Knowing Your Value

Growing up I heard more sermons on sin than I ever heard about my worth as a child of God. My shame tells me I am worthless; my stubborn resistance and tendency toward arrogance shouts back sounding remarkably like PeeWee Herman, “So what? ‘I know you are, but what am I?’ ” I can find ways to deflect blame and shame. I am a master at defending myself. But honestly, if we have been brought up to believe that we are unworthy, or if we have practiced living an unworthy life for a long time, why wouldn’t we be defensive? Of course we will be defensive!! After all - we were created to embrace virtue and God’s image.

“Some Christians base their identity on being a sinner. I think they have it wrong—or only half right. You are not simply a sinner; you are a deeply loved sinner. And there is all the difference in the world between the two.”

~ David G. Benner, The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery[1]

My particular “coming to believe” stumbling block is less about my sin and more around accepting my intrinsic value. If I cannot wrap my head around this idea of self-acceptance then it is almost impossible to believe that restoration is in my future. This sounds like a crazy paradox. I am both ashamed and arrogant, leaving me in the precarious position of not being particularly self-aware.

Meditation Moment- Healing, Guidance, Strength

Recovery can be such a frustrating and confusing process. Here is a prayer that you can use each day. This simple prayer is a way of admitting that we need God to guide us, heal us and strength us along the way. Pray and breathe. Give your body, mind and spirit time to soak this prayer in:

I pray that I receive the healing, the guidance, and the strength necessary for my journey today.

You are Divine

When our life is too disconnected and chaotic, too painful, too meaningless, too confusing to bear God’s image with dignity and respect, why wouldn’t we self-medicate? Why would we even care to try? The distortions caused by bad habits or forgetful living cause us to lose touch with our intrinsic value as children of God. Our conscious contact with God and our capacity to love others as a result of actively working to “bear God’s image” on a daily basis is awesome, but what about when we cannot bear up under the stress of daily living?

Often we are numb, isolated, lonely and ashamed. Or sometimes we are just really, really mad. Maybe, most likely, we do not even much care one way or another about our freaking core values. But here is a tough truth: our body cares, our mind cares, our heart cares. It is the dis-ease of disconnection from God, ourselves and others that does not care. Our body, mind and spirit are in open rebellion against a disease (think of sickness as the opposite of bearing God’s image) that kills and destroys our creativity, our joy, and our love for one another. Our being just knows that it is created for more than isolation, suffering, compulsions and forgetfulness of God.

Humankind was created as God’s reflection: in the divine image God created them; female and male, God made them...God looked at all of this creation and proclaimed that this was good - very good.

~ Genesis 1:27, 31

If you have forgotten - here is your wake up call! Remember? You are divine!

Getting the Wheels Aligned

In practice, we are at our best when our body’s desire and intuition is joined with the emotional impulse of our heart and guided by our mind’s knowledge and insight to live daily in a way that makes sense with our beliefs. We live what we believe and our three centers of intelligence - thoughts, emotions and actions - all work in union with our core values. Our core values spring from what we decide to believe. Translation? We wake up in the morning and greet ourselves in the mirror without shame; we brush our teeth at night, stare into the mirror and know that we did a decent job at being human today. And on those days when we totally blow it - we know what to do to make it right. We know that God finds a way for banished people to come back home.

On decent days, we go about our day reflecting the image of God by loving what God loves, thinking as God thinks and doing as God would do if he were in our place. This does not have to be some big grand epic thing. Most of the time it will not be big or grand. But we can appreciate God, ourselves and others. We can live a reasonably peaceful and productive life in a way that makes the world a bit better because we are alive, fully present, and capable of doing the next right thing as best as we can understand it.

What happens when it all goes to hell in a handbasket? Again, we are going to wrestle with what we believe. BUT. The bad days often reveal what we doubt, what false beliefs we have buried deep inside, and where we need to ask for help. Bad days feel bad but can be great gifts and reality checks too.

In God's Image

At our healthiest, we are a people of God who can embrace the fullness of our humanity and practice the capacity God gave us to “bear his image”. Basically this means that we practice what we profess to believe. Is that hard? Yes. Are we often confused about how to apply our core values in real time? Absolutely. But we struggle with this by actively seeking to improve our conscious contact with God and our self-awareness so that we can sort out our confusions and live consistently within our framework of belief. If you are coming from a Christian perspective, then our work includes sorting out all the confusions about what it means to be a Christian and work to practice those beliefs that we understand and accept as true. This is more practical than it sounds.

For now, think about this: If we say we are Christian - which we do not have to but if we do - then we by default must take an interest in what God says it means to be a Christian. How do you receive that? What might need to change for your to embrace that commitment? Now - if you are not a Christian, that’s cool. You fill in your blank about your belief system but you still need to wrestle with the same principle!!!