The Mechanics of the Artificial Persona
Our greatest struggles aren't always against forces outside of us, they often lie in understanding the artificial personas we present, even to Jesus
Jesus said,
"I am the vine, ye are the branches." - John 15:5 kjv
When Jesus spoke these words, He wasn't simply giving us a metaphor for connection He was revealing a profound truth about our identity. To be branches connected to Christ, the Vine, is not merely to draw moral lessons or emotional comfort. It is to receive our very identity from Him, to have our souls continually energized, given life, joy, and clarity through authentic communion with Him.
This "you" that Jesus speaks to is not the scattered self of confusion, regret, or sin. The "you" Christ addresses is your most authentic self, the person whom God intentionally created, perfectly known and deeply loved from eternity. It’s the real you, the one found not in sin but hidden safely in Him.
It is very challenging to find this person in our modern world. The one whom God made. We are inclined to think, “surely, everything I’ve done, everything I feel, everything I think - that is what I am.” But this is not true.
That version of the self, the sum of all your actions, impulses, opinions, and habits, is often more reflective of what you’ve had to become in order to survive, rather than who you were created to be in order to live. Living is not just breathing, is not just moving, is not just grasping, and striving. Living, is expressing your authentic self which can only be found attached to The Vine.
The authentic self, the one Christ speaks to when He calls you beloved, is not constructed from accumulated behaviors or societal reflections. It is deeper than your memories, preferences, and pain. It is the part of you that was known before you were formed in the womb. It is the part of you that remains hidden in Christ, unshaken by your performance, unaffected by the ever-shifting standards of the world. Do you believe that part of you exists? Do you trust that s/he is still there?
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.Psalm 139
But most of us live out of a substitute self, an artificial persona crafted out of fear and self protection. We develop this persona to make us acceptable, successful, safe. We develop this persona to prevent our softer self from being hurt and with time, we begin to believe it is who we are. We believe that the personas that we developed to protect ourselves IS ourselves. We believe that the “interior armor and garments” we wear is our skin, our flesh, our soul.
This false self becomes the one we present to the world… and even to God. But how does it come to be? How does something false become so convincing even to us?
Artificial Personas, How are They Created?
Artificial personas are not born out of malice, but out of perceived necessity. We begin to generate them when the world asks for something we feel we cannot offer from our authentic self, whether due to shame, fear, trauma, rejection, or perceived inadequacy or from presenting the world with something that it then attacks.
At first, this feels small: a bending of posture, a selective silence, a performance of what is strategic rather than what is True. Sometimes, it is just a social mask we wear at times to get along with others or survive. But it can also be the beginning of a disconnection from the soul and a rejection of who God seeks us to be.
“And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”
Genesis 3:7 kjv
Many artificial personas are forged in moments of genuine suffering where love, outside of direct interaction with God was unavailable.
Many of our artificial personas are forged in moments when love was genuinely available, but we chose not to receive it. Not because we were evil or selfish, but because the pain of the Truth of our own self was too much. Love, in that moment, would have required us to grieve. Maybe to accept that someone we depended on was powerless. To accept that we, too, are powerless in this life in certain ways.
Rather than enter communion with people around us or with God through grief, we chose exile. And in that isolation, the lies began to take root.
This is who you are now. This is what they made you. This is all that’s left.
"Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering."
— Carl Jung, Psychological Reflections
These moments are not just psychological breaks. They are spiritual openings, doors through which darkness can whisper and build. And if left unaddressed, these whispers evolve into strongholds, compounded over years until the real self is hidden behind a fortress of performance, pain, and fear.
The Persona Grows
We don’t always realize we’re doing it. Sometimes it looks like “growing up.” Sometimes it even looks like spiritual maturity to others. But underneath, something tender and sacred has been cut off. With that severing comes substitution: a false self, an artificial persona, constructed to carry the pain we refuse to feel and provide the connection we no longer trust to receive.
These artificial personas act like dolls which we place in front of other people when we interact with them. We retreat into our minds and present these facades. They too present their own dolls and so now the dolls interact with each other. The dolls themselves cannot have love, they are inanimate and disconnected from The Vine of life. They cannot give nor receive love and so we go about our days without a single person to provide with the love they so desperately desire, nor receive the love that we absolutely need.
The personas are placed in front of others to provide them with what we feel we cannot give them but we are fearful to admit. The true self retreats and the persona appears. This persona may begin with noble intentions: to survive, to function, to avoid collapse. But over time we begin to forget that we had hidden at all! We believe that the artificial persona is our true self!
The artificial personas then start to combine and something very strange begins to happen. They begin to animate themselves. They begin to speak back to the true us. They begin to have agendas. They become rigid, punitive, controlling. Eventually, they begin to punish the very parts of us they were meant to protect.
They whispers things like:
“If you’re not serious, you’re weak.”
“If you let yourself enjoy this, you’ll lose control.”
“If you’re soft, you’ll be hurt again.”
“You’re safer alone than you ever have been with others.”
At first, these sound like wisdom. Like self-discipline. Like wisdom born of experience, hard earned maturity. But listen closely, and you’ll hear something colder beneath the surface because these thoughts don’t originate from the Holy Spirit, nor from your own mind. They come from a darker place.
An Eye For an Eye and A Mask for a Mask
Once the artificial personas are established, they create a gap between yourself and the world and into that gap comes a voice.
Not your voice.
And not God's.
It is the voice of the enemy.
he begins by speaking about himself, using your voice. It is a special kind of deception that would be laughable if we were only more aware when it started. he will say phrases which are truthful about himself, but in contexts that can cause confusion if he says them into the ear of your heart.
he says:
“I am worthless.”
“I am disgusting.”
“I deserve destruction.”
“Pleasure is all that matters to me.”
These are not lies. The enemy does indeed believe these things, perhaps rightfully so, but these are not true about you or me. These are things that he whispers truthfully about himself near enough to you that, in the moment, we become confused and mistake them for statements about ourselves. They are whispered identities. Spiritual traps. The demon tells the truth about his own fallen and damned state, but he speaks it in the first person, so that you believe it’s your own voice about your nature & your reality. And once you agree, the deception deepens.
These are not random thoughts.
his self-hatred becomes your self-hatred.
his addiction becomes your desire.
his despair becomes your truth.
And the demon can smirk and say, “i never lied.” But he has deceived. Profoundly. He has weaponized his own damned reality. What began as a coping mechanism for you becomes a system of spiritual exile.
You Are Still Reachable
We create an artificial persona to provide what we cannot, or will not, give. We know that God does not will for us to be harmed, but allows us harm to either correct us as a loving Father or to unite us more closely to His Son. When we reject what came from His hand, we disconnect ourselves from a part of ourselves which He created and artificial, dead, personas begin to fill in.
But here is the mercy: you are not truly in exile from Him. He did not cast you out to be beaten and broken by demons. You are still the child whom God made. Still the one He knit together. Still the soul Christ sees when He says, “I am the Vine, you are the branch.”
The beginning of liberation is not through striving, performance, or perfection, but by turning, slowly and honestly, back to the One who sees you beneath the artificial personas. Healing begins when we dare to say:
“This voice is not mine!”
When we begin to exclaim to Jesus the presence of the thief around us!
“The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”
John 10:10 kjv
Neither you nor your soul is lost. It has been hidden. It has not forgotten how to love or be loved, it has simply been buried under years of self-preservation and whispered lies. The way forward is not to fix the persona, nor to paper over it with another set of personas. It is to expose it.
To say to God:
“I no longer want this artificial persona to speak for me. I want to live from the part of me that You made, still connected to the Vine.”
Becoming Whole Again
To begin living is it live with real vulnerability towards God. Not to parade our artificial personas before Him but instead to allow Him past those guards and straight to our heart.
The enemy will not be pleased with this you even thinking this desire. The enemy knows that when we are willing to reject the artificial persona, surrender our resentments/hates/fears which caused us to make the artificial persona, and embrace the healing that our Savior provides freely to anyone who asks… The enemy knows that when we do this we are on the doorstep of Liberation and walking The Way. This is not a single moment. It is a lifelong process of sanctification. Of re-learning how to live from the soul. Of returning to the Vine.
Jesus said:
“Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.”
— John 15:2 kjv
To be purged of artificial personas is not to be punished. It is to be cleansed. It is to allow Christ to gently cut away what does not belong to you, what was never really you to begin with. That which is already dead because it was never alive - you live.
And as He does, the soul begins to breathe again.
Not all at once. But steadily. Quietly. Faithfully.
You begin to feel again. To trust again. To connect again.
You begin to remember who you are in Him.
“But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:
And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry:
For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.”Luke 15:22-24 kjv
This is the real spiritual warfare. Not waging war against others, but reclaiming your own soul, through Christ, from the lies that have possessed it. This is the real repentance, not shame over sin, but turning away from the mask and returning to love. This is the real deliverance, not just from demons, but from false identities.
You were never meant to be a puppet.
You were meant to bear fruit.
You were meant to abide.
You were meant to love and be loved in truth.
Let the Vine draw you back.
Let Him prune you.
Let Him speak to the real you.
He always has been.