The Heresy of Self Condemnation
I have put up with this crap since 1983. That’s 25 years. That’s over half my life at this point. All the time when I was attending certain churches the message was that part of me has to go to hell so the rest can go to heaven. The church is full, front to back, with counter-intuitive psychology that is euphemistically called wisdom. If you question those in charge, they’ll tell you the holy spirit said it, which serves as a further coercion for you to obey. And people will quote verses like “…God has confounded the wisdom of the wise…” This stuff comes in the ears one way and filters through the subconscious as something quite different and much worse.
You don’t hear this every Sunday in every sermon. But. At some point you’re subjected to what amounts to encouragement to curse your self. I am splitting the word up because for this essay “self” is not part of any pronoun. Now you won’t hear the clergy or the other members of the congregation saying curse your self. Nobody says that, at least not out loud. I doubt many are thinking that. It might actually get their conscious attention and we can’t have that. What is said by many people around you is humble your self, deny your self, yield your self, surrender your self, give of your self, be selfless, die to your self, there is no such thing as self-worth. I wish I could say all this stuff goes in one ear and out the other. Unfortunately it goes in at least one ear, gets processed by the subconscious and comes back as self-criminalization. According to these doctrines the self is at war with God. And to put that in our pop culture lingo, spiritually we’re all terrorists.
For this essay I have split the word self from whatever associated pronouns it occurs with in the sentences. When people are saying it to others, they don’t. It gets read in by the subconscious as mostly “yourself.” If you don’t “robot” easily and since things aren’t explained well in the church, you tend to walk around with ideas in the back of your mind that you’re worthless, you’re nothing, you don’t matter and you have no value. Then to confound matters further, there is a separate message of self love. People will ask, “if you don’t love yourself then how can you love anyone else?” Right. Exactly. And how can you love your self if everywhere you turn it is being assaulted by religion? And not only is your self being assaulted constantly by religion, you’re being asked to participate in this psychological Gangbanger’s jumping in. Being worthless, nothing and not mattering are certainly not things I want to feel affection for.
There is a difference in this, between what is meant, what is said, and how it is received. If the message is don’t indulge your self to excess, that would be okay. But that’s not what is said. What is said is that self-indulgence of any kind is evil. If they limited the talk to things that cause harm to others, like engaging in some favored activity at the expense of one’s children’s needs that would be okay. If they’d take the time to describe these cases and why this sort of selfishness is bad, that would be okay. People could process it. People could understand it. But these speeches aren’t fleshed out enough to do that. Most sermons consist of how much can we pack into a 15-45 minute talk to get some message across. Whenever the self is being discussed in these speeches, prepare to get the ice packs out because you’re about to take a beating.
The self is just what it is, it’s you. It’s not evil. It’s not worthless. It’s not nothing. Evil is coming from the abusive authority figures who are telling you that nonsense. Overcoming this, and believe me I am just starting, is a subjective process. It’s internal. You’ve got to value your self enough to take the time to do it. You have to decide to do it for your self. Try picking out something you do well and taking credit for it. Try to think of something to love about your self. Start with something small. Light a match. Turn on a flashlight. As you continue to do that, the darkness will retreat.
I have to come up with other solutions because what I have been trying to do and what others have been encouraging me to do ain’t workin’. I am putting it up here for others to read because I know I am not alone.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 11:11 and is filed under RogueSun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
