A Christian reframing of the self-acceptance narrative.

This morning in my advanced marriage and family counseling class, we were watching a therapy session with a husband who struggled to connect with his emotions and a wife whose fear of herself (the damage she might inflict on the marriage) grew stronger the more their relationship grew closer. The more intimacy increased, the more she became aware, and afraid, of not better knowing herself. In short, as intimacy grew, so did her sense of underlying shame—ultimately a fear of rejection. 

The banner message of our cultural moment to her predicament is radical self-acceptance. A quote from Debbie Ford sums it up well. “It is only when we accept who we are that we can truly make peace with our past, and only then can we begin to build a new future.” Or, as Moana said, “The call isn’t out there at all. It’s inside me.” Or as Lady Gaga says, “Don’t hide yourself in regret, just love yourself and you’re set.” After all, “God makes no mistakes.” 

As I reflected on the wife in couple’s therapy, I realized this could have been a chance for her to realize exactly why the cultural narrative of self-acceptance turns out to be false. What good would it do to tell herself she was good, to tell herself she was enough, to tell herself that she was ok against the possibility that self-discovery might reveal the real underlying question: “What if I find out something about myself that I can’t accept?”

The pursuit of intimacy and belonging requires vulnerability; but vulnerability is risky because of the fear that knowledge of ourself may be met with rejection. Some people early in life experience a kind of rejection where they needed acceptance most, causing what therapist and author Patricia DeYoung describes as “the experience of one’s felt sense of disintegrating in relation to” the rejecting person. And so they develop self-protective defenses to prevent that from happening again. This is called chronic shame; the ultimate enemy of vulnerability. Brené Brown’s work on vulnerability has highlighted the significance of this concept at the popular level. And while her work is so important, I find that it falls short, because rather than seeking a timeless acceptance as an antidote to the fear of shame, she suggests self-acceptance instead. Self-acceptance as a solution falls short (1) because it is non-relational and (2) because it is bounded by time. The following will explain and provide a Christian reframing of self-acceptance. 

First, let me state what I think the self-acceptance narrative gets right. I was recently introduced to an idea called the cycle of grace, which may have originated with Dallas Willard, but I’m not sure. 

Acceptance—Sustenance/Increasing Strength—Significance—Achievement.

→ Grace

←Works

The problem is we almost always get this backwards. We tend approach life thinking if we achieve, then we can have significance, and that sustains and strengthens us, and then we find acceptance. Grace reverses the order. It begins with acceptance and moves toward achievement, grown out of a gracious acceptance. The self-acceptance narrative is absolutely correct in identifying that the order of acceptance and achievement is wrong. We cannot begin with achievement and work toward acceptance; such is a recipe for disastrous burnout. But what the narrative misses is the source of acceptance.

The first shortcoming of the self-acceptance narrative is that it is non-relational. Human beings are constituted in relationships. Despite the ubiquity of the cultural narrative that all you need is you and your own self-love and self-acceptance, developmental psychology knows better. Curt Thompson, Psychiatrist and author of Anatomy of the Soul and The Soul of Shame, likes to say that we all come into the world looking for someone looking for us. As old as we may get, this never stops being true. Babies only become aware of themselves in the face of an attuned parent (the Romanian orphanages supply ample negative evidence for this). Likewise, as Christians we believe—and we experience—that we come to know who we truly are in the face of God. So, humans are relational at their core.

It was “not good” for the man to be alone (Gen. 2:18) not because he was yet unmarried, but because relationality is core to humanity. Eve’s creation marked the completion of Mankind, not just completion of the man. Mankind itself is not represented by a single individual. That means the fundamental unit of humanity is a we, not an I. It also means that other people are mirrors for our self-awareness. We come to understand who we are in relationships with other people and with God. Self-awareness or self-discovery is a reciprocal, relational process—it does not and cannot happen alone. Donald Winnicot, a major contributor to object relations theory in psychology who primarily studied mothers and infants came to conclude, “There is no such thing as an infant…without maternal care there is no such thing as a baby.” Isolation is fatal in numerous ways. Why? because we are constituted in relationship. In other words, the self-acceptance narrative contradicts almost everything we know about developmental psychology and biblical anthropology.

The second shortcoming is the person’s limitation within time and space. Self-discovery occurs experientially along a timeline, and for those of us with a fear of rejection, that fear will remain unless we are accepted ahead of whatever we might find out about ourselves. Unless we have a form of perfect, timeless, acceptance that comes from outside ourselves, and outside our very lifespan, “What if I find out something about myself that I can’t accept”? remains a lurking, venomous question.

This is another example of why theology is important. The most fundamental facet of reality itself is the dividing line between Creator and creation. A great, untraversable divide exists between God and all that is not God. The Creator/Creation divide is what most centrally defines the nature of reality. He exists outside the confines of all created things, which means he exists outside of time and space. Yet this God has also made Himself present within His creation; present to, but not located within. As one of my theology professors Robbie Griggs reminds his students, this is not a puzzle to solve, but a great mystery to behold. 

The benefit then of having a God who exists outside of His creation (time and space), is that He has a perfect knowledge of us of the kind that we could not gain in a thousand lifetimes of self-discovery. He knows our individual and corporate lives intimately from beginning to end. But this God who exists outside of time and space, who is not located within creation, has made himself present with us. Most importantly He has done this in the Son, Jesus Christ. If through faith we are united with Christ in his righteousness, death, and resurrection, and the Son’s righteousness perfect, his death atoning, and his resurrection vivifying, then that means we have been accepted ahead of whatever we might learn about ourselves, and by someone whose knowledge of ourselves surpasses human capability. Our own personal self-acceptance will always be based on incomplete information.

God knows the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end. God knows our lives perfectly. He knows what we will do and what we will not do. He knows all possible choices we will never make. He knows positive and negative potentiality that will never be realized. He knows every sin you will commit and will not commit. He knows every insecurity and knows better than you ever will exactly why those insecurities exist. And if you are “in Christ,” then He has accepted you ahead of your own self-discovery. Shame and self-doubt can never outpace God’s timeless acceptance. 

Acceptance from others is vital in life, because relationships are essential; but fallible people offer fallible acceptance. And we do need to accept ourselves…as identified, loved, and being changed by God. But we cannot go on trying to convince ourselves that we are whole without being made whole, and we cannot keep trying to convince ourselves of our acceptability without being accepted by the One knows all and accepts us anyway. Most centrally this is because acceptance is bound up with belonging, and if we merely accept ourselves, where and to whom do we belong? Telling ourselves that we are good, acceptable, and whole cannot take us back to Eden. Shalom is a corporate reality, not an individual experience. 

Finally, let me say that self-acceptance is not entirely wrong. It is necessary—but only when properly grounded. It is true that you cannot declare over yourself what only God can speak into being. But on the other hand, there is a place you have been called that no one else has, and a song only you can sing, because your design is framed with divine intent. 

Christian self-acceptance means that the parts of yourself you fear the most or most ashamed of, the parts you keep locked up in the basement—that “you” has been crucified with Christ. But your living self—your gifts, your beauty, your calling, your body, your laugh, your humor, your passion—is to be accepted wholeheartedly, not because you accept it, but because you accept it from God who made it. You are a gift from God to the world, to the church, to you, and your relationships. So, self-acceptance, properly grounded, means accepting yourself as the you that comes from God who alone has a love that casts out fear. Self-acceptance requires looking up, not just within.