In his book, The Voices We Carry, hospital chaplain and teaching pastor, J.S. Park, offers this valuable, evidence-based, little nugget for those of us who are prone to self-condemnation.

And for the self-condemnation sort of goes with the territory.

Park writes in his book:

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“We say the worst things to ourselves that we’d never say to anyone else, and we root for others while forgetting to root for ourselves.

….I had read that when we see ourselves in the third person, we have more compassion for ourselves and get a boost of bravery.

In other words, instead of asking, What do I need? it’s better to say, What does Jane need? Instead of saying, You can do this, it’s better to say John can do this. It’s like rooting for somebody in a movie, except that somebody is you. Seeing yourself in a story, it seems, gives you enough empathy to advocate for yourself the same way you’d stick your neck out for a friend.

I have often wondered how I could do such a thing. How I could find the courage to say what was true even when it was hardest.

And if I saw myself rom the point of view of God, the real advocate, in the same way He sees me, then I could step up for a guy like me.

If you could see yourself from His side of things, you might root for yourself a bit more. You might believe you have a voice worth hearing.”

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The idea that God sees us more lovingly than we see ourselves is, of course, entirely biblical.

I John 3:1: “See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are!”

And because of that, Thomas Merton wrote, “Who am I? I am one loved by Christ,” and concluded:

“Quit keeping score altogether and surrender ourselves with all our sinfulness to God who sees neither the score nor the scorekeeper but only his child redeemed by Christ.”

I know we know this, but it’s a constant battle to believe it, and it’s what inspired Henri Nouwen to write, “The spiritual life is a long and often arduous search for what you have already found.”

A-MEN.

There are a lot of churches who, while acknowledging our salvation in Christ, want to keep us in a perpetual state of wondering, asking, worrying whether or not we measure up.

But that’s the message, the religion Christ came to destroy.

A child shouldn’t have to worry every day about whether she’s loved, or wonder whether she’s good enough on Monday to be loved by her parents, but too bad on Tuesday.

If we’re good parents, our kids shouldn’t even have to ask in the loneliness of night, “Am I loved?”

And yet that’s the kind of Father that’s preached in many pulpits. He’s like a dad who manipulates his children into obedience by loving us if we do right, or turning his face from us if we do wrong.

No wonder so many Christians, including myself, have been scarred by this image of the Father and can’t grasp that being his child isn’t just a good thing, but the best possible thing.

P.S. By the way, the study Park refers to about talking to ourselves in third person is this one, and it’s pretty fascinating and proves just how effective it can be for us.

The researchers concluded, in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:

….. non-first-person language use (compared with first-person language use) leads people to appraise future stressors in more challenging and less threatening terms. Finally, a meta-analysis (Study 6) indicated that none of these findings were moderated by trait social anxiety, highlighting their translational potential. Together, these findings demonstrate that small shifts in the language people use to refer to the self during introspection consequentially influence their ability to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behavior under social stress, even for vulnerable individuals.

This is another example of how psychology and Christianity are not at odds, as so many Christians claim.

When we talk to ourselves as someone, beloved, we’re the better for it, and when we see ourselves as God sees us, then that is so overpowering we will be more likely to extend that to others.

In her book, Help Thanks Wow, Anne Lamott tells the story of the priest, Pedro Arrupe, who lived a remarkable life (Among other things, he was in Hiroshima when the bomb fell, was one of eight priests who survived, and immediately went to work, serving the wounded).

Near the end of his life, he suffered a stroke that eventually took away his ability to speak.

And he wrote this:

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“More than ever I find myself in the hands of God.

This is what I have wanted all my life, from my youth.

But now there is a difference.

The initiative is entirely with God.

It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God’s hands.”

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We’ve all said or prayed something like, “God, I want to be in your hands.”

But sometimes that looks so different from what we think, and we ask ourselves, “Do I really want to be?”

Well, the truth is — we already are entirely in God’s hands. At this moment.

But what made Arrupe’s experience different from yours or mine is that he finally felt he was entirely in God’s hands, and you and I might say, “God, I want to feel entirely in your hands,” but do we know what we ask?

It’s a scary mental place to go — the idea that we now feel completely, physically and mentally dependent on God’s mercy.

Emotionally, I don’t like that thought, and yet intellectually, there are no other hands that would give their life for you, while you cut those hands off and spit on him.

No one could love you that much.

And yet, it still scares us to be entirely in those hands.

We worry that he won’t really be Jesus to us.

But where has he always gone?

To the suffering.

The preacher Charles Spurgeon once said: “Jesus is touched, not with a feeling of your strength but of your infirmity….as the mother feels with the weakness of her babe, so does Jesus feel with the poorest, saddest, and weakest.”

I’d rather not be the poorest, saddest, weakest.

But if you feel that way this morning, remember that Jesus was poor, that he was a man of sorrows, and that he was naked, on a cross.

According to the world, he was the “poorest, saddest, weakest,” and so he is telling you, as one who went through it all, “I know what it’s like.”

In his book Gentle and Lowly, Dane Ortlund reminds us of something important about the term, “body of Christ.”

So often, we hear “body of Christ” and think of it in ecclesiastical terms. You know, the church that gathers.

But Ortlund urges us to look at our hurting bodies in the context of Christ, hurting as well.

He writes: “We are part of him. This is why the risen Christ asks a persecutor of his people, ‘Why are you persecuting me’?”

If you hurt, he hurts. Like any parent.

And as Spurgeon said in another sermon, “The eternal arms shall be lower than you are.”

It’s a “neither height nor depth” fact.

But I know that depression will lie to us about that fact.

And so if all of this doesn’t console you, don’t question your salvation or Christ’s love. That’s what depression will do. Make you doubt everything good, including a Father who loves you as much as his own son (John 17:23).

So, here’s my constant pitch again…

Here’s a psychiatrist near you.

And a therapist.

[Photo: Pedro Arrupe Memorial at the University of San Francisco, photo: Daderot]

Although written in 1966, it sounds and reads like something from many centuries past.

Which isn’t a good or bad thing, it just means you have to think longer about each line (and spending a bit longer on anything is a good thing).

Rosamond Herklots’ song: (Why, oh, why, isn’t there more about this amazing woman and poet, online)?

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“Forgive our sins as we forgive”

‘Forgive our sins as we forgive,’
you taught us, Lord, to pray,
but you alone can grant us grace
to live the words we say.

How can your pardon reach and bless
the unforgiving heart,
that broods on wrongs and will not let
old bitterness depart?

In blazing light your cross reveals
the truth we dimly knew:
what trivial debts are owed to us,
how great our debt to you!

Lord, cleanse the depths within our souls,
and bid resentment cease;
then, bound to all in bonds of love,
our lives will spread your peace.

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Think of those lines: “What trivial debts are owed to us, how great our debt to you.”

And: “How can your pardon reach and bless the unforgiving heart that broods on wrongs and will not let old bitterness depart?”

I’m going to try (and fail) to read that last line every day.

There’s a lot of bitterness in the world, at large, right now, and perhaps in your personal life.

Mine too.

But harboring that sin is perhaps the easiest and most pernicious, because it comes from a place of being wronged and so we’re likely to hold onto it more tightly than other sins, as we mistake it for “righteousness” when really it’s the prelude to self-righteousness and the big, horrible opera, as well.

God knows I’ve indulged, and still indulge the bitter, and it’s only when I look at Christ that I realize how wrong and ridiculous it is.

He died, willingly, for a world that wronged him, and did so saying, “Father, forgive them.”

How can I make myself higher than Jesus, which is what I do when I’m bitter?

I don’t talk much about sin here because Christians with mental health challenges are particularly prone to self-loathing.

And when we fixate on sin, a lot of us talk ourselves out of Christ’s love for us. Which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want us to do.

But it’s good to think about our sin of bitterness — not to condemn ourselves — but because it stops us from condemning others. Whether it’s condemning our spouses, our families, or our neighbors with the yard signs we don’t like.

And it’s because we’ve forgotten the theology of our fallibility, our personal sin, God’s mercy towards us, and the practice that should come from those three things — humility.

We will never let go of our self-righteousness until we see your own unrighteousness. (When we meet Jesus, I don’t think he’ll do a slow clap and say, “Wow. You were right on a lot.”).

Yet we slow clap our rightness all the time, don’t we? In our marriage, our friendships, our politics.

That’s what leads to our bitterness. Over marriage, friendship, and politics.

This is a terrible time of bitterness in America, and unfortunately, the evangelical church is feasting on it and actually promoting it. It’s like a virus that replicates and spreads, and it’s infected the entire church.

But it’s killing us, both spiritually, and as a group of people that are supposed to represent God’s love.

If there’s one fight Christians should actually be a part of in this world, it’s the fight against bitterness, the fight against our lack of humility and our self-righteousness.

(And I write this to remind myself of my own bitterness, not to put myself above it. Ask my wife about how well I deal with bitterness).

Professor Michael Hawn has written a great history of the song, and includes this beautiful anecdote.

I was in South Africa in 1998 during the presidency of Nelson Mandela. Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu presented President Mandela with the bound volumes containing the results of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I was sitting among a group of black and white Methodist ministers watching this historic occasion on television as Tutu referenced one of the many important revelations that took place during the process that the Commission hoped would lead to healing and hope for South Africa. At one point, Tutu recalled a black woman who asked him, “Who murdered my husband?” Tutu responded, “We do not know.” She was insistent, however, and continued, “I must know who killed my husband.” Again, the patient Tutu responded, “I’m sorry, but we may never know who killed your husband.” Still her question persisted. Finally, Tutu asked, “My dear lady, why must you know who killed your husband?” She responded simply and quietly, “So I can forgive him.”

I’ve included, at the bottom, Koine’s version of the song, which sounds a bit like it’s from a Sergio Leone film.

We ask that question from both sorrow and happiness, don’t we?

Sorrow: “Why this darkness, Lord, over me?”

Happiness: “Why me, Lord? Why your mercy, salvation, and everything else for me? It’s preposterous, this mercy, but I’ll take it and praise you.”

The answer in sorrow and happiness is the same: Jesus loves us, is for us beyond our wildest imagination, and “all is grace.”

When we’re sad, those words often fail to move us, but it doesn’t change the fact that Jesus is always moving for us.

Now for those of us who battle mental health challenges, this particular lyric from Kris Kristofferson is something to remember:

“Maybe, Lord, I can show someone else

What I’ve been through myself

On my way back to you.”

Tell someone struggling with the dark that you struggle with it, too, and in that shared moment, something light might be born.