In an earlier post, the word “egongelical” was introduced. It has taken more processing and human interaction to formulate. In this post, I hope to at least introduce the idea and frame it a bit. Like Love, it will be a subject written about much more. It’s already there, infused in and behind the ideas and writing here. Perhaps “egongelicalism” isn’t the right term—names can change. The truth is there, and it provides a contrast to Evangelicalism.
Ego is not a surprising concept anymore. It’s not a debated idea but rather an accepted reality for us today. It hasn’t always been that way. The idea of ego in a “real” or scientific understanding wasn’t formulated until Freud. However, it’s everywhere in humanity’s wisdom and religious writings. Ego is central in Stoicism, Buddhism, New Age beliefs, and psychology. Jesus’ laying down of self or Paul’s call to die to self, considering others more than ourselves, and removing the plank from our own eye are all about ego. Christians call the ego things like “flesh,” “sinful nature,” and even “the self” or the “old me.”
In psychology, the goal is to help a person become a more whole and integrated person. Facing ourselves isn’t an option—it is the way. If we avoid addressing our ego, it’s our ego in control. If we project, control, deny, deceive, and avoid things as if they are an afterthought, it’s our subconscious taking the wheel, not Jesus. The dangerous thing is to confuse God, Jesus, or the Spirit with our ego.
Hello Me. Meet Your Ego.
Ego is an image of ourselves created in our mind that we perpetuate. It’s the fabricated identity that we have formed since childhood to allow us to safely engage with the world while keeping our guarding our self. We can’t deal with some things in reality, so we create a different reality within ourselves. It’s a shell through which Reality and the false reality we’re hiding in segregate. Adding a false image of ourselves to our thinking and decisions complicates things quickly—we’re not thinking just about ourselves but about the idea of ourselves we’ve constructed, smothering our inner self. It creates disharmonies and habits we justify to keep our Ego secure and ignorant. We inflate ourselves, diminish others, and justify our choices to ourselves. And we expect others to support it.
When our own person is wrapped and infused with Ego, we struggle to see and hear things as they are because it is not us who is perceiving but the “me” that we have to protect. This highlights the double-minded nature of how it complicates life. “I” have to protect a “me” that “I” imagine while ignoring what “I” actually need. This has to be done with other people who all have their own ego stuff going on. Egos tend to feed off each other. Egos will collect and start colluding with and validating one another. This is how tribalism starts.
The work of creating an image of myself who already exists, the work of trying to push that up and out while keeping the real me hidden and safe inside, and the work of dealing with communication breakdowns so I can filter Reality for the sake of my Ego is exhausting and unsustainable. It produces pain and stress. It’s why we let little things blow out of proportion, why we can’t talk about our issues but will point out everyone else’s.
An Evangelical Exodus
It’s clear to me, from Genesis 1-3 through the Gospels and to Revelation, that Ego is humanity’s issue. Jesus’s Gospel was clearly an invitation to kill our egos and do the “opposite”—love. American Christianity got lost turning personal plunder into an ephod and national adultery: “Gideon made it into an ephod, and placed it in his city, Ophrah; but all Israel committed infidelity with it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his household” (Judges 8:27). Do pastors realize they can turn lead (or keep) a church into idolatry?
Plenty of evangelicals feel something is off but don’t seem to have the language for it. Many have left, especially since Trump’s first presidency. My issue with the Deconstruction and Exangelical movements is that they, in general, are more a simple rejection of Christianity. But a rejection towards what? Saying “no” to something is needed, but we can’t stop there. While I had to deconstruct my faith and am no longer an Evangelical, throwing baby Jesus out with the baptismal water seemed off.
Generations of Doctrinal Entropy
In law, tax code, my bedroom, and the universe, there is entropy. Entropy is disorder (any physics fan out there is cringing at such a reductional definition but we must keep going). As things like tax codes and organizational policies build and develop over time, things start to drift and overlap. Eventually, the simpler internal systems get lost in noise and minutia. Small things become bigger and bigger things smaller. Words change and systems replaced. Over time, what was started with has been lost in the the thing that evolved to take its place.
The Bible has been around a lot longer than America and longer than the Catholic Church. I’m not interested anymore in defending the “Christianities” humans have spun off for 2000 years. We’ve had generations upon generations of humans playing with their ideas of the Gospel, then handing it down to be evolved by the next. The doctrinal entropy has so overwhelmed our focus that we’ve missed the “weightier matters.” We’ve pulled the Gospel away from the Ego so church organizations can control them. We’ve done this in large part because church leaders and people missed this. Their attention was on what they perceived to be bigger problems. Ego again and now it’s a national problem with the perfect mascot.
Jesus
Then there is Jesus. Even among atheists, people love Jesus. Jesus isn’t the issue in churches—the way their ego sees him is. The way he’s taught and used by churches supports their insular worldview and justifies their behavior while demonizing the world—more ego. Depending on the church you go to, you’ll find a different Jesus with a different personality and priorities.
I believe another reformation is coming. This hunch has been building for years. Recently, I’ve heard the same idea from other pastors and Christians. The murmurings are there and it’s already beginning. Lifelong evangelicals are finally seeing the problem—many are too afraid to speak about it because they don’t have words for it and may not have dealt with their own ego. We need to create definitions and a language so this reformation can take place. A lot more is coming. A lot of egos will panic.
For you and me, we need to keep this central. This is about “me”—not “them.” My moment-to-moment being is what this is about. It’s my every interaction and how I see people. It should sift down to the “Why” of my existence and change the “How” of everything I do. It’s continual because there is always the option of creating a distorted reality and posturing ourselves differently than we really are. It should simplify things, but I’m not used to that. Pain, low self-esteem, and hopelessness are what I’ve made my bed in for years.
