THE QUEST TO FEEL GOOD WITHOUT GOD

A researcher shared his feelings of inadequacy with a Stoic advisor:

·       I would like to ask you if you have any references on Stoic responses to two struggles that are dear to us in academia: i) frustration due to working hard and not achieving the desired outcome, and ii) feeling one doesn’t deserve what one has in life…

I appreciate the researcher’s candor and also his struggle. He is in touch with feelings so basic to our human experience. He suspects and feels that he is inadequate – that there is something the matter with him.

The advisor affirmed the fact that these feelings are ubiquitous, even among the most talented and able:

·       Yes, I’m all too familiar with the two feelings you are referring to, both because of direct personal experience, and because I’ve talked to plenty of graduate students and young colleagues who have had them at one point or another during their career. They don’t seem to affect senior faculty much, possibly because of a combination of getting older and caring less, becoming wiser, and simply getting used to it. https://howtobeastoic.wordpress.com/2018/03/15/stoic-advice-impostor-syndrome/

Why are these feelings so common, even (or especially) among the most able and highest performers? We might expect to see a higher prevalence of the sense of inadequacy among the lowest performers but why among the highest? I think that it is part of the human condition to feel that there is something the matter with us no matter how talented or how many accomplishments we might have.

If this is so, then why? Perhaps there is really something the matter with us at our core. Perhaps the feelings of guilt, shame, and threat we experience reflect something real – our alienation from God. Perhaps this is also why the most talented and accomplished hate God so much. They suspect that He is behind these feelings, and they can’t shake loose from them despite all of their efforts and achievements. Rather than surrendering to the fact that they are sinners who need the Savior, they are trying to achieve their significance apart from a relationship with a God who loved them and died for them.

While I appreciate the insights of this advisor, he will no longer accept my responses on his blog. Why not? He has admitted that he doesn’t appreciate my God-centered responses. Why is he threatened by them?