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Two defining elements of Christianity are God’s love and God’s grace. 9 times out of 10 I have a problem accepting both.
God’s love: why would God love me? I’m a hack. I don’t pray, read my bible, serve (and so on and so forth…) nearly enough. I go to bed every night disappointed with myself, knowing that I “blew it” once again. What could I possible have done to deserve God’s love?
God’s grace: this is just beyond me. How could somebody forgive me time after time after time? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame you me, right (unless it’s the George W. Bush version)? I’m not gonna let some clown fool me over and over again, just to continuously ask for my forgiveness! I’m smarter than that and I’d rather invest my time in people who take me seriously.
So I lay in bed, literally every night, disappointed and aggravated with myself (again). Nothing I do will EVER be enough to satisfy MYSELF. Crazy, eh? I know this is where grace comes in, but I just can’t seem to accept it. I honestly feel like my failures DO define me. This is no way to live! So what do I end up doing? Nothing! I’ve distanced myself from many things Christian. If nothing I do will ever be good enough, then why even bother?
I know the Christian answers to my questions and struggles. I just can’t seem to wrap my mind around them and embrace them as truths.
Am I alone or do any of you guys ever struggle with this/these as well?
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It’s very sad to see how little you like yourself, Bill. I felt pretty much the same way when I was your age. I hope you outgrow it. It takes maturity to learn to love and accept yourself.
I wouldn’t say that I don’t like myself so much, I just hold myself to standards that I’ll never meet! I hope I outgrow it too!
Well, your posts lately on this subject have been real downers. You are a human being with human limitations. Once you get to know yourself, you can come up with realistic goals that you can realistically accomplish. Don’t try to be someone or something that you’re not. It’s just not worth beating yourself up because you’re who you are.
Wow. This fairly similar to a question John Shore asked on his blog last year:
“…If I treated my wife snarkily, or … I don’t know … took too many long lunches at my job, or spent money I shouldn’t have buying booze or pot and then behaving in ways even less likely to win me any Husband of the Year award, I always fervently resolved to change my ways.
“That’s it! ” I would cry. “From this moment forth, I shall be a veritable pillar of strength! Strong! Resolute! Incorruptible! Insusceptible to temptation! I will become a man worthy of the woman I married!”
But, then … you know: Who can take a lunch in half an hour? I’m a chewer.
And am I not supposed to ever buy beer?
And if a friend of mine in the parking lot of the factory I work in offers to get me high before my shift starts, then … well, then I’ll be sittin’ in that guy’s car sharing whatever he’s got faster than you can say, “Um. Dude. Is that clock right?”
The point is: I personally always had exactly zilch in the Exert Your Will To Better Yourself department.
Which inevitably left me again suffering new, fresh guilt over the way I’d treated my wife, or my money, or my employer, or my body, or some other confounded thing or another…
So, again: How, atheist (or New Ager), do you process your guilt? What is the means by which, after you have in effect soiled yourself, you come to feel clean again?”
My response then was (comment 40):
“After I have come up short to what I wished to be, over and over, I have learned to accept that I am an imperfect fallible mortal human being. I can’t feel that I am better than that - which might translate to ‘clean.’ What I can do, though, is realize that when others come up short, it is because they are also imperfect, fallible, moral human beings. All I can do is try and extend as much forgiveness and acceptance for faults and misdeeds as I am asking for my own.”
Do you forgive other people for being imperfect, Bill? It’s a rhetorical question, because everyone knows you do. You should extend yourself as much respect and forgiveness as you do others, shouldn’t you? If you would think it would be wrong to treat someone else a certain way (like criticizing them to be perfect), itsn’t it also wrong to treat yourself that way? There’s no reason you shouldn’t be treated as an equal - by yourself.
Your failures don’t define you just as your successes don’t. It is how you deal with success or failure that is the measure of a person. If you find peace in poetry I suggest reading Rudyard Kipling’s If. I find it a bit forced and conservative in sentiment but it has something to say about making the best of a situation rather than dwelling on failures.
Not that I think any of the things that you’ve listed are failures at all.
Darnit, ‘like criticizing them to be perfect’ in my post above should be ‘like criticizing them for not being perfect.’
Sigh.
Bill,
I will second the gist of the majority of comments here. And I will tell you that I struggle with this also. I think most believers do. However, striving for better does not preclude peace with where we are currently at.
We unbelievers try to improve ourselves, too. We just don’t have to deal with the religious guilt trips along the way. That’s something that I don’t miss at all.