Track 2 · 3:13

Beneath The Surface

The story

This song came to me as I sat next to my dad in the sound booth at the back of my childhood church.

As the pastor led us all in prayer for a couple of "lost" boys, teenage friends of mine who had recently lost their father, I was more interested in the way this man who I had accepted as my spiritual leader seemed to relish the spotlight of it all.

Was he really concerned about their souls? I asked myself. Or was all of this really about his own need for significance?

It might not seem this way, but I wasn't actually watching with judgement…. at least not the kind of judgement I was used to seeing.

Over the past months, a newfound awareness had begun to change the way I viewed everything around me, but it had really started with the way I viewed myself.

Previously, it had been all too easy to believe that all of my motives were generally pure. But my failure to adhere to my own standards when things really got tough had shaken that belief to the core. I had been so shocked by my ability to violate my own conscience that I began to question my motives with great judiciousness.

My uncle, who my pastor warned me to be cautious of (because, while he did have an unquestionable prophetic gift he was currently out of God's will since he was estranged from his wife), had nonetheless been instrumental in encouraging me to examine my own motives.

He taught me about the three basic emotional needs that drive all human decisions - the need for love and acceptance, the need for significance and power, and the need for purpose. The most fundamental, in his mind, was the need for purpose, but sometimes the other two became so powerful that they choked out the primary need and dominated the person's decisions.

I didn't really care much for pie in the sky theories about things like that myself, but as I started to pay more attention to my own motives, I did find that an unconscious need to be validated by others that was silently driving far too many actions in my life. Further, it was as if it completely controlled me.

I began to ask myself how anyone could become spiritually pure when their heart was constantly fighting against their better judgement?

I was simultaneously disheartened and encouraged. I knew that if I could see why I was making decisions that didn't align with my faith and values; I had the power to change them.

Maybe it really was possible to "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect". Not that we would never make mistakes of course, but if we could purify these selfish motives then we would be able to act out of pure love; not just because we wanted something from someone else.

But I was surprised to hear that my Christian friends didn't share my excitement and zeal.

That's man's wisdom, not God's wisdom, they told me. "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked," they quoted.

That's dangerous ground you're treading on. You need to be careful of your uncle; he may be a wolf in sheep's clothing, they warned.

Luckily, while I was confused and hurt at all the backlash from my friends and family at me just asking some simple questions, my newfound insight was not so lightly diminished.

And as I began to see how these fundamental needs within myself silently hijacked my life's agenda, I couldn't help but see it in others too.

So while I watched my pastor pray for these two prodigal sons, I could see the same thing I had often been seeing in myself. Not a pure, selfless desire to help someone in need; but a desire tainted with another, deeper need to feel significant and powerful.

And on that day I finally realized that I couldn't possibly follow someone toward a goal they had never achieved themselves.