A Life-Controlling Affliction: The Need for Self-Validation

The richest man in the world, John D. Rockefeller, had been asked, “How much money do you need to be happy?” He famously answered, “Always a bit more.”

His answer remains alive for us today because it illustrates something that we observe in ourselves. We are never satisfied, no matter how great the successes, recognition, or money we have accumulated. Self-validation is a monster that requires continuous feeding. Lady Gaga sings about this consuming fire:

• “I live for the applause, applause, applause…the way that you cheer and scream for me.” She adds in another song, “yes we live for the Fame, Doin’ it for the Fame, Cuz we wanna live the life of the rich and famous.”

Self-validation is a life-consuming quest, which will not let go. I always had to be the best. When someone else was better, I was jealous and resented his success. Although Christ has set me free from its controlling influence, the feelings are still there. They can get me down, but I get right back up and laugh these ugly feelings in the face.

Where do these feelings – these psychological addictions – come from? It seems that we are all, to some degree, afflicted with an underlying sense of unworthiness. It might manifest itself through shame or guilt or even self-contempt. This sense is so powerful that we have to do something about it. We have to validate ourselves not only to ourselves but to the rest of the world.

My way of self-validation was through being the best. Others seek to look the best or to be people-pleasers or to gain love and approval to the max – anything to silence the inner voices that tell us that we are unworthy, that they is something wrong or lacking within.

Well, where does this seemingly universal sense of unworthiness come from? What is the universal cause that is adequate to explain this universal brokenness?

God had created us to feel entirely comfortable within our own skin. In fact, Adam and Eve felt so comfortable that they went naked without any sense of shame. However, this all changed once they had sinned. Even if they didn’t quite understand their now life-controlling feelings of shame, they knew something was wrong and laughably covered themselves with fig leaves.

Today, not having a fig tree in reach, we cover ourselves with our attainments, university degrees, and successes, convinced that a mere covering will adequately address the underlying infection. But as a mere covering, it never does! Instead, as with any drug or addiction, we always crave more.

The addiction is so powerful that we will do anything to protect it. We deny the real issue and avoid and detest anything or anyone who might expose it. When God found Adam and Eve hiding from Him, He asked them what the problem was. Foolishly, they tried to divert Him with half-truths.

I could never admit my addiction – that I was self-consumed, had to be the best, and was jealous of anyone who had what I wanted. I tried my best to hide these obsessions away in a place of darkness. Anyone who might expose them was a threat.

Even after God revealed their sin and lies, they continued to validate themselves by blaming someone else. Eve blamed the serpent; Adam blamed both Eve and the God who had brought her to him.

What had started this cycle of unworthiness, addiction and lies? Sin and its rupturing of our vital connection with our Creator! As long as Adam and Eve had this connection, there was no sense of unworthiness but rather completeness and wholeness.

Why then are the redeemed still struggling with these feelings, now that the relationship with our Redeemer has been restored? We are only halfway home. We are still awaiting the glories that will be revealed in us:

• We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:23)

Yes, we have already been redeemed and adopted. However, not entirely! The sin in our unredeemed body remains our enemy and opposes us at every turn:

• So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. (Galatians 5:16-17)

Consequently, it does not feel like we are yet home. We still want to validate ourselves against the accusations of our flesh, even though Christ has validated us beyond anything that we might hope to do (Gal. 2:20). What then? We laugh at these cravings, convinced that they have already been decisively addressed by our Savior, and meanwhile seek to minister to the needs of others.

Rejection and Positive Affirmations

Rejection is hard to take. We are social creatures, and define ourselves socially, by the acclaim or dis-acclaim of others. Consequently, when others like, accept, respect and value us, we feel valued. When we don’t receive these tokens, we generally hurt, some more than others. One blog, Psychology in Everyday Life, defines feelings of rejection in terms of pathology:

• Sensitivity to rejection isn’t just a passing fancy of the self-help movement. It’s a serious symptom of the mood and personality disorders that results in an inability to regulate emotions, exert self-control, and the tendency to give too much personal meaning to life happenings that it undermines the ability to cope with frustrating experiences.

Instead, the pervasiveness of our “sensitivity to rejection” seems to suggest that it is a human phenomenon that requires general how-to-live-life answers. This blog suggests:

• You will be able to handle rejection, when you start to describe it in ways that don’t destroy your self-esteem. Turn a statement like, “I am destroyed and can’t go on living” into “I’m hurting, but not broken or down”. Your whole demeanor changes just by the meaning you give to the experience.

• The next time you are denied, chant the beauty of your good… even if you have to fake it at the start.

Instead of allowing society/others to define and determine who we are and level of our worth, we need to find a never-ending fountain from which we can drink an unchanging positive self-concept. However, this blog and secular psychology assert that we can provide this balm for ourselves.

Can we? My experience tells me that I cannot! I had had five highly recommended psychologists/psychiatrists who affirmed that I should “chant the beauty of [my] good.” However, their chant failed to penetrate. My pervasive feelings of un-worth cried far louder than any of their collective chants about my positive worth.

While it is true that we can’t base our self-concept on the passing whims of others or even on our own passing accomplishments, we also cannot base our psychological well-being on self-affirmations – a form of masturbation. Instead, we were made for relationship – one that would provide for us the necessary psychological foundation to weather life’s challenges and changes.

Scripture informs us that we have this relationship through a Divine Savior:

• Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. (Psalm 27:10)

People will reject us. None of us have immunity from this reality. Even our closest relationships will fail us, if not be rejection, then by death. I continue to experience threatening feelings due to rejection and the threat of such. However, I know that the Lord will never reject me, and that what He thinks about me is what counts.

Others might disapprove of me, and sometimes, this deeply hurts. Sometimes, their disapproval is justified. I do have many failings. However, I can now bear the rejection (and be transparent about it), knowing that my Lord esteems me everlastingly.

Moral Unworthiness, Self-Righteousness and the Need to Endure Self-Examination

A polarization of dust-bowl dimensions is sweeping the West. It is not simply the product of growing philosophical differences, but also an absolute contempt for those on the other side.

Why do these differences have to result in contempt and intolerance? Is there hidden psychological baggage that has commandeered this often lethal engagement? Philosopher Charles Taylor thought so. Around 25 years ago, he astutely wrote:

• The threatened sense of unworthiness can also lead to the projection of evil outward; the bad, the failure, is now identified with other people or groups. My conscience is clear because I oppose them, but what can I do? They stand in the way of universal beneficence; they must be liquidated. This becomes particularly virulent on the extremes of the political spectrum.

•  Many young people are driven to political extremism, sometimes by truly terrible conditions, but also by a need to give meaning to their lives. And since meaninglessness is frequently accompanied by a sense of guilt, they sometimes respond to a strong ideology of polarization, in which one recovers a sense of direction as well as a sense of purity by lining up in implacable opposition to the forces of darkness. The more implacable and even violent the opposition, the more the polarity is represented as absolute, and the greater the sense of separation from evil and hence purity. Dostoevsky's Devils is one of the great documents of modern times, because it lays bare the way in which an ideology of universal love and freedom can mask a burning hatred, directed outward onto an unregenerate world and generating destruction and despotism. (“Sources of the Self,” 516-517)

Where does this “sense of unworthiness” come from? Our conscience is pre-packaged with high moral ideals of love, truth, and justice – ideals to which we inevitably fail attain, and we know it. How then do we deal with our resulting, crippling sense of moral failure and unworthiness? We have many strategies:

1.     DENIAL – We merely suppress this painful awareness.

2.     COMPENSATION – We convince ourselves that we are good and worthy people, perhaps through positive affirmations or by surrounding ourselves with others who will affirm us.

3.     RATIONALIZATIONS – We can either tell ourselves that everyone is garbage or that there are no objective standards by which we can be judged.

4.     SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS – We perform good deeds to convince the world (and ourselves) that we are really superior to the vast majority. We also denigrate others in this process.
 

The latter is the most dangerous form. It is what impels young people into what Taylor labels as “political extremism” and “implacable opposition.” This demonizes the opposing party to the extent that the self-righteous believe that they must be eliminated. After all, they represent the forces of darkness and the self-righteous have convinced themselves that they are the forces of goodness.

In contrast to this, there is healthy, necessary, and humble idealism. This idealism is not achieved by convincing ourselves that we are better than others, giving us license to subjugate or eliminate them. Instead, this is an idealism that is cognizant of ourselves and our underlying self-serving motives to use a legitimately righteous cause to promote our self-esteem at the expense of others.

It is also an idealism that is willing to endure continual self-scrutiny, knowing that we are capable of the same evil, which we decry in others. It is also willing to place the welfare of others – even that of the “bad guys” – on par with their own.

But how can we endure this painful light of self-scrutiny or how many of us solicit honest criticism? Few! While many of us claim that we want wisdom, we are not willing to pay the price.

Three thousand years ago the enlightened King Solomon wrote about the free offer of wisdom and its rejection:

Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD,

They would have none of my counsel and despised my every rebuke.

Therefore they shall eat the fruit of their own way, and be filled to the full with their own fancies.

For the turning away of the simple will slay them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them. (Proverbs 1:29-32)

With our denial, rationalizations and self-righteousness, we ultimately destroy ourselves. Wisdom comes at a price – the willingness to hear the painful things that it says to us. Consequently, we readily reject it in favor of something that feels good. However, Solomon’s father – David – knew better and asked his God to examine him:

Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23-24)

We should do no less!