My Christian faith is the context in which I have been able to grow self-compassion.

This was not always the case. For a time, it was more true to say that Christianity was the context in which I felt self-hatred and shame. The perfection of God and the high ideals of Christian “mission” and “witness” were metrics against which I evaluated myself and felt great inadequacy. I felt myself to be a failure as I compared myself to what I thought an effective Christian as supposed to be. I determined that hating my insufficiencies was appropriate for my Christian walk. I needed to be better.

 

I’m now in my 29th year, and it is clear to me that hating myself did not fix me. Hating myself did not protect me from the two breakdowns of my adulthood and from developing a disabling chronic pain condition in the second collapse. Hating myself is likely to have been a major cause of the breakdowns. Hating myself, as far as it persists, has made recovery very difficult.

 

I’ve found great healing in perspectives offered by psychology writers and practitioners.

 

At times it can appear that Psychology is at odds with Christian teachings. I think some schools of Psychology are indeed at odds with Christian principles, but I do not believe that Psychology – as in the study of human mind and emotion and psycho-physiology – I do not believe that the study of the human mind and body is bound to lead one into the belief that Christianity is a damaging belief system (though counterfeit versions of Christianity can be).

 

I think that Christianity is a belief system in which human fallen-ness or sin, can be rightly called out and therefore injustice can be addressed, while at the same Christianity is a belief system in which curious self-compassion is possible. Forgiveness and healing are possible and are all the more valuable when legitimate damage or error can be recognized.

 

If we could only have patient grace for ourselves and each other. We should because God does for us.

 

It strikes me as recklessly compassionate that Jesus appealed to his Father on the cross, referring to those who had committed him to crucifixion, “Forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” Even when human fallen-ness was actively crucifying him, he appealed to the Father to give them another chance. This I think highlights the mercy of God and his desire to forgive and reconcile at all times. It also highlights that God is aware of and has understanding for human limitation and brokenness.

 

God is willing and able to work with broken people – people who have lived errantly and damagingly up to the present moment. Should they avail themselves to him by repentance, they are reconciled. Their errors are seen and accounted for and they are still completely forgiven. The forgiveness of God is consuming, generative and abundant.

 

The unconditional forgiveness of God constitutes permission for us to forgive ourselves. It is faithful and good for the Christian to claim validity and approval on themselves by virtue of the atonement of Christ. In the context of this complete abundant forgiveness, it is not unfaithful for Christians to exercise patient, curious self-compassion for themselves for the goal of healing and integrity.

 

Patient, curious self-compassion is a critical component in healing that I have learned from counsellors, and from the writings of physician-counsellors Bessel Van der Kolk, Gabor Maté, and Hillary McBride. In the context of trauma counselling, patient and curious self-compassion is the foundation for helpful exploration of one’s embodied experience. One really can’t move forward without the groundwork of establishing a kind relationship with oneself.

 

Hostile, judgemental, reactive self-evaluation, on the other hand, is counter-productive. Approaching one’s limitations, wounds, and damaging behaviour patterns with hatred has a greater chance of entrenching those limitations, wounds, and patterns deeper into oneself than of healing them. Sometimes hating an aspect of oneself stuffs that aspect deeper for a time and hides it, only for it to emerge later in another form.

 

I submit that the hostile self-evaluation of my youth was an expression of my assumption of the scarcity of God’s affection. I really did not believe that God’s love was abundant enough to accept and delight in me as I was. It felt like my validity in his regard was contingent on my performance and that I was either on the edge of knife with him or that I had long fallen off that edge and was needing to win myself back to it.

 

I believed that I was going to heaven, but I didn’t believe that God really wanted me there. It sort of felt like he was obliged to tolerate me by virtue of the cosmic legal exchange that was Christ’s atonement. I was one of the spiritual refugees that were “justified” and therefore accepted – but I experienced that acceptance to be very anemic and conditional. After all, how could God actually enjoy me or delight in me? God’s “love” was an austere theological term, not an immediate experience except in precious fleeting moments.

 

I gave a great measure zeal of my good Christian youth to being “better” and compensating for the wounds, thoughts, and behaviours that I was deeply ashamed of. It didn’t work except in that it made me look like I was thriving to some while I was actually tearing myself apart inside.

 

I grieve to recognize now that I thought my self-hatred was necessary to my Christian faith. My shame had theological endorsement.

 

I was being a good Christian by exiling the parts of me that were shameful and weak. I was serving God by orphaning my wounds off to oblivion. I rejected myself and dissociated from the alarm bells of my body. I could function, but the orphaned parts of me only screamed louder and louder the farther I hated them away – until they destroyed my capacity to hold up the facade by manifesting in very physical body failure throughout my twenties.

 

It is unfortunate that I felt self-hatred to be the right Christian response to my brokenness for much of my youth. I felt, for example, that if I judged and called out my insecurity/people-pleasing, strongly enough, then I would fix it. I was self-aware enough to know that people-pleasing and compliance were problematic – even working against my attempts to be an effective Christian – but I was not gracious enough to understand my people-pleasing to be a trauma-response deserving compassionate attention. It rather deserved, I felt, to be excised by determination of will – and that willing away was “faith”. The coping-protection mechanism that my people-pleasing was, I only understood to be a moral and personal failure that I needed to eliminate and compensate for.

 

In the context of my present faith, I can understand my people-pleasing to be a trauma-response worthy of compassionate inquiry: “Why do I that?” said with genuine curiosity, patience, and gentleness. I can ask that question in the presence of God without feeling that I’m wasting his time. Even if my people-pleasing does constitute, or generate, personal or moral failure – even so I can and should address it with patient, curious self-compassion in the company of the Spirit of God, because God forgives me and God knew what he was getting into when he adopted me. Even my damaging behaviour patterns can be assessed with patient compassion because I exist in the context of Christ’s atonement and that atonement is a compassionate relational embrace, over and above just a cold legal exchange. I don’t have to hate myself to be a better Christian. I have permission to love myself and hope for myself and consider my soul and body to be an object of God’s pleasure and loving commitment. He is committed to my restoration and it appears to me that psychology is an avenue by which he is healing me.

 

I have permission to forgive myself because Christ forgives me and commits to me. Some of the tools I’m gaining from compassionate psychology are helping me to practice self-forgiveness which is resulting in internal reconciliation, aka healing.

 

Even if my whole life up to this point was one big moral failure (it’s not, but even if) the Christian thing for me to do would not be to perpetually resent myself but rather to repent where necessary and simply move forward in his grace. The right Christian response to one’s story, even one’s trauma points, is to first receive God’s grace around it and then to take the next step toward restoration. God receives us as we are, with pleasure. He’s happy to have us. Healing is possible and God is committed for the long term. Some wounds are deep and take time to heal. Some thought and behaviour patterns are entrenched and require compassionate attention before they release. The child of God is swimming in compassionate attention. Healing is possible. God is not in a rush, and nothing of our stories sets us outside the range of what he is willing to work with.

 

I think this view of God that I’ve developed more recently is a greater faith than that of my youth. Assuming God’s generosity and patience towards my damage is to know that God is bigger, kinder and greater than I thought he was when I assumed his perpetual moral resentment. The grace of God is not anemic; his love is not scarce. He communicates ardently through Christ that he’s committed and his forgiveness is complete. To not forgive myself would be to distrust his forgiveness. Should I not lean into what is already given, forgive myself, and move forward?