Christians and Christian leaders must realize their potential as disciples, and apostles (those sent into leadership) must face their personal emotional weaknesses and sin, lest they project it onto others. This responsibility is fundamental, especially for leaders. As noted in the past, leaders magnify their brokenness by embedding it into organizations like the church, where it infects others. Leaders inevitably leave the marks of their personalities on the organizations they lead, including small groups, classes, and entire congregations.

Understanding the False Self, the Shadow, and the True Self

To understand what it means to “face our brokenness,” it is helpful to clarify three concepts in our minds: the False Self, the Shadow, and the True Self.

False Self. The “False Self” is a construction of the human ego designed to project a more acceptable persona to others. This constructed False Self divides a person from the True Self, preventing psychological and spiritual wholeness. The human propensity to create a “False Self” is a coping mechanism resulting from our insecurity and inadequacy, usually stemming from childhood, youth, and adolescent anxieties. From a religious perspective, our false self ultimately derives from our alienation from God and God’s creation due to pride and selfishness, our unwillingness to accept who God has made us, and our failure to recognize God’s ultimate trustworthiness to redeem and bless us as creatures and the creation God made. [1]

The Shadow: The Shadow consists of an accumulation of unacknowledged and, therefore, untamed emotions, motives, and thoughts, both good and bad, that influence our behaviors. The term “shadow” indicates that consciously hidden and submerged parts of our personality work in the background, in our unconscious, where they can direct and influence our behavior without our even knowing it or having any control over it.

The False Self and the Shadow can create chaos in our lives and the lives of others. The apostle Paul, speaking of sin, speaks words of wisdom that apply to our false self and shadow self:

For I do not understand my own actions. I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what I do not wish to, I agree with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me (Romans 7:15-20).

When we are under the control of our false and shadow selves, we act in ways we cannot fully understand or control. We do not act with faith, hope, and love towards others. We do not act wisely, with temperance, justice, and courage. Instead, we act under the impulse of submerged fears, anxiety, lust, jealousy, greed, and a host of other sinful and unhealthy desires. This causes us to betray our calling as leaders, our fundamental values, and our most basic commitments to the cause of Christians.

As Scazzero points out in The Emotionally Healthy Leader, when we become dominated by the dark side of our shadow, we become a less dramatic form of the famous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Worse, our false and shadow selves prevent us from experiencing the joy of the Christian life and the kind of transformational leadership we so much desire. [2]

True Self. Unlike the False Self, the True Self represents our authentic personhood. From a Christian perspective, it is the person God created us to be, encompassing all our gifts, talents, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. For Christians, Paul instructs us that in Christ, we must “take off the old self and put on the new self” (Colossians 3:9-10). This new self, as John wrote, is “born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, but born of God” (John 1:13). Our true self does not require false strategies, deceit, or control to shield a false self-image. It is genuine and possesses inner integrity. It does not operate from the hidden motives or control of the shadow or repressed emotions. It does not need to project false strength or abilities. It is content with itself.

Life Beyond the False Self and Shadow Domination

Most of the time, many Christians and leaders, both secular and sacred, ignore their false selves and shadows. When challenged to confront them, we often resist due to anxiety, fear, and sheer laziness. We say, “I don’t have time for this.” By resisting the confrontation of our own brokenness, we miss the treasures that Divine Wisdom and Love have to offer. By taking the time to confront our shadow self, we gain emotional and spiritual riches through the freedom that comes from Christ and the realization of our true selves. We can break free from the shadow’s hidden power and bring it into our conscious ability to change. We discover aspects of ourselves that are good and wholesome, which we fear due to the disapproval of parents and others.

Basic Tools of Our Freedom

Experience and Name Emotions. So long as we cannot name our emotions, we cannot ask ourselves questions about their meaning and appropriateness. Once we can name them, they begin to lose their power over us. I often tell a story from my past. When I was about six years old, my parents were hit in a car by a drunk driver. Two people were killed. My father was thrown through the windshield into a nearby field, and my mother was crushed between the back and front seats. (This was before seatbelts and airbags.) Dad was in the hospital for about eight weeks and my mother for six months., Dad lost our family business, and the doctors doubted Mom would recover fully. (She did and lived to 94, walking like a much younger woman.)

For whatever reason, I did not want them to go that night. They assured me everything would be okay, and we spent the night with our grandmother. Things were not okay, and I was left with a kind of anxiety and fear of abandonment that affected me as a husband and father. Then, one day, a spiritual director and friend pointed out that the dysfunction was not the problem or was caused by anyone else. It was coming from my subconscious fears. That realization was the first step in overcoming this fear. It did not happen all at once. It did not happen without prayer and work. But it did happen.

Understanding and Experiencing Our True Selves. As mentioned above, not all aspects of our shadow selves are negative. Within each of us lie potentials we have submerged, partly because others have devalued them. I have a friend whose parents deemed him “too emotional and too soft.” In our success-oriented culture that celebrates toughness, this can easily occur. For a long time, he pursued a profession and a life path, trying to become the “macho person” he believed he should be. The outcome was failure and emotional turmoil. When he finally embraced the different facets of his personality, he shifted his professional focus. He became quite successful in a new field where his sensitivity to others became an asset. Accepting his true self enabled him to unlock untapped potential.

Stopping the Wrong Script. Most of us see our lives as a story where we are the main characters. One view from modern psychology, philosophy, and theology is that humans interpret and respond to reality in narrative forms. This is beneficial if we embrace the script of the right story for our lives but harmful if we enact a false narrative. Unfortunately, in one way or another, we all follow a script we did not write, which was not intended by God, but rather passed down to us by our parents or other significant figures. Sometimes, that script is tragic.

For example, a child who learns to believe he is not a good person may live a life of crime and dishonesty. A child who is told that “Girls (or boys) do not enter this or that kind of profession” may spend years in the wrong calling. Children taught “never to complain” may put up with abusive behavior from others in their adult lives. A young person who sees on television or the media glorification of violence or sexual promiscuity may live out a life script of promiscuity and miss the joys of real love.

Seek Counsel and Wise Mentorship

It isn’t easy to overcome deeply ingrained emotions and habits without help. This is why receiving counsel from appropriate, trained professionals is essential. Referring back to my earlier example, if I had not established a relationship with a spiritual director, I would not have been able to overcome my brokenness. Scazzero notes in his book that one of his negative scripts was the belief that he could not be a good manager because the family business in which he was raised was poorly managed, and he felt he lacked the ability. He overcame his buried fears through the wise counsel of more experienced managers.

Discernment and the True Self

St. Ignatius Loyola wrote a series of meditations to use Jesuits in discerning God’s will for their lives. [3] Today, across many denominations, the so-called “Ignatian Retreat” is used to discern God’s will and the proper functioning of the True Self. At the root of this method is recognizing that God speaks to us through our emotions. He calls these “Consolations” and “Desolations.”

Consolations. Consolations occur when we experience the potential for the joy of God’s pleasure in our lives and, in leadership, in the lives of others. We know we are in God’s will when we sense the presence of love, faith, mercy, hope, or any qualities we recognize as gifts of the Holy Spirit. If I am becoming kinder to people and find this transformation life-giving and Christlike, Galatians offers a partial list of these emotions: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and similar emotions (Galatians 5:22-23).

Desolations. Desolations, on the other hand, refer to those moments when we perceive the absence of God’s pleasure in our lives and, in the context of leadership, in the lives of others. We recognize we are heading in this direction when we sense a lack of the growth of love, faith, mercy, hope, or any qualities we understand as gifts of the Holy Spirit. Once again, Galatians provides us with a partial list of these emotions: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry (greed), sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and similar emotions (Galatians 5: 19-21).

In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius developed a system of discernment and decision-making that relies on scriptural meditation. This involves visualizing whether a proposed course of action or decision will enhance the presence of God and the Spirit in our lives and the lives of others. By meditating on Scripture and seeking its guidance in our lives and decisions, we can practically understand God’s will in our daily experiences.

This can be very important for leaders. Failing to discern whether a particular decision will lead to consolations or desolations, health or a loss of health (personal and institutional), wholeness or a loss of wholeness, harmony, or disharmony can have devastating consequences for any organization and the people involved. As a pastor and church leader for nearly 50 years, I have seen the tragic consequences of failing to meditate prayerfully on the consequences of a course of action.

Victory through the Word of God.

When we become aware of the submerged emotions and harmful narratives shaping our lives, we can evaluate, pray about, and transform them. This awareness liberates us from being driven by unconscious desires and repressed emotions, allowing us to embody our True Selves in Christ. We can “put off our old self and put on a new self” in our lives and leadership. Paul puts it this way:

Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ!— assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 3:17-23).

As we allow our minds to be changed, we become able to engage in what I call “contemplative decision-making.” Letters to Leaders (which I hope to revise and publish in the future) outlines the beginning of contemplative leadership’s importance and technique. [4] Ultimately, contemplative decision-making involves prayerfully lifting to God, not just the decision to be made but also the impact on the human beings involved. One helpful practice is for a leadership team to build a “mental model” of the decision and its impact together with prayerfully considering various bible verses or wisdom sayings that might be helpful. There will be more on this in a future blog.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] G. Christopher Scruggs, Centered Living/Centered Leading: The Way of Light and Love (Memphis, TN: Permiso Por Favor, 2016), 164.

[2] Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Leader: How Transforming Your Inner Life Will Deeply Transform Your Church, Team, and World(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 55.

[3] The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, were originally published in Spanish. Numerous English translations are available online and through various book services. The Spiritual Exercises consist of scripture readings, meditations, prayers, and contemplative practices developed by St. Ignatius Loyola to help individuals deepen their relationship with God. For centuries, the Exercises were typically offered as a “long retreat” lasting about thirty days in solitude and silence. In recent years, the Spiritual Exercises have evolved into a program for laypeople and non-Catholics.  The most common approach to experiencing the Exercises today is a “retreat in daily life,” which incorporates a months-long program of daily prayer and meetings with a spiritual director.

[4] G. Christopher Scruggs, Letters to Leaders (unpublished manuscript created for Bay Presbyterian Church, 2019).