I’m often told (by folks that read this) that I’m too hard on myself. And for years I’ve countered that internally with the thought that I’m probably not hard enough.
But maybe everyone’s right and I’m wrong.
I’ve written ad nauseum about my problems, my shortcomings, my character flaws, my imperfections. I’ve publicly berated myself for them, partially as a method of cleansing, and (admittedly) partially in an effort to convince myself (and others) that I’m self-aware, introspective. Like the kid sitting under the tree in college writing in his journal or composing songs on his guitar.
In these self-rebukes, I’ve often consoled myself that though I’m wrong and stupid and vile, all I need to do is ask forgiveness and ask for help and all will be right. My evil will be overcome.
But in all these years, I may have missed the point.
Christianity is a fascinating idea. I’ve written before about the two ‘laws of humanity’ that we take for granted, even though they are impossible to reconcile, namely:
1) There are no moral absolutes. We are a product of a naturalistic world with simple cause and effect reactions. No such thing as good or evil, right or wrong – just social constructs.
2) People do terrible, evil things all the time. Indeed, there are some pretty wicked people in this world, some of whom have done some really nasty things to me or someone I love. Thankfully, I’m not one of those people. The things that I do that could potentially be construed as evil or wicked – that’s just because people don’t know the circumstances, don’t understand the context.
Those ideas sit in tension in our subconscious, and we try to avoid addressing them (most likely because we know that thinking about them means trying to make them make sense, or else abandon one of them and rethink our position on the world.)
Christianity is fascinating because it doesn’t try to sweep these ideas under the rug. It says that there is a natural order to the world, there are laws that exist that have cause and effect, but there’s something else behind it – something that determines what is good or evil. It says that yes, I have screwed up just like everyone else, but that I’m not an evil person. Even better, it says there’s a way to have a clean slate, a way to be associated with the character of someone who is not evil, and in so doing slowly, often imperceptably replace our muddled characters with His.
That’s the story that I’ve come to believe in. Or so I thought.
All these years of writing have been from a paradigm that says that because I do evil things, because I screw up, I am an evil person. It’s the classic ‘worm theology’ that various churches in various centuries instilled in its people, and it is one of the most deceptive lies we’re fed (though we often don’t know it.)
All these years, I’ve subconciously held onto the belief that I’m not a good person, and that I’m really lucky I’ve got my belief system or else I’d be totally screwed.
But I missed the point entirely. My heart is good. Your heart is good. I am loved just as I am, and so are you. The dirt and the evil things that we do are not who we are – they are what stand between us and a loving, faithful God that desperately wants to be closer to us.
Yes, it’s true that this God is just and good, and that my evil actions are what has driven a wedge into that relationship. But those are my actions, not my heart. My soul is good – held captive, a faint image of what it can and should be, but good nonetheless.
It’s funny, for all my talk about living life a certain way, I’ve always had the priorities in the wrong order. I can’t take on my faults with a frontal attack – I can’t create a to-do list that I can check off.
“Hey look, I’m not greedy anymore… Check! Seeya pride – I’m on a roll!”
I can try as hard as I want to berate myself into being a better person, or I can let go of the idea that I’m a bad person in the first place. I can decide to finally acknowledge that God created me in His image, as something good and loving and worthwhile. I can decide to acknowledge that I’ll continue to screw up, but my chances of ‘living intentionally’ go up dramatically if I let Him do the work in my heart instead of stubbornly continuing to try to do it myself.
I can realize that after all these years of trying to remove the logjam of evil thoughts and actions that have kept me out of the kind of relationship I want, I somehow missed the self-imposed dam, the subconscious idea that behind all those actions is a person who is unlovable, unworthy of such a relationship.
I’ve tried for years to be less judgmental towards people – perhaps it’s time to be less judgmental with myself.
