You Are Not Your Own

Do you ever feel that tug inside an urge to assert yourself, to take charge of your identity, to shape your life entirely by your own hand? That inner voice often whispers convincing lies. I am my own, I am what I choose, I am all I need, I cannot be remade. These beliefs are not new, though they sound strikingly modern. They are as ancient as humanity itself.

In fact, they were captured powerfully in George MacDonald’s 1895 novel Lilith, where the titular character embodies humanity’s refusal to submit to God’s loving authority. This defiance echoes through culture, and more intimately, through our hearts. But MacDonald also offers a profound vision of redemption one where truth confronts delusion, and the soul is invited back to its Creator.

Let’s explore how Lilith’s journey mirrors our own and how the lies we live by are undone only through surrender to divine love.

The Lie: I Am My Own

In one of the novel’s most intense dialogues, the character Mara confronts Lilith:

• “Will you not be your real self?”

• “I am what I mean myself now. I will do what I will do. I am not another’s; I am my own.”

This defiance feels disturbingly familiar. We live in a culture that glorifies autonomy and insists that we are our own ultimate authority. But Scripture tells a different story. Psalm 100:3 says, “Know that the Lord, He is God; It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.”

We were never designed to be independent creators of our identity. To insist on sovereignty over ourselves is not strength it’s spiritual confusion. As C.S. Lewis, deeply influenced by MacDonald, once put it: “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become.”

The Lie: I Am What I Choose

Lilith proclaims, “What I choose to seem to myself makes me what I am.” It’s a seductive thought in today’s age of curated online personas and self-definition. But no amount of self-reflection can manufacture the essence of who we truly are.

The prophet Jeremiah reminds us, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Our internal compass isn’t always reliable. What we feel is authentic may in fact be an illusion.

The truest self is not self-made it’s God-made. Ephesians 2:10 describes believers as “God’s workmanship,” implying careful, intentional design. To live by this truth is to reject the shallow notion that identity begins and ends with self-perception.

The Lie: I Am All I Need

Lilith’s next delusion is perhaps the most blinding “No one ever made me. I defy that Power to unmake me from a free woman!” This is the cry of the self-made soul, but it's built on fantasy.

Science confirms that even our physical existence is entirely dependent. The average human takes over 20,000 breaths a day, and we control none of them consciously. Spiritually, our dependency is even greater. Acts 17:28 tells us, “In Him we live and move and have our being.”

And yet, we cling to self-sufficiency. In a 2023 survey, 61% of Americans agreed with the statement “I can only trust myself.” But this kind of isolation is both exhausting and empty. We were created for connection to God, and through Him, to one another.

The Lie: I Cannot Be Remade

Mara’s most piercing insight is this “There is a light that goes deeper than the will that light can change your will and so redeem it!” But Lilith resists “The light shall not enter me: I hate it!”

This is the heart of the tragedy believing change is either impossible or unwelcome. Yet the gospel shouts the opposite. 2 Corinthians 5:17 promises, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

You can be remade. Not into something foreign or robotic, but into the very self you were designed to be. Christ doesn't erase your personality. He redeems it. Your gifts, passions, and identity find their true shape when surrendered to the One who formed you.

The Truth: You Were Made for More

Each of these lies whispers a seductive promise: freedom, control, security, self-fulfillment. But they lead only to spiritual isolation and diminished joy. The truth is liberating, but it requires surrender.

Psalm 100 again offers the right perspective “We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” You were created by God, sustained by Him, and loved with an everlasting love that calls you into wholeness. Not less of yourself, but more of the true you refined, renewed, restored.

So which lie have you been believing? Have you been clinging to autonomy that leaves you empty, or resisting the very light that could set you free?

The good news is this: it’s never too late to yield. More of God in your life doesn’t mean less of you. It means more of who you were meant to be from the very beginning.

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