Ever since our first parents encountered the choice between the two trees in the Garden of Eden, we, like them, are so easily seduced by the whispered lies of the deceiver.

We want to be like God, and this in itself is fine. This is how God fashioned us—in the divine image. The problem, however, is that we want to be like God without surrender of our willfulness and autonomy. We want a life of godlike existence independent of God. We want to keep one foot in the kingdom of self while awkwardly attempting to plant the other in the kingdom of God.

The false self is the tragic result of trying to steal something from God that we did not have to steal. If only we would dare to trust God’s goodness, we would discover that everything we could ever long for most deeply will be ours in God. By trying to gain more than the everything God offers, we end up with less than nothing. By rejecting unconditional surrender to God’s way of truth, we end up with a nest of lies and illusions. By displacing God, we become a god unto ourselves. We become false selves.

Rejecting the self that is created in God’s likeness, the false self is the one we develop in our own likeness. This is the person we think we would like to be—the person we would create if we were God. But such a person cannot exist because he or she is an illusion. Intuiting that we are but a shadow, we seek to convince ourselves of our reality by equating ourselves with what we have, what we can do, and what others think of us.

The false self helps us forget that we are naked. Wrapped in this hastily prepared garment of our own making, we lose touch with our vulnerability. But God wants something better than fig leaves for us. God’s deepest desire for us is that we become the self that we were destined from all eternity to be. This self is our truest and deepest identity—the only one in which we can find ultimate fulfillment.

Every moment of every day of our lives, God wanders in our inner garden, seeking our companionship. The reason God can’t find us is that we are hiding in the bushes of our false selves. God’s call to us is gentle and persistent: “Where are you? Why are you hiding?”

Coming out of hiding means meeting God on God’s own gracious terms. Coming out of hiding means surrendering the keys of the kingdom of self (even the duplicates!) and accepting the keys to the kingdom of God. Coming out of hiding means accepting the gift of our true-self-in-Christ. Coming out of hiding means daring to know God in the only way God can ever be genuinely known—in a deep encounter with ourselves. Coming out of hiding means daring to know ourselves in the only way the self can ever be fully known—in a deep encounter with God.

In Christian spiritual transformation, the self that embarks on the journey is not the self that arrives. The self that begins the spiritual journey is the self of our own willful creation. This is the self that dies on the journey. The self that arrives is the self that was loved into existence by divine Love. This is the person we were destined from eternity to become—the “I” that is hidden in the “I AM.”

May we dare to trust God’s invitation to surrender our willfulness and exchange it for Divine willingness. May we dare to accept the gift of living in the truth of our self-in-Christ.