As Yourself... 

The Biblical Case for Self-Compassion

By Phil Rushton | Lead Pastor

Hi Church Family,
Thank you again for your continued care and support as I re-engage in ministry after my time of leave. I am glad to report that my healing journey is continuing to trend in the right direction, and I am regaining stamina. This month I am going to slowly increase my hours from half-time to 2/3rds time, and I hope to be back to full time in December. 

One of the lessons I had to relearn during my recovery was the importance of self-compassion. As I mentioned in my sermon on the life of Moses a couple of weeks back, we have a tendency to be deeply critical of ourselves. We say things to ourselves that we would never say to a friend. One psychological study I came across found that over 70% of our self-talk is negative. We often engage in self-abuse as we shame ourselves and reinforce narratives that we are not enough. This was amplified during a season when I was unable to work and needed to rely on the care of others. Our self-criticism has significant impacts on our well-being. Imagine the impact we would feel if we lived with another person who criticized us 70% of the time. It would be crushing. The same thing happens when we do it to ourselves!

Sometimes our reflex toward self-criticism is reinforced by bad theology. As I’ve mentioned often, the narrative of the gospel is often reduced from four movements to two movements. The gospel is often framed around the movements of human sin and God’s forgiveness. Dallas Willard calls this the "gospel of sin management." Our primary identity, in this telling of the story, is that we are totally depraved and sinful to the core. The biblical story, however, does not begin with the story of sin in Genesis 3, but the story of creation in Genesis 1. It also does not end with the hope of forgiveness, but with the hope of a restored creation. In this bigger understanding of the gospel, we are, first and foremost, beloved creatures made in the image of God. God declares that humanity is “very good!” The heartbreak of sin is that it distorts God’s original intention of creation. I am certainly not discounting the reality of sin; I am simply advocating that we place it in the bigger storyline of Scripture. In the broader arc of Scripture, we are God’s beloved, fearfully and wonderfully made, and God goes to great lengths to redeem the effects of sin and restore us to our original purpose. 

Jesus reminds us that the greatest command is to love God and love our neighbors as ourselves. We’ve likely heard numerous sermons about loving God and neighbor, but we often overlook the qualifier “as ourselves.” This command implies that we are called to love ourselves as well. In fact, it connects how we treat ourselves to how we treat our neighbors. 

My therapist introduced me to Dr. Kristin Neff’s work on self-compassion. You can find her research and resources at https://self-compassion.org/. At first, I felt resistant to this idea of self-compassion. I kind of rolled my eyes at the idea. It felt a bit self-indulgent and trivial. However, I found it to be very healing to take some time to practice self-compassion, especially when I connected  it with my faith. 

For one week, I wrote a self-compassion letter to myself. Neff suggests three movements to this exercise. First, we take time to empathize with the ways we are struggling. We notice and name the hard emotions we are carrying.  Second, we connect our suffering to the suffering of others. We remember how we are part of a shared humanity that struggles in similar ways. Third, we speak to ourselves compassionately just like we would to a friend. In this movement, I would often bring my faith into the dialogue. I would speak to myself the way God would speak to me and remember who I really am in Christ. I would replace the lies of the accuser (one of the names of the evil one in scripture) with the truth of Jesus. 

If you struggle with self-criticism and shame, perhaps you might find some healing in this practice of self-compassion. As we continue our discipleship of loving God and neighbor, let us also remember to care for ourselves as well! 

God Bless,
Pastor Phil