it actually breeds more insecurity. The more control you get, the harder it is to give any of it away.

Your actions become increasingly desperate. Instead of ignoring people for their creativity and innovation, you’ll actively resist them. Instead of looking for the best people to add to your team, you’ll only select people that agree with you.

It ultimately leaves only two options for people to respond to your leadership: Compliance or insubordination. The people who will endure those options will stay. Everyone else will leave.

So you end up with a team of people who will never achieve more than you can control.

Is that really what you want?

What Does Servant Leadership Look Like (Really)?

Servant leadership creates an environment that invites and expects people to excel and accomplish in an intrinsically-motivated way. Simply put, the goal of the leader is to help their followers flourish.

This may sound soft, as if it avoids giving firm direction, challenging or correcting people. Not true. If you want an example, I invite you to read David Marquet’s Turn the Ship Around and see servant leadership that is inspiring, challenging and paradigm-busting. And anything but soft.

Servant leadership works under the realization that healthy authority is earned. That it inspires submission and cooperation, rather than demands it.

Servant leadership recognizes that authority is ultimately granted to the leader: People choose who they will respect as an authority. When you are a leader worth following, one who serves interests beyond yourself, people will follow.

So how do you create that kind of environment? Here’s a handful of practical steps:

• Choose capable people (with the potential to achieve more than you).

• Figure out how to get them what they need to perform at their best.

• Ask for their input and ideas. Listen deeply—to everyone.

• Get them to buy in to a vision/purpose that’s bigger than all of you combined.

• Call them to sacrifice. Challenge them to engage and take ownership.

• Give away decision-making authority—and train them to make good decisions.

• Don’t play favorites. Treat everyone equitably, but not equally (everyone’s different).

• Never stop working to be the leader people want to follow, instead of the one they have to follow.

Pick three you don’t already do, and get to it.

Want to talk about how to improve your leadership from the posture of being a servant? Let’s grab a time for a 15-minute phone call to talk about it. Click the button below to schedule a time

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Use Authority Like Jesus Did

Four final thoughts re: authority …

First, when it comes to authority, Jesus has it all. Any perceived authority we might have is not really ours anyway, it’s his (that includes governments and heads of state, by the way).

Think of it as stewarding his authority that he’s loaned to us.

Second, what Jesus did with his authority is pretty compelling: He gave it away. He distributed his authority to his followers, so that their entire lives (and the lives of those disciples that followed them) were lived as representatives of his authority:

Then Jesus came up and said to [his disciples], "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." (Matthew 28.18-20 NET)

Third, authority and service are not opposites; they’re complementary. Jesus was both the King of Kings and the Chief Servant. After washing each of his disciples feet (one of his final acts before his arrest and crucifixion—a fairly selfless act), Jesus sat back down and said,

"Do you understand what I have done for you? You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and do so correctly, for that is what I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you too ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example—you should do just as I have done for you. I tell you the solemn truth, the slave is not greater than his master, nor is the one who is sent as a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you understand these things, you will be blessed if you do them. (John 13.12-17 NET)

Fourth, Jesus never commanded leaders to serve others. He recommended it. He left the application of servant leadership up to us as a choice. He said we’d be blessed if we did. He said lording authority isn’t in line with who we are to be.

Why did he not command his followers to be servant leaders? Only Jesus knows. My guess is that he knew that calling people to be something is ultimately more powerful than commanding them to do something.

If we’re seeking to be like him desperately enough, we’ll have the humility, the confidence and faith it takes to see ourselves as servants who aren’t afraid to lead boldly.

We’ll understand the degree of identity change we have to go through to see ourselves as servants instead of dominators. And we’ll be blessed by it.

Final Thoughts

To be fair, leadership in any form is tough, hard and humbling work. Unless your name is Jesus, you will fail at leading others. Even the best of servant leaders will resort to self-interest at some point.

And to be clear, authority in an of itself isn’t bad or wrong. It’s what we do with authority—particularly at the exclusion of service—that goes against Jesus’ intent.

The bottom line is this: You will work harder to be a servant leader. But in working harder at leading others through serving them, you will be a more capable and effective leader than you would have been having settled on using your positional authority to dominate.

Peace be with you…

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There’s a saying: “It doesn’t matter where you begin, only where you end up.” This is true—if you start out by seeing yourself through the right lens.

But if you’re trying to get better as a leader from a faulty mindset, your path forward will always be blocked. When it comes to leadership development, HOW you start makes all the difference.

In This Article:

• Being comfortable with yourself as a leader is an asset. So is being driven to improve as a leader. But one without the other means trouble.

• Improving yourself without also being content with who you are makes you consistently self-critical.

• Being content with who you are without also striving to get better makes you consistently defensive.

Key Application:

• Be intentional about being the best possible version of yourself.

There are two big picture truths to grasp in leadership and in developing leadership skills:

1. Leadership Is a Behavior - Whatever you know (or think you know) about leadership means nothing until it shows up at the level of observable behavior.

2. All Behavior Is Driven By Thinking - And because most of our thought processes are subconscious or unconscious, most people aren’t aware of their behaviors—much less the thoughts that drive them.

Let’s walk through these, beginning with …

Leadership Is a Behavior

You haven’t mastered a leadership concept until you intentionally put that concept into practice at the behavioral level, where it is observable, measurable and accountable. Otherwise, it’s conceptual only.

If this describes you, your leadership will always be reactive. You cannot and will not be intentional.

I laid this out in a previous article, if you want to explore this further:

Leadership as a behavior has been a long-time focus in my coaching. Early on, my clients embraced the idea but struggled to see in concretely. I needed a way to help them “see” their behaviors in an objective way, so they could fully grasp how it was impacting their leadership.

360-degree assessments were helpful, but highly situational. Many times, those being assessed questioned the validity of the feedback. And those doing the assessing were uncomfortable about providing accurate feedback. Ultimately, these assessments didn’t create insight on what was most needed: Behavior Change.

And you can’t change something you don’t see.

Beyond leadership as a behavior, there’s another, more transformational truth …

Behavior Is Driven By Thinking

All human behavior is driven by (mostly) subconscious or unconscious thought patterns in our brains. Through extensive research over the past few years, I’ve come to understand the role of things like mindset, identity, attention and brain function.1

There’s too much to unpack here, but I can summarize by saying that every single behavior is driven by our thoughts: what we think and how we think.

Not being able to identify actual behaviors is hard enough. And without being able to identify the behavior, there’s no hope of discovering the thinking that’s driving the behavior.

I needed a leadership mirror to use with my clients.

Fortunately, I found something much better …

The Leadership X-Ray

Seven years ago I took the The Harrison Behavioral Assessment as a part of a coaching training class. It turned out to be exactly the tool I was hoping for.

Where most assessments slot you into a category of personality or temperament types that have some general behavior characteristics, the Harrison predicts what we actually, individually do.

The Harrison Assessment is an X-ray because it presents a data-driven, objective picture that exposes both effective behaviors as well as the counter-productive behaviors hiding in our blind spots.

In a coaching engagement, these results allow us to explore the thinking process behind the behaviors. It’s awareness at this level that produces significant and permanent change.

Let’s explore an example …

The Self-Actualization Paradox

One part of the Harrison Assessment is the Paradox Report, which lays out 12 pairs of behaviors that seem to be opposites of each other but actually work in collaboration. This collaborative effect creates a synergistic, higher-order leadership behavior.

One of these paradoxical pairings is called Self-Actualization, which examines these two behaviors:

• Self-Improvement - The tendency to attempt to develop or better oneself, and

• Self-Acceptance - The tendency to like oneself, or the comfort level with saying “I’m OK the way I am.”

Here’s a graph of how these behaviors work together:

As you can see, when we practice the combination of high Self-Acceptance and high Self-Improvement behaviors, we exhibit healthy self-esteem behaviors. This might show up as confidence, ease, low anxiety, transparency, eagerness to engage and carrying a genuine concern for others even as we inspire to grow ourselves.

Being comfortable with yourself as a leader is an asset. So is being driven to improve as a leader. But one without the other means trouble.

That’s what we’ll see in the next two examples …

High Self-Improvement + Low Self-Acceptance

When we have low Self-Acceptance behaviors, we introduce an out-of-balance dynamic in our behavior set. Take a look at the graph below …

Immediately you can see that working to improve without also being content with yourself makes you consistently self-critical (dot and the gray shaded circle in the lower-right quadrant). In this scenario, nothing you do to improve is ever good enough. You’re improving to cover up for a perceived lack of … something.

The reasons for the perceived lacking are unique to each individual, but the outcomes are usually very similar: pressing to be better than others, not handling failure well, worrying about status and reputation, and frequently getting defensive or justifying when setbacks occur (represented by the “hurricane” symbol in the upper left quadrant). It’s not pretty.

Now, let’s flip the behaviors around and examine …

High Self-Acceptance + Low Self-Improvement

Being content with who you are without also striving to get better makes you consistently defensive. It looks like this:

The leader with this behavior combo is content with themselves and sees no need to improve. So when setbacks occur, it’s obviously someone else’s fault. When called to work harder or put themselves on the line, they can feel unfairly pressured or singled out.

Eventually, as stress levels rise, their defensive posture can turn into a disengaged, ambivalent attitude (indicated by the gray hurricane symbol in the lower right-had quadrant).

Like the previous chart, this behavior weakens a leader’s ability to influence others.

What’s Your Guess?

If you had to guess which of the two out-of-balance paradox patterns is more common, what would you say? Interestingly, one is more frequent than the other. Leave your guess in a comment below and let’s discuss …

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So What?

If you’re out of balance in Self-Actualization and you encounter a setback or unforeseen challenge, your leadership is characterized by either beating yourself up or blaming others and deflecting accountability. Think about how this impacts your team …

• Do these behaviors increase their trust and confidence in you?

• Is this the way you want them to respond when they hit a rough patch?

• Do you want them to treat each other—or worse, your customers and business partners—by being either critical or fault-finding?

• What kind of environmental culture does this behavior create in your organization?

• How do these behaviors impact their eagerness to bring potential problems or solutions to you?

Hopefully, the benefits of leading with a balanced Self-Actualization (without those negative impacts) are obvious. The best possible leadership outcomes happen when purposeful and targeted Self-Improvement supports humble Self-Acceptance—in other words, you work to be a better version of yourself.

It should be noted that these paradoxes don’t eliminate your ability to lead. I’ve seen unbalanced Self-Actualization demonstrated in executives with significant levels of influence and who were reasonably—and in some cases, very—effective. Those leaders leveraged a number of other qualities in their leadership (experience, personality, power, intelligence, persuasion, grit, etc.), in spite of being out of balance in Self-Actualization.

But one has to wonder: What kind of impact did they leave on the table? How much more effective could they have been had they been able to add balanced Self-Actualization on top of their other qualities? How much more fruitful could they have been at developing the emerging leaders on their teams?

The thoughts driving Self-perception and Self-Improvement are some of the most powerful thought processes in our brains. They’re also some of the most poorly managed. How we see ourselves—who we believe ourselves to be (i.e. identity) and how we’re becoming who we want to be—impacts so many of our outward behaviors.

Those leaders who are courageous enough to explore the thinking that drives the low Self-Actualization behaviors will separate themselves from the rest.

Peace be with you …

Interested In Your Own Self-Actualization?

Let’s talk about it! Click the button below to schedule a 15-minute call with me.

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Thoughts? Questions?

Let’s hear ‘em! Leave a comment …

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What if there’s a deeper issue at the bottom of Patrick Lencioni’s 5 Dysfunctions of a Team pyramid that hasn’t been discussed?

In This Article:

• A lack of unified identity is the foundation for a team’s underperformance.

• Team members won't exhibit TRUST behaviors until they have mutual commitment to who they are as a team.

• Clarifying team identity drives team members to ask themselves, "What is it like for us to perform as a team?"

Key Application:

• Practice 6 key leadership practices to stimulate and grow your team’s identity.

I’ve long believed that Patrick Lencioni’s book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is one of the best resources on building a leadership team. Clearly, I’m not alone. Goodreads has it as #11 of the 100 Best Business Books of All Time:

And it’s Amazon’s #1 AND #2 best seller in the Human Resources & Personnel Management category (the audio-book version is #2) :

Not bad for a 23 year-old book.

In my work in coaching leaders and teams, I find that many leaders have read it—though a minority of them can claim that they’ve successfully applied its principles. With good reason: Leadership in general is difficult, and developing a leadership team is even more of a challenge.

In my experience, there’s one particular reason most teams are teams in name only and struggle to solve all five dysfunctions. I’m convinced that this can change, if leaders could understand what’s happening and lead through it. Before I get to that reason, however, let’s do a quick review of the five dysfunctions.

The Model

Here’s my summary of Lencioni’s model, in his familiar pyramid:

Showing it in pyramid form highlights that the issues at the top are seemingly the most prominent, visible and are the ones that get addressed first. But it also shows how each dysfunction is being fed by the dysfunction below it. As you go deeper into the pyramid each subsequent issue becomes larger—and unfortunately, more obscure. So few teams actually become healthy at the deepest level: mutual trust.

Now, to my point: With the utmost respect to Patrick, I have found a sixth dysfunction that he doesn’t explicitly mention but is critical to team success. That sixth dysfunction is …

A Lack of Unified Identity

The most basic reason people don’t trust each other is because the team hasn’t established and unified itself around who it is as a team. Here’s the pyramid with the identity level added:

Without a unified team identity, things like core values, attitudes, the interdependence of individual gifts and talents are all vague or competing. There’s no clear collective purpose. The group collaboration—i.e. how the individuals interact, depend upon, support and synergize with each other—is left to chance.

A team is a group of people who share principles and ideals that are both individually owned AND corporately exercised—simultaneously. It’s a group of people who need one another, belong to one another and whose individual identities have morphed into the collective identity.

Approaching the pyramid upside down, it’s pretty straightforward for a team with a unified identity to …

• Trust each other, which makes it easier to …

• Initiate and resolve healthy conflict, which allows for …

• Raising the bar on commitment, which then …

• Creates a culture of accountability for their performance, and …

• Maintains focus on team results—which are more important than individual results.

How to Establish Unified Team Identity

Here are 6 leadership practices you can deploy to create and sustain a unified team identity …

01 :: Believe It

This “identity thing” can’t just be cliche, posturing or platitudes on the part of the leader. You have to be all-in, otherwise your team will know you’re all-out.

To help you be all-in on the concept of team identity, you should know the truth that identity informs activity. This is simply how our brains function: All our behaviors are a product of our thinking. The 5 dysfunctions (avoiding trust, avoiding conflict, choosing not to commit, skirting accountability and inattention to results) are all behaviors that are driven by a weak or conflicting thinking about team identity.

Still think this sounds soft and irrelevant? Think again. The fact that identity shapes behavior is one of the most basic and practical aspects of being a human. Think about it: Imagine trying to behave in ways that don’t align with your identity. You won’t be able to maintain those behaviors for long before becoming demotivated, frustrated and having a troubled conscience. All this is cognitive dissonance from identity and behavior not being aligned.1

02 :: Make It Practical, Not Philosophical

Because the genuine team experience is so rare, the concept of “team” will be vague and conceptual. Talking about “team” will be like talking about a black hole—people may have a concept, but they won’t have practical knowledge; they’ve never actually seen it.

That means you have to de-mythologize “team” and make it very tangible. Give them some real life team examples, such as …

• The Navy SEALs

• Flight acrobatic teams like the Thunderbirds or the Blue Angels

• NASA during the Apollo 13 mission

• The 2018 rescue of the 13 boys trapped in a flooded Thailand cave

• The 2010 rescue of 33 miners buried in a mine near Copiapó, Chile

Each of these are examples of genuine teams. Remember: A team is not everyone working individually, together. It’s everyone working together, individually—cohesively depending on and increasing the value of each individual contributions.

03 :: Target Collaboration, Not Cooperation

I can cooperate and still hold firmly to prioritizing my individual identity and my personal interests. But in collaboration, I must defer, become vulnerable, embrace receiving feedback and be equally invested in the team outcome. I still see my individual identity, but my role on the team helps me see myself more clearly. It gives me far greater clarity on who I actually am and how I best function.

Inspire and demand collaboration, not just cooperation. To collaborate, individual team members need to both give AND receive in ways that make the product of the team greater than the sum of its parts.

04 :: Elevate the team, not the individuals

Compel the individuals to serve each other’s interests, and not (just) their own. A team identity means success and failure occur at the team level, not at the individual level.

Build a team of superstar collaborators, not a group of superstars. Obviously, you want talent on your team. You want to hire capable, competent people. But prioritize team culture over individual results.

05 :: Listen to everyone

Model team values by expecting, requiring and rewarding participation by everyone. Find tangible ways to illicit ideas from each member of the team. Listen before you give direction, and find ways to incorporate input from the team to shape the strategy and execution.

06 :: Just Lead It

I could have started my list of leadership practices with this one, but I think ending with it can be more impactful. The truth is: The team will follow your lead. If you want your team to genuinely be a team, you have to lead it as a team. You have to model the qualities and practices that inspire team performance. If you don’t, you’ll just be a hypocrite.

Model team values like transparency and interest in other’s opinions. Ask for input. Make a human connection and build trust. Give people insight on their talents and gifts and encourage them to use them more in serving others on the team.

I recommend Adam Grant’s Hidden Potential as a great resource for actualizing team identity:

Specifically, read chapter 8: Mining for Gold, which is all about uncovering the hidden potential and raising the collective intelligence in teams (Adam uses the Chile mine disaster response as the main theme of this chapter). It alone is worth the price of the book. After reading it, don’t be surprised if you change all your future strategy meetings to incorporate the practice of team “brainwriting.” Just saying …

Prosocial skills are the glue that transforms groups into teams. Instead of operating as lone wolves, people become part of a cohesive pack … Icebreakers and ropes course can breed camaraderie, but … what really makes a difference is whether people recognize that they need one another to succeed on an important mission. That’s what enables them to bond around a common identity and stick together to achieve their collective goals.

~ Adam Grant, Hidden Potential

You’re Working With an Iceberg

Finally, it may help to realize that creating a unified team identity may feel like mining an iceberg … because it is.

Icebergs (whether they form in the water or calve off of glaciers) are built from the bottom up. The surface issues are the visible things above the waterline. The core issues driving the surface issues are at the bottom—the oldest and most dense part. Everything we see above the waterline is built on top of what’s at the bottom.

You can focus just on being results-focused—these are certainly not insignificant. But if you really want to create and build a team that is focused on producing great results in a healthy way, you’ll eventually need to dig into the core issue: Team identity.

Peace be with you …

Agree? Disagree? Something to Add?

Leave a comment and let’s discuss it!

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Most people these days are savvy enough to recognize a “feedback sandwich” coming from a mile away. If that’s your approach to giving feedback to a direct report, you should know that they’re probably tuning you out. But the solution isn’t finding a new feedback method, it’s finding a way to earn their trust.

In This Article:

• You can't help people transform their behaviors apart from a relationship.

• Feedback is "This is what you're doing wrong." Effective feedback is "I want to see you succeed, and this is blocking your success."

• Effective feedback is about getting past the barrier of "Why should I listen to you?"

Key Application:

• Establish the relationship around trust, then build on that foundation.

We’ve all received feedback from a manager who used the “feedback sandwich” method. Even if you don’t know it by that name, you’ll recognize those conversations that went something like this:

1. Tell them something they’re doing right (to set a positive tone).

2. Tell them what they’re not doing right (what needs correction).

3. Tell them something positive (to set expectations for good outcomes moving forward).

The approach was widely promoted 40 years ago, but now is equally widely criticized as plastic and insincere. Now it’s a meme for how to be a bad manager who can’t relate with people.

I don’t know if there was ever a Dilbert cartoon made about it, but I'd bet my house there was…

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