An alter ego is a second self, a substitute self. In the life of a Christian, it is not who you are but who you were before you came to Jesus. The Apostle Paul refers to it as “the old man”.
Actors are not the persons they portray, but by playing a part for too long they can take on the character they are playing. Likewise, it is possible to become too familiar with a second self and live two lives.
The “new creation” in Christ is a singular self. There is no former self, no other self, unless we are not really “dead” to the old life. Those who do not count themselves as having been “crucified with Christ” and “buried with him in baptism” and do not identify themselves as having “risen with him” and so are unable to live in the freedom of the new life.
Instead they live double lives — each life contrary to the other — and so unable to do the good they should or the bad they would if they could. What a miserable existence! Like the children of Israel they are out of slavery yet are unable — or unwilling — to “enter in” to all that God has promised. They live in between and move to and fro in the ‘wilderness’ of their own will.
Pastors counsel them but they never “enter in” and claim the inheritance that awaits them in Jesus their Saviour but not really their Lord. Jesus said: “If your eye is single, your body will be full of light.” A Christian needs to become a person of singular purpose!
The Apostle James writes that a double-minded soul is as unstable as a wave of the sea and blown to and fro by contrary cross-winds of the will of the Lord and their own blowhard second guesses.
So, if you are in two minds about the Lord’s call on your life, make up your mind and do God’s will! When you’ve done that you’ll no longer be tossed around by those troublesome “every which way” thoughts!