Ego-whatsit?

Arrived in South Carolina a few hours ago. The stress of a long flying day, limited knowledge of the city, an obscure location for a hotel and very few street signs begins to show quickly as you dodge around town in the dark. Upon arriving I was able to let my hair down - well, with a military haircut, you know what I mean. The flesh is sometimes so hard to kill!

So I finally got to catch up on some Christian Research Institute magazine issues. I am still amazed at the Eckhart Tolle - Oprah Winfrey apostasy. There is little doubt about it, given Oprah's very specific denials of Jesus and the orthodox Christian faith. But the sad thing is the ignorance that goes into such ideologies. My father believes essentially the same thing. These new-found, self-styled "gurus" have an "aha" moment while flossing their teeth and suddenly there is a new religion!

Well, actually, a newly re-hashed religion, since Buddhism pretty much covers the essential belief structure. Tolle's most telling ontological comment was in reference to a time in his life when he stated, "I can't live with myself." He saw in that statement the "I," a separate person from the "myself." Since he didn't like the "myself," he reasoned, he must really be the "I" and distinct from that which was the construct he disliked. Sound like word games to you?

It's all about the cosmic oneness, the monism, the pan- and panen- theism, the denial of "ego," and the disciplines that lead one to "enlightenment." Ironically, while Tolle and others of his ilk can point out that the "self" does not exist, but is a construct of our mind, they fail to explain why there can then be a mind, or a construct, or several billion "selfs" around the world who are constructs of their own minds! Tolle, my father, Baghwan, eastern mystics... they're all OUT of their minds!

It is so hard for people to let go of the fact that they cannot perfect themselves. We keep trying and it never seems to work. Does the conscious one-ness have some issues (approximately 6.5 billion of them) that it works out through the individual "selfs" it creates? How does a monistic, universal "being" divide itself out into so many egos, anyhow? If these questions sound confusing, it's because there is no logical answer, save that it is a false doctrine that is better explained in a theistic context! God gave us our individuality...it is not a self-fabrication.

If that spun your head, just remember: We are individuals and will be for eternity. Our path is or own choosing. We can either live it like God wants us to, or like we want to. Perhaps I am too caught up in "ego," especially since I obviously could not suppress it on the drive through Columbia this evening, but the real struggle is not against "myself," but against my "self." As Paul concluded in Romans 5:6-7, "For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin — because anyone who has died has been freed from sin."

We will never be free from our "self" by simply denying self. Those who try and say they have done so (and believe me, I've seen many) lie to themselves, and the evidence is daily visible. Those of us who enact Christ's death in our bodies, while we may fall short, are daily being made in His image, which image will one day be perfected in us, in glory. Our freedom is in the ubiquitous God, revealed to us in the individual, Jesus Christ, not in an amorphous, impersonal super-consciousness.