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When You Can’t Forgive Yourself
“I know that God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself.” Lots of people find themselves trapped in self-recriminations, overwhelmed by regret and sorrow for things they have done (or not done). They beat themselves up, often secretly hoping this will make up for their sin. But they can’t get past it. You can read the Bible from cover to cover and not find a single instruction on forgiving oneself. That’s because it’s not there. We don’t have the power to forgive ourselves. It’s like trying to separate ourselves from our shadow. As I understand it, this idea comes from humanistic psychology. For millennia, people have recognized the freedom and…
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Is Comparison Always Bad?
“Comparison is the thief of joy.” I’ve been hearing that for decades. But is it, always? Examples of how true that is, most certainly abound. I recently read my friend Amy’s Facebook account of her college experience. A gifted singer, she was a jazz vocalist major at a university known for its excellent music program. The only problem was that she had a friend and classmate who was so much better than Amy. She used to go home on weekends and bemoan the difference to her parents, asking why they couldn’t be jazz musicians like her friend’s parents. She eventually changed her major to pre-med, which was easier in comparison.…
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A Theology of Sleep
It’s no secret that Americans are chronically sleep-deprived. The problem isn’t relegated to just the United States; it seems our neighbors across the pond also suffer from a “global problem of insufficient sleep.” Researchers contributing to a 2014 BBC article named the significant consequences of getting less than 7-hours of shut-eye on a regular basis: depression, heart disease, cancer, and obesity, to name a few. No surprise there. But I was startled by the reason the researches gave for our propensity to deny our body clocks: arrogance. In Reset: Living a Grace-Paced Life in a Burnout Culture, David Murray boldly states, “Show me your sleep pattern and I’ll show you…
