Eric Youngblood: I Just Can’t Forgive Myself

  • Tuesday, October 25, 2016

A BRIEF MILLER ANALOGIES TYPE TEST FOR YOU: 

How do these two statements compare:

A. “I don’t want your pity!”

B. “I know I’m forgiven, I just can’t forgive myself.”

What is the relationship between A and B?

Are they different or the same?

Answer:  The SAME! (Statements A and B, while appearing at odds with one another, are nearly identical!)

How So? 

Statement A, “I don’t want your pity” is what we growl when our own internal instrument panel detects a “shame cyclone” being initiated because we’re being looked down upon by another.


It’s verbal missile defense system when we encounter what Brene Brown calls, “the incredibly passive aggressive Southern version of sympathy, ‘Oh, you poor thing....or worse, ‘Well, bless your heart.”” She suggests the need for a t-shirt which reads, “If you bless my heart, I’ll punch your face.”

We reject pity when we sense we’re being regarded, not based on our virtue, ability, or general awesomeness, but in spite of the absence of these things in our lives.

It feels demeaning to be pitied like this.

Statement B, “I know I’m forgiven, I just can’t forgive myself” is what we protest when we feel an adhesive of guilt or regret that neither time nor reassurances ever seem to lessen. 

We say it when we feel an inward throb of self-indictment and keen disappointment that we are the sort of person that actually did (or didn’t do) the sort of thing we now realize we were so wrong to do (or should have done!). 

On the face of it, statement B, “I just can’t forgive myself” is an anguished and desperate response of a vastly differing caliber and tone from the angry assertion, “I don’t want your pity.” But don’t merely look at their faces. 

What if these statements are two creative masks our pride chooses to wear which ends up duping and depriving us of what we all crave? 

It’s Not That We’re Just Hard on Ourselves
The growling anger of hurt pride that is turned outward in statement A is aimed with precision on our inner selves in statement B. We can’t stand it when we realize we are going to have to depend on mercy (another word for pity) in order to be fully accepted, acceptable, and generally OK in the world. 

The pride that generates the sulky sentiment, “I can’t forgive myself,” like the protective attack, “I don’t want your pity” are both, refusals to live by mercy. Though wildly varying symptoms present, the underlying condition is the same. 

We are suffering from bruised and cracked pride, which like broken ribs, we sometimes feel with every breath, conversation, or moment alone.

Our pride is injured (we call it the sensation of shame) when we have been revealed as one who is only going to remain in the good graces of others, God, AND ourselves, if there is some amount of undeserved pity (or mercy) shown to us.  

Dallas Willard suggests that we’d all stop punishing ourselves and others if we could adopt a new mindset as folks who are chronically dependent on mercy. He says of those who insist “I just can’t forgive myself”:

”…more often than not these are people who refuse to live on the basis of pity. Their problem is not that they are hard on themselves but that they are proud. And if they are hard on themselves, it is because they are proud. They do not want to accept that they can only live on the basis of pity from others, that the good that comes to them is rarely ‘deserved.’ If they would only do that (accept what they don’t wish to accept), it would transform their lives. They would easily stop punishing themselves for what they have done.”

THE AIR WE MUST BREATHE
Of course, it is because of masquerading pride and pity refusal in our actions, that Jesus tells that terrifying and stunning story about the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18. You remember, the fellow who strangled his co-worker, because he failed to pay him back 5 bucks, and this, right after the strangler’s boss had said, “Forget about it” to that $800,000 loan the strangler was suddenly unable to account for. 

Jesus wants to shock us into the sobering but freeing realization that God’s pity is the air we we must breathe to survive. Because he is keeping the books, and because there isn’t a second of our lives when we aren’t accumulating a sizable debt before him, in terms of what we leave undone or what we do, there aren’t any seconds of the day when we can walk around without his mercy, or his willingness to treat us as better than our actions have earned.

REFUSING TO ACCEPT THE ROLE OF GOD
In fact, a major nugget to take away from that story is the primary resource for forgiveness comes not from taking on God’s role as judge and punisher (of others or of ourselves!) but rather from refusing God’s role, and instead standing again beneath the warm, replenishing shower of his inexhaustible pity toward us so we are inclined again and again to show those rascals around us (and ourselves) who are always offending us in some way the very pity that God has rubbed so healingly into our bones.

Once you think about it honestly, don’t your best relationships depend far more on the kindness of the one you are in relationship with than on your goodness? Isn’t it slightly offensive to consider the scientifically accurate truth that the folks around us are having to put up with all sorts of inconveniences, weirdnesses, moodinesses, and flat out sins from us---but guess what? They do! They love us despite these things, just as we adore folks in our lives despite their irritating habits and selfishnesses.

The man who wants no pity, is eaten up with pride. 

The woman who cannot forgive herself is too.

DUMP TRUCKS OF DIVINE PITY
The remedy for each is to stop being eaten up with themselves and instead permit themselves to be swallowed up in God’s mercy (or pity!) which doesn’t count any of our sins against us---and of course, we’re really a lot worse than we imagine, and therefore are all perfectly eligible candidates for dump-truck loads of Divine Pity! 

When we realize the debt we have accrued before God, we’ll only want pity from God, and we become strangely insistent and able to show it to others and to ourselves as well. 

We don’t ever really need to forgive ourselves, but we often need to accept God’s forgiveness, something a proud person can never pull off. 

As soon as we realize this is oxygen for our spiritual lives though, questions will occur to us regarding other selves (including our own) like these, “What right have I to be severe to the self that God adores? How can I be impatient with the self that God treats so patiently? How can I fail to show compassion (aka “pity”) to the self to whom Christ continues to show pity? The answer of course, to each is, “None! I can’t!” and “I shouldn’t!”

STURDY HAPPINESS AVAILABLE
And when we start asking and answering questions like these adequately, a sort of indestructible, solid happiness begins to seep into our pores and flavors how we relate to everyone, including God, our neighbor, and ourselves.  

This is why Martin Luther said that when he understood the Gospel of Jesus Christ, “it was as if the gates of paradise had opened up to him.” Discerning himself bereft of enough undiluted goodness to offer Christ, he realized that Christ stood eager to offer undiluted goodness to Him, in exchange for all Luther’s sullied nastiness. 

Paul Tillich once suggested that that “faith is the courage to accept acceptance.” Accepting Christ’s grossly unwarranted acceptance of him melted and moved Luther, but he had to step over a mutilated pride to do it.

So must we.

But what a thrill to stop pretending, defending, and trying to absolve ourselves of our own guilt...something we are able to do, as Buechner has noted, “about as well as sitting in our own laps.” And instead, to refuse to refuse pity from Christ any more, or from anyone else. Because we’ve not yet met the soul who didn’t need to be treated, much better than they deserved.

-----

Eric Youngblood is the senior pastor at Rock Creek Fellowship (PCA) on Lookout Mountain. Please feel free to contact him at eric@rockcreekfellowship.org or follow him on Twitter @GEricYoungblood.

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