61: Kingdom vs. Kosmos (Belief-Based Identity, Part 1)

[00:07] Stephanie: Welcome to Deeper Walk’s On the Trail podcast. You are on the trail with father-daughter duo, Marcus and Stephanie Warner. I’m Stephanie, and I’ll be talking with my father, Dr. Marcus Warner, as we discuss topics that help you stay on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Season 1, episode 61. Today we are starting our look at beliefs-based identity.

Hello, Father.

[00:29] Marcus: Hello, Daughter. Good to be together again.

[00:31] Stephanie: Always. And it’s good to be podcasting right next to a sleeping cat.

[00:36] Marcus: Sleeping cats do add a level of peace to the house.

[00:41] Stephanie: I have lots of joy. Hopefully, he’ll stay asleep. All right, today’s icebreaker is courtesy of a listener. What was your very first job? Do you remember?

[00:53] Marcus: Well, it depends on how you track it. I mean, I got paid to mow lawns, but it wasn’t really a job. I just did it randomly. First time I ever filled out paperwork and got employed, I was 16. I am this old okay, it was S&H Green stamps. I don’t know if people even know what that is anymore. But when you bought things you used to collect stamps, and if you got enough stamps you could take them to the S&H Green stamp store, and trade in your book of stamps for merchandise.

And so my job was to be at the counter. When people would turn in their stamps I would go to the back room,  get the item, and give it to them. But there’s a story related to this that’s kind of funny, I guess.  I had eye surgery because I had something like a lazy eye and they decided to try to do surgery. And so one of my eyes was totally red. There was no white in it.

And so this mom came in with her little boy, and the little boy looked at me, and his eyes got really big, and he stepped behind his mom. I heard him say, is that a monster? So fortunately, I have a strong identity. But she was able to help him understand. No, I explained I just had surgery, it’s okay.

[02:30] Stephanie: Oh, my goodness. Well, my first job that I got a paycheck for was at a mystery bookstore.

[02:39] Marcus: Yes, I remember.

[02:40] Stephanie: Yes, it was so lovely. We had used books and new books. We also had book clubs and events where we would bring in authors, and other industry professionals, to do either book signings or even classes. And it was so much fun. It was such a blessing. My employer would apologize every time he gave me my paycheck because it wasn’t very much, but it was a robust and rich experience. I loved it.

All right, so we have traveled from the right side of the brain to the left. We’ve spent a lot of time this year talking about brain science, but we definitely aren’t downplaying the importance of beliefs. So we’re presenting things in order, going from the attachment things and into the more conscious thought things. So will you segue us from attachment based identity to beliefs based identity in terms of their role, and how we should approach them and such?

[03:40] Marcus: When I think of identity and the formation of identity, I think ABC, and attachment is at the basis of this. I’ve got a fully formed identity before I’m verbal, before I can use words and have fully formed beliefs, I’ve got an identity already shaped in my head so that’s the attachment. “B” is the beliefs. What happens is that if I have a fear based attachment identity it’s going to be much easier for me to believe lies about myself. It predisposes me, in a sense, to believe the worst about myself.

Whereas if I have a joy based identity already at the attachment level, it is easier to believe that good things are true about me. And so there is that segue. When we get into the beliefs we’re going to be talking really about two things, what does the Bible say is true, and how do wounds, lies, vows, sabotage that? What is the enemy trying to do in order to rob us of our correct beliefs about ourselves?

So we’re going to be focusing on that. And then the “C” is community. And the job of the community is to help each other remember who we are and to act like ourselves. And so when all three of those things are working we are moving from a fear based to a joy based attachment.

When we are getting the truth, Biblical truth about our beliefs, and we are taking thoughts captive that are coming from the enemy about our beliefs, about ourselves. And when we are in a community that is also on that same journey and committed to it, then you’ve got three things all working together in harmony to create the best possible scenario for a strong, healthy, identity.

[05:27] Stephanie: Perfect. So for beliefs based identity we’re going to start with a broader view at what you like to call, Kingdom versus Kosmos. And I love that title. Give us a pitch for what you mean by that. And then we’re going to start unpacking Kosmos first.

[05:44] Marcus: Yeah, Kingdom versus Kosmos. So I remember teaching a group of fifth graders one time and said, “Do you know that Jesus is an alien?” That kind of got their attention. One of my favorite texts on this is in John I think, it’s chapter eight, where he says, “I am not of this world.” I believe it is John 8:12. He says, “I am not of this world. You are from below, I am from above.” And it’s this idea that Jesus is an alien in the sense that he is not of this world. So this world, the Greek word is Kosmos, which in Greek is with a K. So you got Kosmos with a K.

And then he said instead he is from a world from above called the Kingdom. So we’ve got the two K words Kingdom and Kosmos. Jesus in a sense, came from a culture that had a different worldview and a different value system. So there’s a different worldview and value system in the kingdom than there is in the Kosmos. And one of the things why Jesus came was to be light to the Kosmos, to bring light into this world, so that we could know the truth about what God really thinks about things. And so this Kingdom/Kosmos dualism is really played up the most in the Gospel of John, but we see it throughout the Bible.

[06:59] Stephanie: I love it, and I think it’s really funny. And also I understand it,but just to be extra clear, you don’t actually think that Jesus is an alien?

[07:07] Marcus: No, he’s not a lizard man.

[07:12] Stephanie: There is a lot of alien talk going out around the Internet right now and in the world. I just wanted to clarify.

[07:19] Marcus: No, Jesus is not returning someday in his UFO. That’s not the kind of alien we’re talking about.

[07:28] Stephanie: Cool. Do you want to cast a vision for where we’re going to go later? We’re tackling the Kosmos side of things first, but do you want to just give a quick window into the kingdom?

[07:39] Marcus: I use the word PACT to summarize the essence of our covenant identity. And our covenant identity is our kingdom identity. And PACT stands for pardon, adoption, citizenship, title. And so we’re going to be taking an episode on every one of those. So I can dig into the Bible a little bit more deeply, and we can unpack what the Bible actually says about our identity in Christ using those categories.

[08:05] Stephanie: Yay. All right. Kosmos, the world, the flesh, and the devil work together to give us an identity and affect what we believe. So do you want to introduce the Kosmos anymore, or do you want to dive right into world?

[08:18] Marcus I mean, the world is the Kosmos. So it’s like, how does this work? I picture it this way. The devil is, I want to get the right analogy here, but the devil is a deceiver. But the reason he’s deceiving us is that he’s a hunter. Just like a hunter lays out traps and you have to trick the animal into going into your trap, there’s a deceptive element to it. So the purpose of the devil’s deception is to ensnare us. He wants to make us slaves.

And he kind of gets a kick out of being able to play with our emotions and play with our heads, and turn us into his little toy and his little slave. The way he does this is through deception. So I look at it this way. If the devil’s the hunter, then the world is the megaphone that he uses to broadcast his propaganda, to broadcast his deception, and to get his message out there.

In 1st John 2:15, where it says, “Do not love the Kosmos, do not love the world or anything of the world”. I picture it this way, that the Kosmos is sort of like the devil’s girlfriend. And that’s putting it too politely. In a sense what John is saying there is, don’t flirt. You’re married to Christ, don’t go flirting with the world. The world is actually the devil’s mistress. She can make herself enticing and she can make you think that she’s got something that you want, and something you don’t want to do without. But it’s all a trap, right? It is all a deception, all a snare.

And that’s why John is like, do not fall in love with the world. Do not let yourself do that. You’ve already got Christ, you’ve already got the kingdom. You’ve got the good thing already. This is all smoke and mirrors. So that’s kind of the idea behind what’s going on with the kingdom, the devil is behind it. He’s called the prince of the Kosmos, the prince of this world, and he uses it to deceive us and to ensnare us. And what he appeals to is our flesh.

So our flesh is fundamentally proud. What I mean by proud, is self reliant. I don’t want to trust in the Lord with all my heart. I want to rely on my own understanding, that’s the flesh. And so he deceives us with the world by appealing to our flesh. And that can go in one of two directions. You can think it like, related to peacock and skunk narcissism. He appeals to our peacock flesh and says, oh, aren’t you special? Aren’t you amazing? Or he can appeal to our skunk flesh like, aren’t you the worst person ever? Aren’t you just of no value at all? But either way, he’s going after this part of ourself that the Bible would call the flesh. So the devil lies to us using the world, appealing to our flesh and all of that together creates slavery. And that’s what we’re trying to do, to help people stay out of slavery and live in freedom.

[11:31] Stephanie: Huzzah!. So what would be one of the primary tactics that the world utilizes?

[11:39] Marcus: The world uses a pecking order. So Jesus talks about this in Matthew 18. And he uses two Greek words that probably everybody’s familiar with it’s Mega and Micro. I was just reading this a couple of weeks ago and it’s fresh in my mind. They went to Caesarea Philippi and Jesus is talking to Peter, but Peter is still called Simon at that point. And then he says, “But you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah. Flesh and blood hasn’t revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. From now on I’m calling you Petros, and on this Petra, I’m going to build my church.” And he calls him Peter.

And from that point on then there’s a transfiguration where only three of them get to go up and see it. And they come down and some of the disciples can’t cast out a demon. And what do you see? The next chapter they’re having an argument about who is the greatest. I’m thinking there’s a connection here. Peter has just been singled out for some praise and Peter, James and John just got singled out for up here.

And these guys over here couldn’t cast out a demon. And they’re talking about which of us is Mega. That’s the Greek word. Which of us is the Mega apostle? Right. I am Mega apostle. And Jesus pulls up a Micro child, a little child, and says to the apostles, you are not in the kingdom. The kingdom doesn’t operate on the same pecking order as the cosmos. The world says, the greatest among you will lord it over those who don’t. And it’s really about power and love. The world system is based on power and the powerful people stay on top.

And Jesus is like, in the kingdom it’s the loving people who are at the top. And so you must be the servant of all. So that was a long involved answer. Simple answer is the world system is about this pecking order. And in the world system, the pecking order is based on our flesh. So the prettier I am, the more intelligent I am, the more athletic I am, the more achievements I have, the greater status I have. All of these things feed off of comparison.

[13:58] Marcus: Feeds off of comparison and puts me on the pecking order. So the pecking order system is based on comparison. How do I stack up against other people in the categories that the world says are important?

[14:11] Stephanie: Probably one of my most impactful stories that Grandpa Warner told you and then you told me, and you’ve shared it before. But the idea of, are you walking around life with a mirror in front of your face? You’re comparing yourself to everybody around you, or even to different versions of yourself. But it’s all about fleshly comparison. But what does God say? How does God see you? How does God see the situation? Do you want to walk people through that chart? I think we’ve talked about this before in our FISH series, but it’s just so impactful.

[14:48] Marcus: The context here is that I was a senior in high school. I just came home from winning a whole bunch of awards, but I was feeling empty. I was feeling defeated because the girl that I like paid no attention to me. So I’m sitting here going, what are all the awards in the world? So I go to my dad and he is studying attachment pain.

[15:16] Stephanie: You’re going to turn into a poet here.

[15:18] Marcus: My dad is in his office working on something. I knock on the door and say, can I talk to you? And I lay this out. And I’m having kind of this inner battle between feeling super important because I’ve won all these awards, and feeling inferior because I’m not loved the way I want to be loved. And I’m ping ponging back internally between these feelings. So my dad said, okay, I think I can help with this.

And at the time, he was doing a radio broadcast called Keeping Your Balance. And he drew a line across the page and said, the Christian life is the exciting process of learning to keep your balance. The devil always introduces his lies in pairs and his goal is to get you to go to an extreme, and he doesn’t care which one it is. One example of this is inferiority and conceit. So at the end of the line that he drew on the piece of paper, on one end he wrote the word inferiority. On the other end he wrote the word conceit. And he said, the devil doesn’t care if you have an inferiority complex or if you’re conceited.

They seem like opposites to us. But he said, actually, they’re just the twin sides of the same problem. And he kind of triangulated down from those two things at the bottom and wrote the word self. He said, when your eyes are on yourself and you’re living with a mirror in front of your face and you’re comparing yourself to other people, you can only go one of two directions. I either compare favorably which says conceit, I’m better than you. Or I compare unfavorably in which case I go to inferiority, I’m not as good as you.

And so the devil has created a system in the world that takes advantage of this and says, your value and your worth depends on how you compare to other people and it defines the categories that matter. So he said, the solution to this is to throw out that mirror. And at the top of the page, he wrote the word God. He said, if I look at God and then I come back to these ideas of conceit and inferiority, these two counterfeits of the devil are the counterfeits of the true virtues. So conceit is a counterfeit of confidence..

And inferiority is the counterfeit of humility. He said, now, humility and confidence are actually twin virtues that go together. They both come from the same source, and that’s from seeing myself the way God sees me and defining myself the way God defined me. So on the one side God says, you’re just dust, okay? I came down to Earth, I formed you out of dust and I breathed life  into you. You have nothing to be conceited about. And that teaches us humility.

Like, hey, tomorrow I could lose everything. Maybe I have a good intellect today, but tomorrow I may not, it’s a gift from God. The other side of it is that even though you’re just dust you have value. You want to know how valuable you are, he signed the check in the blood of his son Jesus, saying, this is how valuable you are to me. Well, that creates confidence.

So he said, humility is really just not even thinking about yourself because your focus is on God. You’re going, I’m just dust, I’m not the star of this show. Let’s just move forward and see what God wants to do. And I live my life as a servant of God knowing that he loves me, and that gives me confidence. So that’s the long story. It was very helpful at the time.

And I do remember the next day going to school with this fresh in my mind and intentionally thinking, I’ve got to throw out the mirror. And right away this pretty girl stepped up to the locker next to me and all of my flesh things kicked in. And all of a sudden I remember, wait a second. What if instead of comparing myself to other people and trying to figure that out, what if I actually threw that away? What would God want me to do? And the thought hit me, and I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a Holy Spirit thought. What if you treated her like a person?

[19:37] Stephanie: Sage advice.

[19:38] Marcus: Sage advice. I realize now that’s the Holy Spirit, but what if you just treated her like a regular person? I actually had a conversation with her for the first time in the school year and found out she was going through some hard things. All these things work together. So God wants us walking in the flesh. The devil wants us walking….. I’m sorry. God wants us walking in the spirit. The devil wants us walking in the flesh. Can we edit that out? God wants us walking in the spirit. The devil wants us walking in the flesh. And he uses this pecking order and comparison system in the world to trap us and enslave us..

[20:22] Stephanie: Probably in the next episode, I want to get to how the world wounds us and how to deal with those wounds and such. Let’s move on to flesh because it segues really well out of what we’ve been talking about here. And I just have to say I was delighted this summer. We were brainstorming through identity and you created a new acrostic. Admittedly, you just rearranged items that you’ve been teaching for years, but I just giggle every time. So remember, friends, don’t let your flesh identity SLAP you.

[21:01] Marcus: Exactly. Do not let your flesh identity SLAP you in the face. So SLAP is our new acrostic. And what these letters stand for are the four core areas in which we compare ourselves to other people. So the world, the Kosmos wants us to compare ourselves to other people in these four areas. So the first one is status. And I think of this immediately like Royal Family Aristocrats on down. There are some people who just have status that has nothing to do with anything but the fact that they were born to a certain privilege. So there is status.

The world wants us to define ourselves according to our status, or lack of privilege or lack of status that comes from that, through comparing ourselves to other people. There are some people when they walk into the room just because of who they are, they are immediately accepted because they’ve got status. So we call this all of this sort of performance based acceptance versus grace based acceptance. That’s the first one.

The second one, the second category in which we compare ourselves is looks. We look at ourselves in the mirror and we look at the other person and go, well, I think I’m better looking than them. Or we look at the other person, well, I’m not as good looking as them. And I remember especially for me in junior high and high school, you’re always asking, am I in their league or not? When you’re asking that question it is all about looks. It’s like, am I good enough looking to even talk to this person? In fact, this is behind most eating disorders.

They have done studies that show that in some cultures eating disorders are almost unknown. But in American culture, it is a huge problem because we push the importance of looks. And image is so driven into us by the culture, which is our version of the Kosmos or the world in this sense. And so comparison through looks is number two.

The third one, “A”, is achievement. Some of us learn early on that I can walk into the room and status gets me acceptance. If I walk into the room and I’m good looking enough, I will be accepted. Others figure out pretty early on that they’re not going to get it done. A lot of times I will become driven to be a high achiever. I’m going to prove my worth and prove my value by accomplishing things, either becoming a great athlete or a great scholar. An artist, a musician or something. I’m going to achieve something. So that’s the next category. And then “P” is performance. You might think that those are the same achievement and performance, but there’s a difference. A performer will be witty. I will be the class clown, I will be funny. People like having me at parties. That’s different from becoming a high achiever, right?

So there are some of us who become performers and we learn to wear a mask around other people. And the problem is that the mask works. They’re often attracted to who we pretend to be. And now we have a problem because the person they like isn’t really me. It’s somebody I pretend to be. And so all of our flesh identities ultimately boil down to this. They boil down to pretending. And so it ultimately does become a “slap” in the face because that is not my true self. And I can’t form deep attachments with people if I’m not being my true self.

[24:28] Stephanie: Well, and wherever you look you can just literally see this. People will frequently say, oh, she’s a ten or she’s a five. It’s not subtle.

[24:42] Marcus: It’s especially so for girls, but it exists for guys too. I mean, there was a movie called Ten, right? There’s what they call a dime. I think there’s another one, similar idea. And yeah, it’s not subtle at all. It isn’t.

[24:59] Stephanie: Well, next week we’re going to continue looking at the Kosmos identity by looking at how the world can wound us, and some of the ways the devil tries to affect our beliefs. I want to pause and thank our monthly Trailblazers and anyone who has partnered with Deeper Walk with a donation of any size. I was struck again recently by how glad I am that we get to do this podcast. I get to interact with people on a lot of different levels from in person to social media, to emails and such.

And I love hearing from you guys and the testimonies of how the podcast is impacting you, how you’re using it, and how you’re sharing it. I just wanted to say thank you. It’s a great privilege to be able to do this, and we couldn’t do it without our Trailblazers and our donors, so thank you. You’re laughing Father?

[25:56] Marcus: I just had a conversation with somebody last week who was telling me they had downloaded Spiritual Warfare Basics and was listening to it. That is our number one most downloaded podcast. And I’m sorry, I just had this thought in my head that we should do a podcast series called The Weird, Wild, Wonderful World of Warfare. Weird, Wild, Wonderful World of Warfare. And I’m like, I must be really tired.

[26:30] Stephanie: Oh, my goodness. That’s amazing. Maybe we should. Maybe we should.

[26:36] Marcus: People would find it interesting. It’s just all of the crazy stuff I have seen through the years.

[26:41] Stephanie: We definitely need to come back to that. And we need to peg that title. I love it. All right, we are coming to the end of the episode, so Father, I’m going to let you give any closing thoughts.

[26:52] Marcus: Well, I will say that even though I’ve known about this since I was a teenager. It’s still something that is a real battle. I can have a stable identity but that doesn’t mean the devil doesn’t attack it. And sometimes they come out of the blue. And one of the things we want to do is learn to recognize where we are most vulnerable. To recognize that you know what, I can recognize it as an attack more quickly when I see the pattern. This is where he likes to hit me. This is where it comes and kind of pre-think through for the next time I get attacked in this area, I need to catch it quickly. I need to call it an attack and I need to quickly turn my mind to what is true, and replace that thought with something true. And so hopefully this will help us in practical ways.

[27:42] Stephanie: Very good. I look forward to this journey. All right, everyone. Thank you for joining us On the Trail. Today Deeper Walk exists to make heart focused discipleship the norm for Christians everywhere. If you’d like to support this cause, you can become a Deeper Walk Trailblazer with your monthly donation of $25 or more. And if you want to keep going deeper with us on your walk with God, please subscribe to the On the Trail podcast, leave a review and share with your friends.

Thanks again. We’ll see you back next weekend.