Understanding Unworthiness

 

 

How blessed to know how unworthy we are! A Roman commander of 100 solders asked Jesus to heal his beloved servant but added, “I am not worthy to have you come under my roof. Just say the word, and he will be healed.”

·       Matthew 8:10 When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, “Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.”

In his unworthiness, he had gained great wisdom and faith. Jesus spoke the Word, and the servant was instantly healed:

A wealthy man’s second born son had demanded his inheritance and went to a foreign land and blew his wealth on prostitutes. A great famine came, and he had no money left for food. He got a job feeding pigs where he tried to compete with them for their food. Consequently, he was starving and decided to swallow his pride and return disgraced to his father, who had been had been awaiting his son’s return. When he saw his unworthy son coming, he ran to him, kissed, and embraced him:

·       Luke 15:21 And the son said to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

With this acknowledgement, the father threw him a great party. However, his oldest son was embittered. He had regarded himself as worthy of such a party but certainly not his unworthy brother. He refused to attend even after the father assured him that everything he had belonged to him.

Bitterness is the fate of those who regard themselves as worthy, while gratefulness is the inheritance of those who gladly accept their unworthiness. Therefore, it is not surprising that Jesus alerts us to our unworthiness before God:

·       Luke 17:10 “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”

Even the great Apostle Paul acknowledged this: Galatians 6:3 “For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”

Our blessedness resides in the fact that we understand this:

·       Matthew 5:3–5 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

 Paul had acknowledged that he needed to be continually humbled (2 Corinthians 12:7-10) to become the man that our Lord requires. I do too! I began to regard my church cynically. I was like the older brother who regarded his prodigal brother with contempt. I I required perfection in my church. However, by God’s grace, my contempt was killing me. It became so painful that I had to flee after the service, lest any see my uncleanness.

What is the answer? Always Christ! He loves us so much that He humbles us to exalt us. He prunes us so that we would bear more fruit:

·       John 15:1–2 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.”

Am I Worthy of Love

This woman had been in great pain. To be alienated from yourself is also to be alienated from others:

•    “I really want to know who I am and have expressed many times to my therapist that I don’t feel human, but I’m not really understanding how to become a person. He hammers on how no matter who I am I am worthy of love. I am currently nothing/nobody so how can I be lovable? I really need some help with getting to know myself. Have any of you been offered any tools in therapy to help you understand who you are? In the last three years I’ve only learned who I am not.”

I can identify. Was I worthy of love, and what would make me worthy? Wouldn’t I have to hit the longest home run or become the school’s valedictorian?

I spend years thinking, “I just want to know who I am so that I can just be me and feel comfortable about me.” However, I was the last person I wanted to know. I didn’t like myself and was convinced that no one else did. Therefore, I tried to be like others, especially the popular ones. I studied their movements. Perhaps this might affect the way I felt about myself. However, I remained a loner.

Then I discovered that if I gave myself regular doses of positive affirmations I could better face the world. However, this contributed to further alienation. How could I possibly known myself and to accept myself if I am always lying to myself to boost my self-esteem.

My five highly recommended psychologists were unable to help. They just feed me with the same junk food I’d been consuming—positive affirmations. Despite this “rich” diet, I could no more engage and accept myself than I could fly like a bird.

I had to be assured that I was unconditionally and permanently loved, and that I had value. This would require me to abandon my unseen addiction to self-aggrandizing thinking which enabled me to get out of bed in the morning. Psychological counseling also robbed me of my dreams of achieving honor and glory. According to secular thinking, these entities were just the creation of my psychological needs.  Instead, life was just about finding happiness and meaning in a meaningless world.

I am now convinced that facing my addiction to narcissistic thinking was something that only Christ could do for me, but I had no idea of the painful and extended withdrawal I’d have to endure. My self-deceptions had to be incinerated. Consequently, I was stripped naked as my defenses were left in ashes. Panic filled the vacuum for the next several years.

In my vanity, I had previously survived by reassuring myself that I could make it through anything. I now knew otherwise. How could Christ love me if I barely could make it through to the next day! I was a failure, but He remained my only hope. If He wouldn’t rescue me, it was clear that I couldn’t.

However, He reassured me of His love through a series of miracles, which ceased more than 35 years ago. I can now say as the Prophet Habakkuk had written:

•    Habakkuk 3:17–19 Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.

I now know who I am, but it is not who I had wanted to be. Instead, I know that I am a beloved child of God, convinced that since I have Jesus, I have everything I need. I can now dispense of my mask and bask securely in the light of His truth.

Did Sigmund Freud Despair of Psychoanalysis?

 

 

 

Richard E. Simmons III, founder and Executive Director of The Center for Executive Leadership, reasoned that he had. Freud had believed that physical pleasure would create the happiness that he had sought:

·     Freud believed that people are not happy because they are not free to pursue outwardly what they desire to do inwardly. He also contended these moral social conventions caused people to feel guilty when they are violated, which leads to further unhappiness.

According to Simmons, it seems that psychoanalysis and its attempt to relieve the sufferers from the pangs of their conscience had failed:

·       Over time, Freud recognized that physical pleasure was temporary and fleeting, and therefore unhappiness was unavoidable. His view of life was dark, ominous and full of despair. In a letter to his fiancé he admitted over a fourteen month period that he had experienced only three or four days of happiness. Nicholi says that Freud constantly experienced “feelings of hopelessness and helplessness, a negative interpretation of life with frequent thoughts of death, and a pessimistic view of the future.” The only thing he found that consistently lifted his spirits was a new drug called cocaine. At the end of his life he asked this question; “What good to us is a long life if it is difficult and barren of joys, and if it is so full of misery that we can only welcome death as a deliverer?” https://richardesimmons3.com/sigmund-freud-c-s-lewis-and-the-pursuit-of-happiness/

Others have also noted that Freud had become disenchanted with psychoanalysis:

·       Dr. O. Hobart Mowrer, a former president of the American Psychological Association, concludes, “I have become progressively disenchanted with results of psychotherapy and with the underlying theory itself…I am convinced that, in general, psychotherapy doesn’t do patients very much good. Before he died, Freud himself admitted that the therapeutic effectiveness of psychotherapy is poor, and that it was mainly a research tool. (Martin L. Gross, The Psychological Society; 32)

Have modern psychotherapies improved upon Freud’s theory or methods? Perhaps in a minor way. They have tried to bridge the gap between the therapist and the patient. Instead of sitting behind the supine couched client, the therapist now faces them, giving a nod to the fact that a caring relationship is essential.

Simmons contrasts Freud’s antagonism towards religion with that of a fellow atheist:

·       For the first thirty-one years of his life, C.S. Lewis was also an atheist, and Nicholi says that during those years, Lewis shared Freud’s despair. After becoming a Christian, he openly shared that his pessimism and gloom were clearly a result of his godless worldview. He had concluded that the universe was a “menacing and unfriendly place.” He saw no hope in the future.

·       However, everything changed when he became a Christian. His somber view of life was transformed into joy and a real sense of freedom. He said that once he had become a Christian he “began to know what life really is and what would have been lost by missing it.”

The Costly Bias Against Christianity

 

 

In Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Carl Jung had written:

·       I have treated hundreds of patients, the larger number being Protestant, a smaller number Jews, and more than five or six believing Catholics…over 35 years of age. There has not been one whose problems, in the last resort, was not that of  finding a religious outlook on life.

His findings agree with thousands of others. In, “Spirituality & Health Research: Methods, Measurement, Statistics, and Resources,” Harold G. Koenig MD, has done more to survey the available research regarding the question of what is associated with positive mental and physical outcomes than perhaps anyone else. He has identified religion/spirituality (R/S) as the key element. For example:

SUICIDE: “We identified 141 studies that had examined relationships between R/ S and some aspect of suicide (completed suicide, attempted suicide, or attitudes toward suicide), and 106 (75 percent) reported significant inverse relationships [the less religion, the higher suicide risk]; 80 percent of the best designed studies reported this finding.”

Koenig also concluded that, “Those who are R/S live a healthier lifestyle that lowers their risk of physical illness.”

HYPERTENSION: “At least 63 studies have examined relationships between R/S and blood pressure (BP) or hypertension, and 36 (57 percent) of those reported lower BP or less hypertension in those who were more R/S or received R/S interventions. Of the 39 best studies, 24 (62 percent) reported this finding. In contrast, 7 of 63 studies (11 percent) reported higher BP or more hypertension in the more R/ S.”

CEREBROVASCULAR DISEASE: “We identified 9 studies that focused on relationships between R/S and stroke, transient ischemic attack (TIA), or carotid artery thickness, or examined the effects of an R/S “intervention on these outcomes. Four (44 percent) of those studies reported that R/S was related to significantly less disease, 4 found no association, and 1 found greater carotid artery thickness in those who were more R/S.”

DEMENTIA: “We located 21 studies that examined relationships between R/S and dementia or cognitive impairment. Of those, 10 (48 percent) reported significant inverse relationships, 3 (14 percent) found significant positive relationships, 2 reported mixed findings, and 6 (29 percent) found no association. Of the 14 most rigorously designed studies, 8 (57 percent) reported inverse relationships with R/ S, whereas 3 reported significant positive relationships. Of the 7 prospective cohort studies, 5 (71 percent) found that R/S involvement at baseline predicted significantly less cognitive decline over time.”

MORTALITY: “At least 121 studies have now examined that relationship, with 82 (68 percent) finding that greater R/S involvement predicted greater longevity, and 7 studies (6 percent) reported shorter longevity. Among studies with the most rigorous methodology, 13 of 17 (76 percent) found that R/S predicted greater longevity.”

From the above small sample of Koenig’s work, it is imperative that concerned mental health and medical professionals must not ignore R/S. This is particularly critical concerning our veterans. “Military Times” (2018/09/26) reported:

• About 20 veterans a day across the country take their own lives, and veterans accounted for 14 percent of all adult suicide deaths in the U.S. in 2016.

It should be noted that this is occurring at a time when secular mental health interventions have increased, while the military chaplaincy has become more restricted. This is tragic because our military personnel need the reassurance of the love, forgiveness, acceptance, and hope that is to be found in Jesus Christ, whatever their sins, traumas, or infirmities - the very needs that secularism is unable to fulfill.