It is true that friendship and affection for the divine are two things which will very often lead us away from self-worship towards a love for Christ.  But I should imagine it is hard for those who feel nothing for Him to understand the conception of wanting Him while at the same time distinguishing that want from the desiring of other pleasures, such as human love.  Thus if we are going to expose self-worship for the ruinous state that it really is, we must learn to distinguish between Heavenly pleasures and earthly pleasures which can, in moments of self-worship, become intertwined.  It is not always so obvious - lovers, for example, sometimes want to worship earthly pleasures when they want to be ‘2 as 1’.  But unless human love can transcend earthly pleasures it is not going to be very rewarding. 

 

When a man wants to take a woman home who he has just met in a nightclub - it is primarily about him and her, not them.  Even if they end up dating, the desires themselves are merely facts about each individual.  And if they, later, fall in love, it then becomes more about them rather than him and her.  But when it starts to go wrong the true weaknesses of the foundation are exhibited for both of them to see.  They had based their love on sensuous perceptions and expressions, both of which will never be enough.  You see, even if love is strong enough that each can worship the other, it still pertains to that awful sub-heading – self-worship.  To worship any kind of humanity is a very negative thing.  It is self-worship that has caused much of the western world to become so Godless, and if we are not safe from it in love, we are not safe from it in any place but behind the protective shield of the divine. 

 

I think you know just as well as I do how it works and what causes it.  Men and women are trying to make themselves gods over their own life.  Perhaps the desire to become a god is more congenital than we have ever realised - after all, we are told that we will become God-like through our salvation with Christ, why then should we be surprised if men and women simply take the shortcut and try to elevate themselves immediately?  Now it is a terrible thing to do - but it is one of those terrible things that is greatly permissible in modern times; in fact, much of government and sociological ideology encourages it - after all, they will tell us that we are the ones who can make a difference; that reform involves ‘everyone’.  But all the time it is making us into little devils.  Banish self-surrender and obedience from the bed of worship and you will be cast into the arms of the Bad One.

 

But we should be quite wrong if we think that self-worship has no other drawbacks; it has many.  Self-worship will, by herself, seek retribution for wrongs done against her - she is not always easy to reconcile with the super-ego.  All the time the self-worshipper knows that this cranky old machine is running on something other than itself.  Thus two things occur - either it is all turned into one big tragic comedy, where everyone apart for the self-worshipper can see the horrendous faults; or worse, complete dejection is experienced through some form of self-abandonment, which leads to madness and ruination.  At the first stage, the man can be brought back easily, for his own humiliation shows him how reliant on other things he really is.  But if he reaches that dreadful second stage, he is going to need something that only the divine can provide - a real changing of his heart. 

 

The self-worship demon brings about folly in the more innocuous areas of a man’s life too.  She will deceive his imagination, she will bring no self-detestation when it is fully warranted, she will be mischievous and make his mind play tricks on him, she will leave him indisposed to help when it is offered most sincerely, and when all hope seems to be gone, when his arrogance and disdain has put his soul on a speed train towards self-appointed demigod she will, having done most of her work, assail him with one final eradication of the last shred of his soul that has the slightest capabilities for self-surrender. 

 

And in the end, when he has nothing much left, she will abandon him like a philandering wife, the sustenance she was living off has run out.  If in those transitory moments when a man’s self-worship did its work and he was able to feel the glow of admiration around him that he constantly coveted, you can be sure that there was a sudden twist in his cognisance where he knew full well that this admiration was really as fragile as plywood.  Any sudden twist like this simply reminded him that he is a prisoner, held hostage by his own insecurities - for the demon of self-worship only preys upon those who have not the first hint of belief in themselves.  I have never met a self-worshipper who was not as transparent as my front window.  There is no real way of dealing with it until it is recognised that one of its main functions is to negate and suppress the self’s regression back to humility, for if this regression occurs, it will be perceived that there will be very little subsequent grandeur. 

 

Most men are convinced that frivolous thoughts about satisfaction are enough to elicit a sound understanding about what satisfaction really is.  But satisfaction is very misleading, as the feeling itself does not change whether it is false or real, just as money retains its numerical value whether earned or stolen.  Self-worship shows a man wrong things about satisfaction; that is, all forms of satisfaction are never detached from thoughts about the self.  But satisfaction, when seen through the lens of Heavenly duties shows the true nature and futility of self-worship - for no form of satisfaction through self-worship can bring an end to the true sinful nature of the self, nor can it stop the dejection that occurs from quiet and introspective self-realisation.  Self-worship wants the faults to be blameless, mere mitigation in the eyes of a troubled soul; it requires that the inner observations of the self’s true needs are, in fact, to remain secondary to self-propitiation. 

 

Self-worship wants the self to be loved by others as much as a man loves the self, thus producing an impossibility.  It wants contemptible things to be overshadowed by admiration; in fact, it wants a complete suspension of the truth to make room for ego-stroking lies.  The real faults of the self, the faults which are impeding true growth, are buried deeper so as to become more of the growing parts than of the eradicable parts.  We all know deep down not just the faults of the self but also of the real need to remove them from our insides.  But self-worshippers, equally aware of this reality, spend their days trying very hard not to acknowledge them for what they really are.  They do one of two things, they either bury them so deep that all strands of human empathy, solicitude, understanding, and charity are lost in a sea bed of parochialism, or they change these faults into disguised wishes for betterment; that is, they are exhibited not as character defects but as satirical idiosyncrasies, deployed in court-jester style jocularity or in public self-flagellation - a cosmetic to brighten up their ashen face.  It not only betrays itself by falsity and sublimation - it creates an illusory form of self-understanding whereby a man descends into a person who barely knows anymore what pleases him or those who are around him. 

 

But self-worshippers can, of course, be helped - if one were to point out the true realities of the situation in a way which the beneficiary understands and can recognise himself within the analysis.  Then we will have helped him save himself from a life of discontentment.  He will be happier not because he knows the true nature of human faults (he can gauge this from faults in others), but because he knows now of his own ignorance regarding the self.  It is right that he should see the true deceptions of self-worship, for they are human entrapments in the web of self-delusion.  If self-worship puts an ugly mask upon the truth, self-realisation shows its real beauty, for however bad and wretched the self, the truth remains a beautiful revelation. 

 

We should be quite wrong if we thought that self-worship has no other corollaries; it has one major corollary which we have not yet touched upon - and it is possibly the worst one of all.  It stands between the self and another person who is in possession of the truth about the self.  Upon hearing the truth, the self worshipper chooses to disregard it claiming it is all nonsense; claiming that many people can live without it.  But they are secretly resenting them for pointing out things which the self-worshipper knows very well are true descriptions of himself and, if he is thinking clearly, everyone else too.  And if he has a strong personality, he makes people reluctant to help him, due to their knowing of the uncomfortable zones in which they will have to tread with him.  He ends up being treated not as is best for his hungry state but as is best for his self-worshipping state.  It does him no favours in the end.  Each step he climbs closer to the penthouse in the superficial riches of self-worship, he climbs one step further from the true nature of himself, until it eventually becomes barely recognisable.  He can be the most despised man in the group and be the only one who knows nothing about it, or the most awkward member of a family, again the only one in the dark about his true position. 

 

And here we have touched upon one of the main reasons why Christians are often mocked and derided; they tell people things about themselves which have, all the time, been hints of truth but an armed enemy capable of cutting right through the power of self-worship.  Thus, it is soon dismissed in favour of the warrior who lives within the comfort zone, for he is a true dependable friend who will not challenge the pleasurable parts of the instincts.  Self-worshippers who also have good abilities on their side, or good fortune, or natural intelligence and quick-witted levity, are so often the worst kinds of people, capable of steering religious people in another direction.  It is odious not just because of self-worship but because the ubiquity of self-worship has convinced many people - even those who are quite self-disciplined - that it is a terrible crime against talent and ability to disapprove of these things.  This grand delusion tells the self-worshippers that others are only jealous, begrudgingly wishing they had such gifts.  But ‘gifts’ is, of course, the operative word, used even by irreverent people - it is a subliminal admission that none of these things are really from the self; none of these are really ours. 

 

And there is a very easy way to tell the true nature of ability.  Those who have it are quite aware that in the company of those who do not, it is quite embarrassing to be so richly gifted compared with those who are not.  It is only when two people with similar gifts and abilities come together the real nature of pride and competition rears its ugly head.  These gifts when realised as belonging to something bigger than the self, make us quite reticent with inner-flattery and unworthiness, but when used competitively, are part of the big picture of self-deception and delusion.  If self-worship were a genuine state capable of bringing lucidity, you would find that conversations would be entirely different to what they are.  But of course, we all know that human relationships only really reveal in words a very small part of that which is being revealed in the inner thoughts of the self.  It is, of course, best that they remain there, but it tells us resoundingly that self-worship is nothing more than cloudy reality.  It is, I would say, certainly true that the nature of self-worship is the biggest self-lie that the world has known.  I should imagine that amongst all the self-worshippers in a crowd of friends, if one really knew what the other one thought of him, they would be friends no longer.  But for those in a crowd of people who understand much better the true nature of the self, I would say that friendship can strengthen because of this.  Hypocrisy cannot elicit anything more than a deep and profound dissatisfaction with the self and the majority of things by which it is surrounded.  The heart becomes lost in a haze of self-delusion.  But there is hope - for if the real nature of self-worship is found out by a man, he can, if he perseveres with the enquiry, delight in the new revelations and, hopefully, go on to pursue the truth further. 

 

The real and true understanding comes when we are able to laugh at ourselves - what crazy kooks we all are really - we should, in the grand scheme of things, be quite appalled at any attempt to take ourselves too seriously.  Should we fervently and sincerely worship our Lord?  Of course.  Should we recognise our creaturely position as subordinate to our Creator?  Absolutely.  Should we love and respect Him as our God who knows boundlessly more what is best for us than we ever will?  Most definitely.  Thus we should never take ourselves too seriously or have delusions about our own greatness.  If any of us are great, if any of us excel in some specialist field, you can be sure that Christ had more to do with it than we did.  If numinous feelings are the true encapsulation of beauty between creature and Creator, self-worship is an encapsulation of the ugliness between creatures.  It is far better to place our mind and body in the reverential mode for something worthy of greater reverence than the obstinate souls which are all too serious at the best of times. 

 

When two people are friends it is primarily about two individuals.  But in the act of love we are two individuals but we also represent something bigger, something enriches each individual, a force that helps each one bring about something in the other person that would not otherwise be there as individuals.  An absence of this, as in false loves and fractious relationships, brings about the denial of those needs - a compromise for something less fulfilling.  In the third type of closeness that can be experienced with creature and Creator (Christ is called the bridegroom of the church) - it naturally follows that those couples who have mastered the second kind, that of love, by using the third kind to cultivate and stimulate their relationship, have in their stead the ultimate form of love.  That is why God says all those things which are uncongenial to the modern mind about chastity and self-sacrifice - because He knows how best we can achieve happiness, contentment, and fulfilment.  It is we, those who He created, who do not always know.  That is the main problem with self-worship it does not allow our enquiries about ourselves any room to breathe - it cuts out the oxygen from those feelings and actions that are best going to achieve for us, bliss in Christ. 

 

Self-worshippers accept as their own, what really should be God’s.  This is why non-Christian love can be one of the most misleading things in the world, for it elevates both parties to a status far beyond their deserts.  To feel love is to walk beside the path that God really wants you to be on; but you are suddenly in touching distance from the feelings you should be having for Christ.  I do not, of course, mean romantically, but love makes us feel a certain way, it makes us feel as if we are doing something right - that we are doing something that God intended, just not quite as he intended.  Do you see what I mean?  To love at all seems to induce feelings that would please any sky-father who might exist.  The real problem is that this love and these feelings often make a man aggrandise those feelings to such a level that he mistakes them for his own qualities.  Love has, for brief moments, falsely exalted him, because people do things ‘for love’, that is, they make up their own patterns ’in love’ - love is perhaps the one thing that makes non-believers feel a little bit like Christ - love has its own way of introducing feelings of being a martyr.  I do not think that this is so distinct from the self-worship that we have been discussing, for when we love in the wrong way, we are really exhuming all those strands of pride that we thought we had left behind - the ones that only surface in times of love and extreme generosity. 

 

Self-worship is one of the things which everyone who is controlled by it knows it exists but they do not often analyse it.  They end up ascribing it to part of their personality, presuming that everyone has it.  They reduce it to virtual nothingness, they suppress it, hoping that it will not escape into tangibility.  If it is thought of correctly, self-worship only shows us how weak we really are.  Those who are subsumed by self-worship will lose it in later life - but it does trick them somewhat.  Self-worshipping, when a man is in the best mental shape to use it, never discloses its temporality, for if one were to know this true fact, it would not be trusted quite so much; it makes promises it cannot keep.  It tosses both personal fulfillment and the ultimate search for wisdom aside in the hope of clinging on to every vain hope of admiration and kudos. 

 

But can we hope to sustain this even for a moment when we have actually realised the damage that is doing?  It is coaxing us towards falsehood.  At best the gains are intermittent.  One of the primary facets of Christian transformation is to eradicate self-worship until every last shred of energy that was put into self-worship is now put into worshipping our Creator.  It is not so easy as you might think, for the old demon returns at every testing moment - she is not so dead as first thought - she can be momentarily knocked down, but she will get up again when the little devils are trying to convince you to let her back in again.  It is usually the times when you believe that worshipping your Creator serves you no momentarily social advantage.

 

It is the truest fact that we will never make it on our own, we must rely on something greater than ourselves.  It is true that self-worship is a demon much stronger than our own powers of resistance.  But we are not being asked to fight her off on our own.  We are being asked to put on the armour of God (Ephesians 6:11), to be shielded by God’s power (1 Peter 1:5) - so that we can subvert the insidious power of self-worship.  We should remember one thing when we are trying to achieve this - we do not have an unsympathetic counsellor (Hebrews 4:15) -- if we put our faith in Christ and in His grace in helping us to overcome the problems of both the self and the world, we shall see both the futility of self-worship, and, indeed, the real pleasures of being free in Christ.