I would never define myself as a masochist because of my aversion to physical pain, but my emotional life illustrates a different story. More than the average person, I am quite skilled at mercilessly beating myself down. Case in point: last week my husband and I joined another couple on a cruise. It was the first real vacation that John and I have taken since our honeymoon. In my preparations I read an article about leaving a cruise more buffet than buff. Determined not to let this happen to me, I packed workout clothes and committed myself to exercising 5-6 days of our 7 day trip using the ship's jogging track and gym. As the days passed without me moving any more muscles than what it takes to shift positions on a lounge chair, I began to pile the guilt on myself for not being motivated to exercise. By the end of the week, I had beaten myself down pretty badly, in spite of my long-standing knowledge that after I left the anorexic behavior behind, all the guilt in the world no longer seems to motivate me to act a certain way. I spent my cruise vacation as probably the average American would--laying in the sun, reading, and enjoying ample quantities of good food. Yet I couldn't let myself fully enjoy my much-needed downtime because of my self-inflicted guilt for not being "better." And because all this guilt only adds to my self-obsession, I became ultra-paranoid that everyone with whom I shared my plans to exercise that week was judging me with the same gavel with which I judge myself.
Of course this self-deprecation is not in the least way a Biblical lifestyle. Contrary to popular belief, the Bible doesn't preach self-loathing when we are taught about humility. There is a middle ground. We are called to recognize the wonder in our personal creation (Psalm 139:13-14) and to know our gifts that we may share them for God's glory (Matthew 25:14-30). Self-loathing makes it impossible for us to live in a way where we maximize God's glory because self-loathing, I've found, maximizes our self-focus rather than our God-focus.
Soon after my father died, my pastor and I were dicussing the grief cycle and guilt. One thing he said to me that I've held onto is the idea that guilt is not from God. Revolutionary when you consider how many others view Christianity as a religious system! Yet the concept fits Biblically. Satan is known as the accuser, the one who finger points whenever we fail (Revelations 12:10). God is the grace-giver, the one who extends mercy and covers our sins and shortcomings with His love (Romans 3:22-24). Satan uses guilt because guilt creates a distraction from our spiritual walk and can cause us to feel out of the reach of God's grace. When I am mentally caught up in the self-abusing guilt cycle, I punish myself rather than accepting grace. God's grace offers freedom from this cycle so that my time and energy can be used for His kingdom purposes rather than my own self-serving tasks.
As I relect on the waste of time and energy it takes for me to mentally abuse myself, I came to a revelation about myself: I have no one to credit for my low self-esteem other than myself. There is no one else I can blame because no one else sends me messages that are as negative as those I send myself. I choose to measure my worth by hours in the gym and by the number of times I restrain myself from the candy jar at work. It is no wonder that I constantly fall short of the strict standards I set for myself. And it is no wonder that my self-esteem is so low when I always set myself up for failure with these measures. There is no way to sugar coat it--this is idolatry. By measuring my value by the gym and my sugar-intake, I am worshipping the false God of the American culture that tells me I am what I look like and that drives me to compulsively serve diet and exercise in order to be rewarded with a more culturally admirable appareance. In doing this, I am down-grading the one true God's opinion of me and the one true God's way to salvation which is the path of grace and not the path of punishment. The Bible clearly defines who we are in Christ. When I choose not to recognize who I am in Christ and live out that identity, I am instead living out an idenity set up for me by the fallen world. And in doing so I am cheating God as well as myself. Instead of being used for His purposes, I am being used for the enemy's purpose, and this is evident in my depression and paranoia that drives me deeper into my patterns.
To be clear, I think that a healthy diet and exercise are important when kept in perspective. Our bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and we are called to treat them well and take care of them. The problem is when we fall to extreme compulsion in diet and exercise that leaves us guilty when we even slightly stray from the course we ourselves have laid out. In one of my newer daily reads, a recent post about the New Year said, "May you choose food and exercise that nourishes your life - not punishes it!" This is my goal for the new year. I want to find the place where I let go of the drive to punish myself for having an appetitie, where I stop striving and just let myself be, where I finally learn to make peace with myself so that my life can start to be about loving God and loving others instead of punishing myself and neglecting both God and others. I want to continue to strive to eat well and exercise, but I don't want to obsess about it. I want to be healthy so I can serve Him longer, not to worship diet and exercise with the hopes that I'll look better and therefore be happier. As I should have learned from my super-skinny days, thinness and happiness are not one in the same. And as I should have learned from my early salvation days, walking closely with God and doing His will brings a joy to my life that I can get through no other means no matter how much Satan would try to convince me otherwise.
In summary, humility requires a healthy fear of God and a healthy understanding of who we are in the universe. It also requires a respect for who we are in Christ and the power that we have in His name. If we live in self-loathing as I often do, we aren't in His will. If we live in love and humility, we are living as He's called us. I pray that 2007 would be a year where all of us who share in the battle of body image and self-obsession would make peace with all of our strengths and all of our limitations, remembering that these physical bodies are only temporary and relatively inconsequential in spite of all the time, energy, and money we spend on them. What lasts is not our flesh but our spirits, and the bulk of our resources should go to improving the quality of our spiritual lives rather than our pants size (1 Corinthians 15:42-50).
Posted by Kim at January 2, 2007 08:51 AM