NARCISSISM, SELF-ACCEPTANCE, AND SUICIDE

Scripture is full of wisdom, and it often contradicts the judgments of today. For instance, today’s wisdom equates blessedness and mental health with the elimination of suffering and negative symptomology. However, Jesus defines blessedness in a very different way:

•    “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.” (Matthew 5:3–5)

The blessed are not the successful but those who are poor in spirit, mourners, and the meek. Likewise, we tend to admire those who have a high self-esteem and radiate self-confidence, while this is the very opposite of Scripture’s ideal:

•    Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit; he has ceased to act wisely and do good. He plots trouble while on his bed; he sets himself in a way that is not good; he does not reject evil. (Psalm 36:1–4)

To flatter ourselves is not to engage the truth about ourselves, for we are all deeply flawed, our only hope is in the love and mercy of our Savior. However, self-flattery is a rejection of the truth and a retreat into the darkness of deceit, both self-deceit and the deceit of others. It is a hardening of the conscience, which enables the proud and arrogant to increasingly embrace evil. It is the antithesis of self-acceptance!

However, this is the wisdom of the day. Teachers are taught to give their students positive affirmations. Parents are warned to feed their children with messages that will build their self-esteem. Psychotherapists are likewise offering the same medicine to their clients in the form of unconditional-positive-regard, assuming that this will be a cure for all their problems. Instead, we have raised a generation of self-absorbed narcissists who have become addicted to the positive-affirmation drug and require increasingly high doses.

Do these strategies work? Matthew Sleeth argues that Suicide has become epidemic. He cites one university that had to close its doors because of suicides:
 
•    Classes were canceled in an effort to prevent a suicide outbreak — or “suicide cluster.” This year, 10 million Americans will wrestle with whether or not to end their lives. One and a half million will be seen in emergency departments for suicide attempts and ideation. Every 11 seconds someone attempts suicide. America’s suicide rate now ties the all-time high experienced in the Great Depression of the 1930s: 14.5 per 100,000 per year. https://www.christianpost.com/voice/the-next-epidemic-is-worse-than-the-first.html
 
Sleeth regards this epidemic as far worse than these stats reveal:
 
•    In the 1930s, they did not have the medical technology to reverse overdoses, dialyze off poisons, and mechanically ventilate those who temporarily lost their respiratory drive. They did not have in-school depression screening, a national suicide prevention hotline, or a 911 emergency system. No effective medical treatment for depression existed. Today, one out of every eight adults takes an antidepressant. In short, without the invention and intervention of modern medicine and trauma systems, our suicide rate would be 200 to 300 times higher than has ever been experienced at any time in recorded history.
 
What is the remedy? First, we must pinpoint the cause. What has changed? Is life more stressful and threatening? Or is it our inability to cope with our problems?
 
While the extensive interventions of the mental health community have failed to stem the problem, I think that they have even inflamed it. They have failed to provide real hope.
 
Why do people commit suicide? It is not just a matter of pain but a lack of hope that the pain will subside. If one has hope, one can endure. The late psychiatrist Victor Frankl observed, during his internment in a National Socialist death camp, that: “The prisoner who had lost faith in the future…was doomed.”
 
I think that this is our problem. We too have lost faith. Why hasn’t psychotherapy been able to fill the gap? Aren’t psychotherapists trying to inculcate hope in their clients? Of course, but perhaps this is the problem.
 
The hope of today is self-hope. However, when our hope is in ourselves, this is where we turn for hope to face our anxiety, depression, and stress. However, we are turning to ourselves, the source of our problems, in a vain attempt to find hope. It is like hiring a burglar to protect your home.
 
This spike in suicide is also associated with a decline of the influence of Christianity, especially among young adults. God used to be our hope when we found that we couldn’t cope with the pressures of life. When we felt ourselves inadequate failures, His Word would reassure us:
 
•    I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)
 
What a comfort to know that our Lord is always with us. When we feel unlovable, He would remind us:
 
•    to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:19)
 
To know the love of Christ is to be filled with God. This includes hope that this God who had loved us, even when we were His enemies (Romans 5:8-10) and is working all things for our good (Romans 8:28), even amid suffering. To know this is to know whatever our pain might be, He is lovingly with us. It is like committing ourselves to a trusted surgeon to remove a tumor. It might entail a painful convalescence but believing in the doctor enables us to endure. How much more is this true with our all-powerful and loving God!
 
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. Ironically, it is this very element that has been banned from the various forms of psychological intervention. Here is only a small sampling of what Koenig has found:
 
•    DEPRESSION: “At least 444 studies have now quantitatively examined relationships between R/ S and depression, and 272 (61 percent) of those found less depression, faster remission from depression, or a reduction in depression severity in response to an R/S intervention (ten studies at a trend level). In contrast, only 6 percent reported greater depression in those who were more R/ S. Of the 178 methodologically most rigorous studies, 119 (67 percent) found inverse relationships between R/S and depression.”
 
•    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; 80 percent of the best designed studies reported this finding.”
 
These same phenomena are paralleled by a plethora of anecdotal findings. The late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, author of The Road Less Traveled, wrote, 15 years later, in Further along the Road Less Traveled about his journey from Zen Buddhism to Christianity. He had repeatedly observed that his Christian clients would improve, no matter how serious their psychiatric condition. Peck concluded:
 
•    The quickest way to change your attitude toward pain is to accept the fact that everything that happens to us has been designed for our spiritual growth…We cannot lose once we realize that everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us holiness…We are guaranteed winners!"
 
Daily, I remind myself of His overflowing love for me that I might enjoy the “fullness of God,” lest I slip into despair. I can no longer survive without the certainty and tangible presence of His love. I cannot understand how anyone else can. Ironically, it is the hope in our Savior Jesus that is disdained and banished from the public sphere.

SELF-ACCEPTANCE, SELF-DECEIT, AND MASKS

What happens when we wear a mask, and I’m not talking about a Covid-19 mask, but a mask that doesn’t allow others to see “the real me?” Nor am I talking about a temporary mask, which we wear when we have a job interview or on a first date. Instead, I’m talking about a mask we wear when we even go to bed or take a shower – a full-time mask, which hides us from even knowing ourselves.

Did you ever feel that you want the freedom to just be yourself but didn’t know how? Why not? Because you forgot who you are and were perplexed about how to even be you!

For years, I felt that way. I wanted to be me and to be free of what others thought of me but was clueless about how to do this. I was trapped behind my mask and couldn’t remove it, even when I was alone.

This creates a lot of problems. When you hide yourself from others, they cannot know you and, therefore, can’t feel comfortable with you. They might feel that there is a distance but might not be able to pinpoint it. Consequently, they cannot have a real conversation with you, since they don’t know who they are talking to.

Why do we wear a mask to begin with? We want others to approve of us and fear that they will not. This is because we do not approve of ourselves and feel that we are not worthy of love. Therefore, we try to be someone else. One way to do this was like the central figure in a Woody Allen movie. He tried to be just like the one his was presently with, hoping to win their approval.

Pathetic? Yes! It is a form of psychological imprisonment to be so dependent upon what others think of you that you lose yourself. You become so dependent upon them that you even hate them when they don’t seem to approve of you or approve of someone else more than you.

Wearing a mask also prevents any growth or psychological integration, the ability to center and control yourself like a karate expert. Why is this? If you don’t know yourself and what you need to correct, you cannot manage yourself properly. Whatever we manage well, we must first understand, but when we are self-deceived, a working understanding is no longer possible.

How can we learn to accept ourselves the way we are so that we can understand ourselves and live transparently, instead of behind a mask? This is not easy. A multitude of studies reveal that “normal” people are quite self-deceived and, consequently, are also wearing a mask, hiding from themselves and the world. Of what  does the mask consist? An inflated self-esteem to shield us!

However, some psychologists claim that a little self-deception is a good thing. It gives us the confidence to shoot high and to pursue our goals. Other pundits add that once we begin to achieve our goals, we can begin to lay aside our mask and to be ourselves.

However, others observe that we are insatiable and never arrive at a place of contentment and peace. For example, the richest man in the world in his day, John D. Rockefeller, was asked, “How much more money will you need to be happy?” His answer was very revealing: “Always a little bit more.”

Other commentators claim that our ego is the culprit. If we’d learn to control the demands of our ego, we’d find peace-of-mind. However, this is like saying, “Our mind is the problem, and we just need to be able to turn it off.” But perhaps we experience our ego and mind in a negative way because they are being negatively impacted by something deeper. Perhaps they are in overdrive—obsession mode—because there is a deeper problem, which hasn’t been resolved.

We are, in essence, moral beings. We need to feel that we are significant, valuable, morally worthy, and deserving. However, on the deepest level, we know that we aren’t. Therefore, we will even do desperate things so that we can prove our worthiness. In The Significant Life, attorney George M. Weaver argues that our quest for self-importance governs our lives. He documents this quest in many ways:

·       Salvador Dali once said, “The thought of not being recognized [is] unbearable”…Lady Gaga sings, “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.” (7)

The quest for fame and significance can be as demanding and life-controlling as our quest for food. It can take many forms. For Lady Gaga, it takes the form mass adoration. However, the quest for adoration never seems to produce contentment.

Comedian Al Jolson had achieved fame, but it was never enough to insulate him from jealousy:

·       According to his biographer, “He once had a team of performing elephants fired because he thought the audience liked them too much.” (59)

However, this quest to feel good about ourselves takes more sinister forms. John David Chapman had gunned down his ideal, John Lennon, so that he could feel that, at last, he would be a “somebody.”

This suggests that, deep down, we feel bad about ourselves and are not a “somebody.” We have an unshakable sense that something is wrong with us. As a result, we try to convince ourselves that we are worthy by virtue of our accomplishments, whether academic, monetary, or in terms of beauty, social approval, or respect. Consequently, when we fail or are rejected, criticized, or disrespected, it feels as if we are naked and vulnerable, and we no longer feel worthy. We then seek to rebuild our self-esteem and feelings of worthiness.

What makes us feel unworthy, and what are we trying to cover over with our masks? I’d like to suggest something that most will find highly offensive. We are trying to defend ourselves against the truth. Not only are we alienated from ourselves, we are also alienated from the One who created us. We have lived in violation of our own moral standards imprinted within, but we are also living in violation of the One who has imprinted these standards. To make matters worse, we know this but cannot stand to face our moral failures. Therefore, we try to mask over this knowledge. As a result, we have become lovers of the lie and the mask, as Jesus had taught:

·       “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.” (John 3:19-20)

Consequently, the last thing we want is exposure. What is the answer? We need to make peace with what we have suppressed, but how? Through the love, forgiveness, and reconciliation with the One we have long rejected, the One who had died as payment for our sins. Don’t think that you can achieve self-acceptance and psychological integration through mental exercises of self-forgiveness or self-acceptance. No – the suppressed material is simply too threatening to face. It tells us that we deserve condemnation!

To know His love and acceptance enables us to accept ourselves, with all of our failings, to discard the mask, and to be free from the dominating opinions of others. This is what the love of Jesus is doing for me.

SELF-ESTEEM, SELF-DECEIT, SELF-ACCEPTANCE, AND FREEDOM

Interestingly, when people are asked if they are a good person, 95-98% answer affirmatively. But by what standard have they come to this assessment? We have objective standards and measures to determine our height, but what do we have to measure our goodness? It seems that we have merely deceived ourselves into believing in our surpassing moral superiority, as many parallel studies indicate:

·       In one study of nearly a million high school seniors, 70 percent said they had “above average leadership skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership skills were below average.” Another study found that 94 percent of college professors think they do above average work. And in another study, “when doctors diagnosed their patients as having pneumonia, predictions made with 88 percent confidence turned out to be right only 20 percent of the time.”

·       25% of college students placed themselves in the top 1%, relative to their ability to get along with others.

·       84% of Medical Residents thought that Doctors influenced by gifts from pharmaceutical companies, but only 15% of the respondents thought that they would be so influenced.

·       Psychologist Shelley Taylor writes, “Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases.” (Positive Illusions, p.214)

However, if and when depressed people recover, they become just as self-deluded as the “normal,” according to Taylor. We don’t suffer from a low self-esteem but an inflated self-esteem.  While we universally struggle with feelings of guilt, shame, inferiority, or just gnawing self-doubts, we tend to compensate for these painful feelings with self-aggrandizement, but why?

However, the more we inflate ourselves, the more we need to justify our inflated esteem against the assault of our feelings, and the more scaffolding we need to maintain our façade that we are significant and worthy of love and respect.

But wouldn’t it be easier to just accept and present ourselves as we really are and to admit our crying and insatiable need for success, validation, and love? Instead, it is a burden to carry around our weighty façade wherever we go and to incessantly have to prove ourselves! We crave freedom, but we have imprisoned ourselves with our own unseen shackles – a ball and chain heavier than any made of iron.

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we place weights upon our back that we cannot bear? It is not just a matter of proving ourselves to the world; before all else, we need to prove ourselves to ourselves so that we can accept and feel good ourselves. However, this self is not really who we are. It is a falsely constructed self as demanding as a corpse that always needs to be refreshed.

We are told to love ourselves, but we longer even know the self that we want to love. Besides, there are constant emissions from our conscience, like gases from a septic tank, which contradict the image we have created. This means the we are in a continual and tiring struggle with ourselves to suppress the truth.

What then is the answer? Many have become workaholics, addicted to the hope that enough accomplishments will neutralize the stench. President Lyndon B. Johnson obsessively built monuments to his “success”:

• According to one commentator, “It is a curious footnote to history that long before he ran into trouble, Johnson had turned central Texas into a living monument to his heritage and his journey to the summit (the L.B.J birthplace, the L.B.J. boyhood home, the L.B.J. state park, the L.B.J. ranch and more).” (George Weaver, “The Significant Life,”  22)

The Doors’ Jim Morrison faced this struggle for freedom in a different way. His conscience wouldn’t be silenced by self-denial, money or success. Instead, he believed that his conscience had to be saturated and cleansed by self-indulgence until it was wiped clean. He was convinced that this would result in freedom and spiritual purification:

·       “Sensuousness and evil is an attractive image to us now…It’s like a purification ritual in the alchemical sense. First you have to have the period of disorder, chaos, returning to a primeval disaster religion. Out of that you purify the elements and find the new seed of life.” (Quoted from “Hungry for Heaven,” Steve Turner, 96)

Instead of freedom, death claimed him.

If servitude is the incessant need to maintain our front or image, freedom is not having to. It is the freedom to simply accept ourselves as we are, warts and all, and not have to worry about what people might think! But how? Don’t the dreadful feelings and psychological demands that percolate up from the unseen deep need to be addressed?

They must, but they can’t be covered over! The remedy has to penetrate to the very source of the infection. I would now like to suggest a remedy that will directly address the infection. However, we first have to understand our ailment before we can address it appropriately. It is called “sin.” It is both an affront to our nature and conscience and also to the One who has given us our conscience.

Our conscience is a fire alarm. It tells us of a moral problem that has to be addressed. It serves us like our pain receptors that alert us that we must remove our hand from a hot stove. However, in the case of the conscience, we do not appropriately react to its alarm. Instead, we usually tell ourselves that we have done the right thing and, therefore, do not need to apologize. It is like refusing to remove our hand from the burner, insisting that we have placed it just where we want it to be.

We stubbornly refuse to acknowledge our guilt, and it becomes a life controlling infection that putrefies everything else:

·       All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit. (Proverbs 16:2)

The Lord “weighs” us by allowing us to reap what we’ve sown. Consequently, we have to make peace with our Creator by acknowledging our sin and asking for His remedy. However, coming to the Lord is like a mouse coming to the cat. Jesus explained it like this:

·       And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:19-20)

The judgment is this – we condemn ourselves to the darkness of the cave. I had been a cave dweller, feeding upon endless self-delusions of grandeur. It was only the love of God that had coaxed me out of the cave and into the once painful light of the truth about myself.

I now bask in the light of the forgiveness of Christ and the eternal assurances of his love. It is this love that has enabled me to be transparent and to even laugh at myself:

·       If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:31-32)

This is freedom.

THOREAU AND THE NEED FOR SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Henry David Thoreau celebrated nature. For him, the woods were “temples not made with hands.” How? Because nature was the place of Communion, the place to learn about oneself and to grow!

In contrast, according to Stephen Mitchell, Thoreau believed that:

·       Civilization trains them up to seek power and security through ownership, fostering fake and artificial appetites rather than teaching them to see and accept the riches that nature provides…[quoting Thoreau:] “Society is always diseased and the best is most so. There is no scent in it so wholesome as that of pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high pastures.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol.39/Number 05, 37)

What corrective role does nature play? Mitchell writes:

·       Nature, then, offers wisdom as an antidote for civilized foolishness, cleansing humans from society’s moral toxins. “For at the same time that we exclude mankind from gathering berries in our field, we exclude them from gathering health and happiness and inspiration, and a hundred other far finer and nobler fruit.” (37)

How does nature cleanse us “from society’s moral toxins?” It helps us to discover the law of our inner being, “an instinct toward a higher, or as it is named, a spiritual life.” As Mitchell puts it, it is a “life that requires self-discipline rather than social discipline”:

·       For Thoreau, he who does not hear his inner voice cannot know the law of his own being. Consequently, he will be dominated by his society. So dominated, he will make choices that circumscribe his humanity, preventing the full development of his spiritual life. (36)

It is in nature that we come to hear our inner voice, which enables us to gather “berries in our field.”

Certainly, knowing the “inner voice” – having self-knowledge – is critical, and the woods gives us an opportunity for self-reflection. This is important. Whatever we manage well we must first know well. This is true of every aspect of our lives – managing our house, clothing, car, business, relationships, and even our own lives.

However, it doesn’t seem that time for reflection in the woods is enough to produce self- knowledge. Why not? Because we have an aversion to self-knowledge! In fact, we run from it. In other words, we lack self-knowledge because we reject it. We would rather feel good about ourselves than to think correctly about ourselves.

Consequently, we live in darkness. I know that this is hard to believe; so I want to provide some evidences:

1.    We seek a psychotherapist, not to learn about ourselves, but to feel better about ourselves. Therefore, the therapist, wanting to attract customers, does not advertise, “Come to me and learn the truth about yourself.” Instead, she will advertise, “I will reduce your unwanted symptomology.”

2.    Instead, we tend to leave the psychotherapist who confronts us rather than affirms us.

3.    When we get into an altercation, it is always the other guys fault. This is because we cannot tolerate being wrong or at fault.

4.    Instead of seeking wise correction so that we can better ourselves, we flee from it.

5.    We surround ourselves with yes-men and people who compliment us.

6.    We wear a façade and try to impress others. Many will admit that they can no longer discern façade from fact.

7.    We clothe ourselves with symbols of success.

8.    Many psychological surveys affirm that we have inflated opinions of ourselves. In fact, psychologists claim that an inflated self-esteem is so pervasive that it is regarded as “normal,” suggesting that we are unable to tolerate an accurate self-estimation.

I know this very intimately and paid a tremendously high price for my inflated self-estimation, fed by a constant stream of positive affirmations. They became a drug, and I needed a continuous supply to stay afloat. However, when reality clashed with my affirmations, I crashed. This would occur with each failure. I would then run to the psychologist to build me up again on more positive affirmations.

If we are unable to see ourselves, it means our lens is so darkened that we cannot see and understand others. We are out-of-touch. An unwillingness to see and accept myself, with all my warts, made it impossible to connect meaningfully and honestly with others.

I needed more than a few walks in the woods or even a steady diet of trees. I needed the light to shine upon me, the light I had always resisted. Without this light we walk in darkness and trip on every tree-root that crosses our path.

My dilemma was the one painted by Jesus:

·       And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:19-20; ESV)

I couldn’t tolerate the exposure of either my deeds or my identity. It was only through the loving reassurances of Jesus’ acceptance of me that I could begin to tolerate the light and accept myself.

I enjoy nature, but I no longer expect more than what it is able to give. It cannot rescue me, but it can point joyously to its Creator.

AUTHENTICITY

In a world of mask-wearing, we yearn for authenticity.

I like being authentically me. Why? I don’t like to expend energy to hide who I am. It’s much more fun to be able to be transparent and laugh at myself. It’s part of the liberty that I have in Christ.

Liberty? Yes! I don’t have to prove myself. I don’t have to become the ideal person so that others will love me. Why not? I am really convinced about the Bible’s truth that my life is no longer about me and my trying to be somebody that I am not:

·       I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20; ESV)

This raises an important question – “What does it mean to live authentically?” For the artist, this might mean letting our feelings hang out. After all, aren’t we our feelings? Don’t they define who we are?

Perhaps, but not for someone who has the privilege of serving Christ. Who then am I? I am a servant of the Lord before all else. Does this mean that I am denying my feelings? Certainly not! But it does mean that these do not define who I am. I am His and He is mine. That’s who I am.

Yes, I struggle with powerful feelings of anger and even that horrid and sickening feeling of jealousy, but they are not essentially me. My life in Christ is what is authentically me! Therefore, authenticity does not require that I act-out, but that I live faithfully for the Truth, while I laugh at my pettiness.

But what is the highest truth of someone without the Savior? Themselves! Namely, their feelings! However, he cannot authentically live them out without incurring rejection, even self-contempt.

How then can he live authentically and connect to others authentically? He cannot. Instead, he must find a new face by suppressing the old selfish one. Consequently, he becomes an idealist, a do-gooder to convince himself and the world that he is good.

This is especially needful in the professional world where he is hired to implement programs to help others, where he must wear professional attire and manifest professional concerns, even as he carries a concealed dagger.

While underneath, he is a carnivore, he must live deceptively as an herbivore. Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly clear to him that he is living a double-life. He is not the herbivore as he presents himself. He finds that the mask cannot be reconciled with who he truly is. He wants to believe that he is a good and caring person, but it is becoming increasingly clear that he is not. He is no longer able to believe in his life and what he is doing. Therefore, in private, he cynically talks about “playing the game.” Cynicism becomes the only glue that can hold these two conflicting identities together.

I am all for doing good, but why? If we wear a mask, a deceptive front, to “prove” that we are a good and worthy person, holding forth our resume of good deeds, we are living inauthentically and the real self will continue emerge, to our chagrin, from behind the mask. It will not remain quiet but will continue to demand stage-center.

How to control it and to live authentically? We have to give the dark-side its own space. However, when it manifests, we can laugh at it and take responsibility. It’s like a pit-bull we have on a leash. We can’t hide it, and when it breaks lose to bite someone, we must take full responsibility. However, we can be transparent about it, denying it the power to operate in the darkness of denial.

“Out of the depths of the heart, the mouth will speak,” but we can humble ourselves and apologize for its words. We can allow ourselves to become accountable.

But how can we laugh at so destructive a force? How can we accept its presence? This is to admit that we are not a good person. It is like admitting that we are a pauper and not a prince. It is to surrender our good feelings about ourselves.

Who can endure such a crash, a fall from such great heights? We have to find our significance elsewhere, from above. Only when we are convinced that we possess something more valuable than our self-esteem – a Savior who has died for us and loves us despite our unloveliness – can we be authentic!

Besides, authenticity and self-acceptance pay great dividends – ability to accept others and even criticism, humility, other-centeredness, and non-defensiveness. By the grace of God, I can be who I truly am.