Series: Healing For Damaged Emotions
#11 The Super-sized You
May 31, 2009
We have all heard it. “Would you like that super-sized?” For us Methodists that is a temptation beyond imagination because it means a lot more fries and a bigger drink for mere pennies more. What a bargain! And yet those who are in the know tell us, that super-sizing fast food is nutritionally one of the worst things we could do. And isn’t that at the core of what temptation is?
The reality is that often we super-size our self-perception as well. In my day we called them braggarts. As a freshman in college I tried out for the baseball team. There was one guy in particular who was obviously the best baseball player among the lot of us. All you had to do was listen to him! He started at 3rd base and I rode the bench. It was soon quite evident that his ‘walk’ didn’t match his talk. He soon rode the bench and I was starting at 1st base! What happens to people when they feel that they have to sell themselves to other people and even to themselves as better than they really are?
The Apostle Paul was coming under great scrutiny in the Corinthian Church. People were criticizing him and even deriding his physical appearance! Our Scripture is set in his retort to the nay Sayers and those who had cast dispersions against him. Paul is saying that he would never compare himself to those who were boasting about themselves. He then zeroes in and says the problem is that these people are comparing themselves to…. themselves! In verse 12, “We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves.” Their standard of measurement is not an objective standard, but a subjective one and one that they set and control! How convenient!
We do the same kind of thing, don’t we? “I’m not so bad and after all I know my own heart.” And we compare ourselves to our neighbors and co-workers. “I’m okay because I am not as “bad” as they are.” While we compare ourselves to others in many facets of our lives, for we Christians that is not the point. The point is this: how do we compare with Jesus? Now that is something that will humble every one of us real quick! He is our standard and measure of comparison our selves. In Christ, there is no room for pride--real or false. Paul says in verse 17, “let him who boasts boast in the Lord.” And I love verse 18, “For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends.”
With that as our foundation we launch into the healing of our damaged emotions specifically for those who feel that they have to be super-sized. The emphasis here is on the words: ‘feel they have to be.’ The have to be super mom, or super employee, or super dad, or super-anything.
How does all this come about? As we grow into self-awareness we receive messages about ourselves, about God, about other people and about relationships. These messages are both taught and caught--sometimes directly and other times indirectly. It is actually a complicated combination of many factors, including your temperament. The irony is that you don’t even know it is happening, it just does.
In our younger developmental years there are some basic God-given needs that ought to be met if we are going to develop into healthy adults. These are the needs of feeling secure, loved, accepted, valued, wanted, and a sense of belonging. When these are not given, then the child soon learns that in order to get those needs fulfilled he/she must obviously be someone else. And so when you as a child hear those torturous words, “Why can’t you be like your sister/brother?” or “Why can’t you behave like Billy (who lives up the street)” then you naturally assume that who you are is not acceptable.
The tragedy is that who God designed you to uniquely be doesn’t get a chance to develop. Instead a false self begins to develop and you begin to get an idealized picture of your self-identity, not based on God’s design but on your perception of what you should be, act, and do.
The reality is that becoming a Christian doesn’t change that. Even in spiritual transformation you still have this false idealized image of yourself that you think you should have in order to be loved and accepted. The bottom line is this: you are trying to earn love and respect and acceptance.
As a Christian, here is the real danger. We do the very same thing to God trying to earn his love, respect, and His acceptance of us. Like Avis we try harder and the more we try, the more frustrated we become, and it is because the gospel and salvation doesn’t work that way. We can never be good enough; we could never do enough to gain God’s favor.
In Luke 18 Jesus told a story about 2 men who went one day to the Temple to pray. One was a religious leader and one was a tax collector. The religious leader prayed, “Lord, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evil-doers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.” The tax collector stood at a distance, beat his breast and said, “Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Now, which one of these men was super-sized?
Let me ask you this: when you pray which self do you present to God? Is it the super-sized you—the one you think you are, the one you would like to be? Or do you come into God’s presence with the real you? Many of us come to God all cleaned up and pretty and we put on our Sunday face. That is the super-sized you. Do you even know the real you? Can you even admit to yourself and to God that you are not “all that?” The super-sized you could never let God know the real you because if He did, He wouldn’t love and accept you! Here’s the irony: He already knows the real you, and He loves you just the way you are. The magnificence of God’s love is that He loves us too much to allow us to stay the way we are. It is you who often doesn’t know the real you, and so you play games.
Much of life is amoral, i.e. neither moral or immoral or right or wrong. It is what we do with it that makes it moral or immoral. Some examples are music, drugs, cars, television, politics, education, et al. This is also true of emotions. Emotions are amoral neither right nor wrong. They just are.
One emotion that the super-sized you often considers bad is anger. In Mark 5:3 we read, “He (Jesus) looked around them in anger….” This is the only place that specifically says that Jesus was angry. I have a sneaking suspicion however that Jesus was just a bit angry in the temple when He took a whip and drove the moneychangers out of the Temple. I think anger underlined His descriptors of the religious leaders in Matthew 23 when He called them ‘blind fools,’ ‘white-washed tombs,’ ‘murderers,’ ‘serpents,’ and ‘miserable frauds.’ In fact Paul wrote in Ephesians 4:26, “Be angry and sin not.” As we have stated before, anger can be a good and useful emotion that motivates us to seek justice and redress of wrongs. But anger out of control can be devastatingly evil when used for revenge and misplaced justice and redress. Keep in mind that anger is not the same as resentment and rage. Anger, used constructively, is a God-given emotion.
The super-sized you also often believes that you should be always happy. But are you always happy? Are you never depressed, anxious, irritated, bothered, and worried? Are there never times when you simply don’t feel all tingly and bubbly? Aren’t there times when you do things out of sheer duty and responsibility without those happy and giddy feelings? Didn’t Jesus wrestle with the Father at Gethsemane? He said, “My soul is exceedingly troubled.”
The word ‘happiness’ has its roots in the word ‘happenings.’ Thus, when good ‘happenings’ happen to us, then we are happy. If bad ‘happenings’ happen then we are unhappy. We then become pawns to whatever external forces throw our way over which we have no control. For the Christian the better word is ‘joy.’ Joy is an internal word that is based on relationships and not on outer circumstances. So because of life’s happenings and circumstances, we are sometimes not happy. But because of our inner joy, there is a calm in the midst of the storm. The super-sized you believes that you always have to be up and perky while flashing those pearly whites through a Cheshire cat-like smile while singing, “Isn’t life grand!”
As Christians, God calls us to be realists. You don’t have to and neither should you ignore the hard, the difficult, the not-so-nice, and painful aspects of real-world life. We don’t need to deny or suppress those negative feelings of grief, sorrow, anger, loneliness, depression, and hurts. E. Stanley Jones would say, “Don’t deny those feelings or don’t suppress those feelings, rather confess those feelings.” Denying and suppressing those emotions gives them control over us, but confessing them gives us control over them.
Jesus modeled for us a rugged honesty about life, the human condition and our emotions. When you waste time and energy trying to be the super-sized you, you rob yourself of the blessing of being the real you that God has created for His good pleasure as well as the good of His Kingdom. The Super-sized you is a myth created by you for you to be used by you to create an illusion acceptable to only you.
The super-sized you often dies real hard and the religious super-sized you dies ever harder. Let me encourage you to hear God’s voice telling you to give it up and abandon this false you.
Let God’s Holy Spirit peel back the many layers of the super-sized you so that God can bring healing to your life and change you so that the Real You can grow into the person God really wants you to become.
“Let us boast then, not in ourselves, but in the Lord.”