Identities & Idolatries, Part 1: Show me what makes you defensive, and I’ll show you what owns you

Allowing our defensiveness to teach us — for the sake of our own freedom. 04.10.23

I spent much of 2015–2019 at war, spiritually speaking.

It was probably many years before that, too—but I suppose I had no conscious recognition of it. We’re often engaged in decades-long struggles (with others, with ourselves, with ideas) that don’t register as hostile to us because we just assume they’re normal and there is no other way to be.

Somewhere we learn that there’s a battle everywhere and we must be vigilant. I can remember as far back as middle school, as my dear mum faithfully tuned in for at least three hours a day of AM talk radio, each new male voice warning of the dire consequences of letting our guards down for even a moment and calling for swift action, in between the ads for gold bonds and elite vitamins that were lining their pockets with listeners’ indulgences.

Somewhere we learn that the world is a frightening, frightening place full of “them”s who wanted to steal all good things from “us.” That we are the last vanguard, the last hope. That we cannot rest.

My own bellicose tendencies, and the deep unhealthiness of them, became most apparent to me after 2015, because there…