AUTONOMY, RELATIONSHIPS, SELF-LOVE, AND SELF-FORGIVENESS

We all want to be autonomous, the “captain of our own ship.” We want to navigate our ship to the ports of our choice. This has become bedrock, an assumption past questioning.

However, autonomous choice has had its consequences. Many of us call ourselves “spiritual” and not “religious.” For the Western mind, religion implies a celestial watchdog, a God who is always scrutinizing our behavior with his list of moral “does and don’ts,” ready to punish those who assert their autonomy beyond His limits. For the autonomous, this feels completely repressive, a violation of their freedom and human rights.

However, this very watchdog has also promised love and forgiveness, something that we sense is in very short supply in our lives. Why? Because we have failed to find peace and happiness! We feel shamed and unlovable! Our most intimate relationships are in shambles or else they are failing to give us what we need. We have not succeeded in reaching our desired ports-of-call; nor have we been able to live up to our own moral code.

We crave love but haven’t been able to find it, at least, not for long. Consequently, self-help books abound with teachings about how to love ourselves, something we already mastered with our arsenal of self-affirmations.

However, as with any drug, these affirmations quickly lose their kick, and so we resort to stronger doses, each further removing us from others, ourselves, and even reality. Instead of imbibing accurate feedback, we have been feeding on the self-esteem drug to give us our AM boost to get out of bed. We have sacrificed the accurate feedback we need to navigate our boat for a brief high that tells us that we are special and superior. At some point, we wake up and realize that we don’t even know who we are.

Narcissism is the price for our pre-occupation with self-love. Besides, if self-love worked, we wouldn’t need to be unceasingly trained in it. Meanwhile, relational love has fled from us, and self-love has proved to be a poor substitute. However, it is appealing if we want to be in control. Self-love is something that we should be able to master, and it won’t threaten our autonomy. However, even this private affair, our safe-date, pays diminishing dividends.

Self-forgiveness is equally costly. Forgiveness is meant to be a relational and not a private matter. If I slap my wife, it is not enough for me to forgive myself. I need her forgiveness, but first I have to humbly apologize. Instead, what if I told her:

·       I don’t need to apologize. I have already forgiven myself.

Such a response will not bring peace into our relationship. Instead, we need genuine forgiveness and not a cheap imitation.

However, we are afflicted with chronic life-controlling shame.  Psychologist John Bradshaw accurately explained:

·       The internalized feeling of being flawed and defective as a human being. In the internalization process, shame, which should be a healthy signal of limits, becomes an overwhelming state of being, an identity if you will. Once toxically shamed, a person loses contact with his authentic self. What follows is a chronic mourning for the lost self. (Homecoming, 67)

Bradshaw then explained how shame, the “master emotion,” begins to tragically numb the rest of the emotions through denial, repression, and dissociation. Where did this life-controlling shame come from? According to Bradshaw, it is a product of not being loved unconditionally. If this is the problem, then the answer is matter of providing unconditional love. One way this is achieved, according to Bradshaw, is through loving affirmations:

·       Positive affirmations reinforce our beingness and can heal the spiritual wound. Pam Levin has stated that “affirming messages can even produce changes in the cardiac and respiratory rate of patients in a coma.” Repeated positive messages are emotional nutrients…Here are the loving words you can say to your inner infant:

o   “Welcome to the world, I’ve been waiting for you. I’m glad you are here. I’ve prepared a special place for you to live. I like you just the way you are. I will not leave you, no matter what...” (93)

There are several problems with Bradshaw’s approach:

1. It is superficial. Bradshaw unjustifiably assumes that toxic shame is the result of a lack of love. Instead, our shame might reflect a deeper problem that should not be covered over with positive affirmations but addressed directly.

2. It’s not believable. If positive affirmations are going to work, they must be believed, but they should only be believed if they are in harmony with reality! However, it’s hard to take Bradshaw’s proposed affirmations seriously: “I’ve prepared a special place for you to live. I like you just the way you are...” To believe this is to live in a dream world and not the real world.

3. Believing something silly can only provide minimal and temporary relief.

If Bradshaw’s affirmations can alleviate shame, how much more God’s affirmations! If it helps to assure myself that “I will not leave you,” how much more the assurances that He will never leave me (Rom 8:38-39; Heb. 13:5)! If I am reassured by the self-affirmation, “I like you just the way you are,” I will find the affirmation from Above that He loves me with a love that surpasses anything I can understand, even more reassuring (Eph 3:17-20)!

I never learned to forgive myself through affirmations.  Instead of coming to God and humbling myself before Him, the One who has been chiefly offended by my sins, I had chosen my autonomous God-substitutes to find love and forgiveness. My moral failures and my rejection of God had alienated me from God’s forgiveness and His cleansing of my sins (1 John 1:9-10). However, I have found that God’s forgiveness (Heb. 8:12) penetrates to the very depths of my problems, freeing me from the shackles of guilt and shame.

Bradshaw’s self-affirmations are to God’s affirmations as self-stimulation (masturbation) is to true relationship. As such, self-affirmations are a poor substitute for the real thing. They compromise mind and reality for the sake of temporary emotional relief.

In contrast to this, the Bible doesn’t admonish us to believe that Christ died for our sins simply because it feels good, but because it is good and true. God’s solution never required me to compromise my intellectual integrity or reality. Yes, it does compromise my autonomy, but I found that this autonomy had subjected me to such oppression that it consumed any sense of freedom that I might have had.