Neither Perfect, Nor Discarded

This is Father Jared Cramer from St. John's Episcopal Church in Grand Haven, Michigan, here with today's edition of Christian Mythbusters, a regular segment I offer to counter some common misconceptions about the Christian faith.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting with my therapist, trying to put words to something I've wrestled with for a long time. Some days it feels like I'm walking a narrow path between two ditches. On one side is the danger of thinking too highly of myself: arrogance, hubris, the belief that I've got it all figured out. On the other side is the danger of thinking too little of myself: shame, discouragement, even depression.

That's a vulnerable thing to say out loud. But I have a hunch I'm not alone. So this week, let's talk about the myths we build about ourselves on the spiritual journey.

The first myth is that we are better than we are. The spiritual life has always been tempted by self-importance. You see it all through Scripture: Moses, David, the religious leaders of Jesus' day, the disciples arguing over who was the greatest, even Peter and Paul in the early church. When you care deeply about your faith (and that's a good thing!), it becomes easy to blur the line between your convictions about God and God's own voice. We start to assume that because we're on God's side, God must always be on ours. Then we minimize where we've gone wrong. We get defensive. We point to how hard we tried and how good our intentions were.

That's why the old practice of the examen matters so much. Saint Ignatius of Loyola taught people to pause each day and look back over the hours with God, giving thanks, noticing where they were drawn toward love, and naming honestly where they fell short. My own tradition builds something similar into our worship. At daily prayer and at every Eucharist, we confess that we have sinned "in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone." When we do that honestly, without excuses, we come to a truer picture of ourselves. That produces humility.

And when humility meets the love of God, something surprising happens: we become gentler, both with ourselves and with others.

But there's a second myth, and it lives in the other ditch. It's the myth that we are worse than we are. Sometimes self-examination slides into something darker. Researcher Brené Brown offers a helpful distinction. Guilt says, "I did something bad." Shame says, "I am bad." Guilt can move us toward change, because it holds us accountable while keeping our worth intact. Shame does the opposite. It isolates us, tells us we're beyond repair, and makes us hide. And people who are hiding rarely grow.

Christian faith has never asked us to hate ourselves (and if anyone’s told you that, they were wrong). Confession isn't meant to end in self-loathing. It's meant to end in absolution and an experience of God’s love. As the First Letter of John puts it, even when our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts.

So what we need is balance. Saint Paul told the Romans not to think of themselves more highly than they ought, but to think with sober judgment. Sober judgment means seeing ourselves the way God sees us: not perfect, not discarded, but broken and so deeply loved.

That's the truth that frees us from both myths. You don't have to defend yourself, because your worth was never something you earned. And you don't have to hide, because the One who knows you best loves you most. Humility and gentleness, it turns out, grow from the very same soil.

Thanks for being with me. To find out more about my parish, you can go to sjegh.com. Until next time, remember: protest like Jesus, love recklessly, and live your faith out in a community that accepts you but also challenges you to be better tomorrow than you are today.