Who Am I?

I was reading the autobiography of Thomas Merton when I first heard of the idea. Once I knew about it, I began to see it everywhere. The idea is that of the true self. Merton often wrote about the false self. The true self is what is left after you remove all aspects of the false self.

The true self is the person we are meant to be in the eyes of God, but who is hidden behind all the things that we do as a result of living in a fallen world. An infant does not have a false self, because an infant is only capable of doing what an infant does. It cannot pretend to be someone or something else. An infant gives glory to God by being exactly what an infant is supposed to be.

When discussing the true and false self, some important distinctions need to be made. The relationship between physical and spiritual has spawned several heresies. We are not born as a false being where the true being is beyond this world. That implies an inherrent wrongness of creation, which is gnosticism. We are still born into a fallen world though. We are not just taught to be false by others. That is pelagianism. The false self develops because we live in a fallen world.

So what is the false self?

The false self can take many, many forms. Think of the false self as the barnacles that attach themselves to a ship. They are bad habits that we develop because we live in a fallen world. Things that prevent us from being who we really are. Notice that I have not attributed words like good and bad to either the true or false self. A tree gives glory to God by being a tree, an infant gives glory to God by being an infant, and I give glory to God by being authentically me with no judgement on who that is.