To listen to this sermon on the values of self-compassion, love of others, and gratitude to God, click here.
Scripture: Matthew 22: 36-40
The sermon began with the following skit performed by Cory Saum-Blystone:
“Gosh, Cory, you idiot! You really messed up this time. I can’t believe you would do something like that. What kind of numbskull are you?! You completely screwed this up. You ruined everything. People are going to be hungry because of you. How could you have burnt all those cupcakes?!”
Sermon:
Have any of you ever talked to yourself like this? Have any of you perhaps ever used worse language than what Cory used? We try to keep our church services somewhat clean here. I am guessing that in beating himself up and putting himself down Cory was doing something with which a lot of us could identify. Cory’s internal critic was on a rampage. Maybe internal critic is too light of a description. Cory’s monster of wrath had arrived to mete out punishment for Cory’s sins, to lash him back into shape, to push him back toward the goal of perfection.
Now, let’s imagine that the scene with Cory was tweaked a little bit. What if everything Cory said came not from his mouth but the mouth of someone else? “Cory, you idiot! What kind of numbskull are you! People are going to be hungry because of you!” Some of the things we say to ourselves would seem absolutely horrifying if they come out of the mouth of someone else. You might not even talk that way to your worst enemy. It’s for this reason that I am having some doubts about our scripture passage for today. Do we really want to love our neighbors as ourselves if this is the way in which we love ourselves? I would be afraid to step out of my house if that’s how my neighbor treated me. Or, maybe it’s my neighbor who should be afraid to step out of his house.
It is disturbing to think that if we can’t even manage to love ourselves then we really can’t be expected to do a good job of loving others. One might say, “Well, Brooks, I think you are overreacting a bit. It’s natural to be hard on oneself every now and then.” There might be some truth to that. Some argue that self-criticism was part of our evolutionary development way back in the cave man days when certain forms of survival and well-being depended upon it. And, of course, someone else might say that being hard on oneself really has to do with mommy and daddy issues. We internalize critical parents. I would bet there is a good amount of truth to that, but something both of these arguments miss is how human cultures are not all alike and in some cultures like ours, studies show that we tend to be more self-critical. Our culture breeds a kind independent competitiveness and perfectionism that encourages self-criticism.
Another thing that studies show is that not everyone in our culture is affected in the same way. For example, those of the female gender tend to be more self-critical about their looks. Studies show that while boys tend to have good self-concepts with regard to their looks as they go through school, girls begin to think negatively of their looks as early as the third grade. Looks happen to be the number one thing in which women invest their self-esteem. As the parent of a little girl, all of this is something that really concerns me. And, so I think to myself, “Is there anything I can do about this?”
I am still in the process of figuring this out, but something that has left a big impression on me are the recent studies, books, and articles on self-compassion. Just as some cultures tend toward self-criticism, other cultures tend toward self-compassion. There is a fascinating TED talk by a professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas named Kristin Neff who has made it her life’s work to study self-compassion’s effects on human well-being. She argues that the research no longer supports the idea that high self-esteem is the road to happiness. Instead, research shows that self-compassion is the road to be taken. To understand this, let’s first take a closer look at self-esteem. At its most basic level, self-esteem involves the judgment of whether one is a good person or a bad person. Self-esteem is undoubtedly important to mental health, but there are a couple of complicating issues. The first is how one gets self-esteem. In our culture to get self-esteem, one often feels like one must be above average or special. You have to be better than someone else or somehow stand out from the crowd. Of course, we know that statistically not everyone can be above average. Another problem is that acquiring self-esteem is not always a healthy process. One can be a bully, one can be a bigot, one can put down others while lifting up oneself in any number of ways. Another problem with self-esteem is that it is often contingent upon success. If we succeed, we feel great, but then what do we do when we fail? When we miss the mark?
In contrast to self-esteem, Neff notes that self-compassion isn’t about “judging ourselves positively.” It is about relating “to ourselves kindly, embracing ourselves as we are, flaws and all.” Self-compassion can manifest itself in how we talk to ourselves. For example, with Cory earlier, there are a number of other things he could have said to himself. First, he could have gently recognized what he was feeling, “Oh, Cory, this is making you feel frustrated and angry because you want these cupcakes to be ready for the party and you don’t want to feel like your letting people down.” He could have also taken an understanding view of himself and said, “Cory, you’ve got a lot on your plate and it’s hard to keep track of everything.” Finally, he could have said something sympathetic about how his experience isn’t abnormal but is actually normal. “Mistakes happen. Everyone makes mistakes. Being human is being imperfect.” Whereas self-criticism often makes one feel different and inferior, self-compassion by contrast can make one feel more similar to other people, more on par with everyone else.
What I especially like about self-compassion is that it helps with resiliency and dealing with the hard times when they come. Neff notes that self-compassion “gives a more stable sense of self-worth than self-esteem does because it is there for you precisely when you fail. Just when self-esteem deserts you, self-compassion steps in and gives you a sense of being valuable, not because you have reached some standard or you have judged yourself positively, but because you are a human being worthy of love in that moment.” One can bounce back a lot faster from a difficult experience if one is compassionate toward oneself rather than self-critical. Being self-critical can actually cause depression and lead one to shut down rather than to rebound.
It is for this reason that this past summer I decided that if I were to choose three values that I wanted to pass along to Danalyn one of them would be self-compassion. When I developed this list of three values, it was in many ways a reflection of something I had learned as a child, except that I updated it. When I was a child I went to a YMCA summer camp that had a big impact on me. I idolized my counselors, and one night for devotions they told me about a motto that inspired the title of Gale Sayers’ autobiography. For those of you who don’t know, Sayers was a Chicago Bears running back in the 1960s who later made it into the Hall of Fame. The title of the book is I Am Third, and the motto that Sayers lived by was this: “God first, others second, and I am third.” I actually went home from camp and read the book because I was impacted by it so much.
Well, for Danalyn, the three core values I developed reflect this motto’s focus on self, others, and God. The first value is self-compassion. The second value is love of others. I believe that from this value stems lots of other crucial values like justice, empathy, equality, service to others, and so forth. The third core value is gratitude to God. When we see with the eyes of gratitude, I think we begin to see the presence of the divine more and more in our lives. I find that gratitude is one of the best ways to begin connecting God to our everyday experiences. All of this deserves more discussion, but for now I mainly want to give you a sense of the process I have been going through, because as I was having all of these thoughts about what values I wanted to pass along to Danalyn what I realized is that what I was really figuring out were my own core values. Amazingly, I have been thinking about these core values for about three months now. It could be because they are easy to remember, but I think it also has to do with the way they resonate with me on a deep, almost visceral level. I keep wanting to come back to them. I keep wanting to search for ways to implement them in my everyday life. This in turn leads me to further experiences and life lessons that reinforce for me why these values are so important.
As we head toward our all-church retreat this upcoming Friday and Saturday, my hope is that we will generate some thoughts about our core beliefs and values as a church. My further hope is that these thoughts will stick with us. We will continue to wrestle with them, revise them if necessary, but most importantly figure out ways to implement them. Jesus knew the importance of core beliefs and values. When his critics lined up to grill him, he stood up to them, and he told them exactly what was most important: love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Amen.