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Exchanged Glory II: The OK Stronghold
<page 25>My frustration grew to the point where I began to physically punish myself. For example, I would sometimes cut my hands with razor blades. I couldn’t meet my own demands, and it hurt more to hold in my anger than to unleash it against myself.
Part of each of us is like a child. We have emotions that inspire us to laugh, have fun, and live life from our hearts. We desire unconditional love, attention, and appreciation from others. We get angry when we don’t get our way and become jealous of those who get more than we do. I will refer to this part of us as our Child (with a capital C).[16]
Though we take on adult responsibilities, some childlike (and childish) qualities remain with us. They are toned down by maturity or are hidden from public view because of social stigmas, but they continue to affect us. Even adults need love and can become jealous or angry.
My childlike emotions took an interesting twist early in my life. In part because my father didn’t spend a great deal of time with me, they set out on a quest to find the perfect father. Every time I respected an older man, I would long for him to fill the empty spot in my soul.
I was let down, almost without exception, when one man after another failed to meet my expectations. With each letdown, I reacted by deciding I couldn’t rely on anyone. This pattern of hope and disillusionment continued for years as I repeatedly opened my heart and then closed it. Since my expectations weren’t based in reality, it was impossible for me to find my ideal father. I had set myself up for a lifetime of disappointments.
My job change brought one of those disappointments. I had come to view management as a father figure. They had guided and taken care of me on my previous assignment, and I trusted them to do so throughout my career. I felt secure as I gave them my time and effort, believing that if I did good work they would always protect me.
That all crashed when I was forced into the new dead end job. My father figures had failed me, as had many others before them. No matter how much they may have cared as human beings (and they were some of the most sympathetic caring managers I have ever had), the realities of the business world made me a small, insignificant piece of a huge money-making machine. No one was going to look out for me but me. I once again felt alone in my battle to live in the world.
You might wonder why my search for the perfect father hadn’t ended when I surrendered to God. After all, our heavenly Father is perfect. Unfortunately, even He didn’t match my ideal. <page 26>The kind of father I looked for would never let me suffer and struggle the way He did. I often felt like He didn’t support me and that He left me to figure life out on my own. I managed to keep these feelings from destroying my faith, but my Child didn’t consider Him to be the kind of Father I needed.
Before I move on, I need to distinguish between what I mean by “Child” and what others might mean. When some refer to their “inner child,” they seem to be referring to a separate personality living inside of them. They may talk about getting in touch with it, as if it were buried or hiding somewhere within them.
When I talk about our Child, I do not mean a separate personality. In fact, I consider that approach dangerous. If we have separate personalities fighting for control, we may be dealing with evil spirits rather than conflicting emotions.
I think it is important not to confuse emotions with evil spirits. Emotions are an important part of us, and they can be straightened out. Evil spirits can’t be straightened out; they must be resisted until they flee.
When I use the terms Child, Parent (next section), and Adult (later in this chapter), I am simply organizing the parts of our inner life. We have a set of emotions that we usually associate with children (our Child), we have a set that we usually associate with parents (our Parent), and we have reasoning and willpower abilities that we associate with adults (our Adult).
In this book I am pointing out that we often don’t have the wisdom to balance the conflicting directions in which these different parts lead. I hope that what I write here will help us to gain it.
This isn’t to say that evil spirits aren’t involved in our struggle. Many of us deal with demonic personalities bombarding our hearts, fighting for control. They can influence our thoughts and emotions, and we must learn to handle them.
This spiritual warfare was a huge part of my struggle, but I will wait until later in this series of books to describe how I finally resolved it. In this book I will only briefly introduce the battle.
I found that until I knew how to handle my mental and emotional issues, I couldn’t fully deal with my spiritual issues. The Spirit of God would drive the evil spirits away, but they always came back. Still, the Lord sustained me in the middle of the oppression. I was able to refuse to cooperate with the demons, and I grew in God’s wisdom. In that way, Jesus gradually moved in with His word and replaced their insanity with His sanity. His character grew in the place they had previously occupied, and this gave them less and less of a foothold.
Another part of us is like a parent (which I will call our Parent, with a capital P). This part is especially affected by the parents who raised us. If they were harsh and judgmental, we will tend to view ourselves and others with criticism. If they were gentle and nurturing, we will tend to be caring people.
I define our Parent as consisting of three sets of emotions:
1. Our guilt and reward emotions
<page 27>2. Our nurturing and protecting emotions
3. Our judgmental emotions
My internal Parent headed in a dangerous direction when I was young. At some point, probably around the age of ten, I remember feeling that I couldn’t rely on people. I felt that if I was going to get what I wanted in life, I would have to find ways to succeed on my own.
Since I had to make up for everyone else’s lacks, there wasn’t much room for me to make mistakes, and my Parent became a perfectionist. I pushed myself and grew increasingly impatient with my failures. My frustration grew to the point where I began to physically punish myself. For example, I would sometimes cut my hands with razor blades. I couldn’t meet my own demands, and it hurt more to hold in my anger than to unleash it against myself.
My father and mother noticed the cuts and asked me what they were from. I told them they were from pushing through thorns in the woods.
At my sixth grade Christmas concert, I performed well as a singer and trumpet player. I came home feeling good about myself. My internal Parent approved of my performance, and my Child was euphoric. I walked into the room where my father was watching TV and celebrated by throwing little styrofoam balls (fake snow) into the air. Unfortunately, I hadn’t noticed he was holding a bowl of popcorn. When the fake snow went into it, he became annoyed and scolded me.
I was mad at myself for ruining a great evening. I went to my room to vent my anger by cutting my hands. I didn’t think about the fact that this would get blood on the white shirt I had worn to the concert and expose my “thorns in the woods” lie. When my parents saw the blood, they let me know that they were concerned and told me that they might have to send me to a psychiatrist.
In order to control my misguided rage (and stay away from that psychiatrist), I became much easier on myself. I stopped listening to my internal Parent and lowered my demands by subconsciously adopting the false god of permissive-love.[17] He was nicer than my internal Parent, which helped me to keep my anger down.
When I was moved to the job I mentioned in the previous chapter, my demanding internal Parent resurfaced. It seemed that management had failed me, leaving me to once again rely on myself. I had to take the situation into my own hands and save the organization from itself. My Parent was stirred to self-righteous anger, and this led me to try to change the world. I didn’t stop until I saw the damage I was doing to myself and my family.
Then, as I quieted my overly protective Parent, my fearful Child was once again exposed. Without its crusading internal guardian to push back the harsh realities of my fatherless world, it became afraid. There were dangers that I couldn’t control, and by fitting in rather than fighting, I risked falling into them.
<page 28> I believe that what happened to me is one flavor of what happens to many. We live in a world in which few of us experience the Father heart of God. The men He has placed into our lives to show it to us often fail at the task. Even when they succeed, we sometimes rebel against them and miss the benefit He is offering to us. As a result, we get hurt, and our Child falls into longing and fear. We yearn for someone or something to protect us and make us feel secure. When we don’t find it, anxiety comes.
In reaction, our Parent can rise to fight off anything that might threaten us. We become angry and controlling to limit the number of situations that can hurt us. We may grow hard to shield ourselves from life’s harsh realities. But on the inside, the empty spot left by the lack of a father’s love remains.
When the relationship between fathers and children breaks down, a country tends to come under a curse.
"And he will restore the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with a curse."
(Malachi 4:6, NAS)
I believe our land is seeing this curse in the form of an outbreak of mental illnesses, addictions, and diseases.
We need our Heavenly Father. Only in a growing relationship with Him can we experience the love, protection, and leadership that our heart requires. He wants to reveal Himself to us as a Father to the fatherless:
A father of the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in His holy habitation.
This takes time, however. Even after I found a relationship with God, it took quite a while for me to understand His Father heart. The curse was slowly removed as I grew to know Him.
The Adult (with a capital A) part of us is like a computer. It consists of reason and willpower rather than emotion. It deals in facts rather than feelings.
When I decided to stop trying to change the world at my job, my Adult was telling my Parent that it was unreasonable to demand that I work so hard that I destroy my health. It was also telling my Child that my fear of the future was exaggerated. I needed to trust Jesus to take care of me. Though there were real dangers out there, I was doing what I could to protect myself by trying to transfer to a new job. Beyond that, I should depend on God to work all things for good (Romans 8:28-29).
By God’s grace, my Adult brought some sanity to my heart. It overrode the powerful and confused emotions of my Parent and Child.
<page 29> The following is one more example to help us understand Parent, Adult, and Child: Picture yourself walking by a candy store where the enticing aroma of freshly made chocolate floats into the street. You catch the scent, and your Child immediately wants to go in and eat. Your Parent reacts by reminding you that you are on a diet.
At this point, your Parent and Child could get into a fight. If your Parent wins, your Child might become resentful, making it even harder to say no the next time. (You will feel you deserve a little enjoyment because of all the sacrifices you have had to make.) If your Child wins, your Parent could start to criticize you (which might make you so miserable you will want to eat more chocolate).
Your Adult comes to the rescue. It points out that you were planning to eat desert later that night, and you could eat the chocolate and still stay on your diet if you skip desert later. If the fun of eating the chocolate now is better than the fun of eating the desert later, your Adult has found a good solution. It allows your Child to enjoy itself, while your Parent still feels it is taking care of you.
If you decide not to eat the chocolate, your Adult might counsel your Child that losing weight will make you happier in the long run. If your mind and emotions are working well together, your feelings will fall into line with truth, and you will be content. (Unfortunately, many of us aren’t emotionally healthy, as I wasn’t when I learned about the OK Stronghold. Our feelings rebel against the truth long after it has been shown to be right.)
Finally, if there is no good reason to avoid the chocolate, your Adult might counsel your Parent about the dangers of false guilt. Untrue ideas can take hold of our conscience and keep us from enjoying God’s goodness.
The Spirit makes it clear that as time goes on, some are going to give up on the faith and chase after demonic illusions put forth by professional liars. These liars have lied so well and for so long that they've lost their capacity for truth. They will tell you not to get married. They'll tell you not to eat this or that food — perfectly good food God created to be eaten heartily and with thanksgiving by Christians! Everything God created is good, and to be received with thanks. Nothing is to be sneered at and thrown out. God's Word and our prayers make every item in creation holy. (emphasis added)
(1 Timothy 4:1-5, The Message)
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