Last Sunday, I began a new sermon
series, exploring “Self-Compassion, An
Overlooked Christian Value.” One of
the inspirations for this series, as well as a guide in developing the series,
is the book, Self-Compassion, The Proven
Power of Being Kind to Yourself, by Dr. Kristin Neff.[i] This week, August 28th, we continue with the
second proclamation in the series, an exploration of the three core components
of self-compassion, as outlined by Dr. Neff.
Our foundational scripture this
Sunday comes from Mark 12: 28-34a. For our purposes, the key portion of this
scripture occurs when Jesus summarizes the Divine Law;
“One
of the scribes…asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all? Jesus answered, ‘The first is, “Hear, O
Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is
one, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” The second is this, “You shall love your
neighbor as yourself.”’”
This scripture is very rich, and a whole series of
sermons could be preached on these few verses alone. Many Biblical scholars and preachers have focused
on what it means to love God with all of our heart and soul and mind and
strength, while others have focused on what it means to love our neighbor. However, for our reflections this week, I
would like to focus on the third, implied object of our love: ourselves.
Jesus
says that we should love our neighbors as ourselves, which implies that we
should love—or, have self-compassion—for ourselves. What I will suggest this Sunday is that we
love in response to God’s initial love for us.
Through the lens of Christian faith, we understand that the Divine seeks
to enter into a loving relationship with us.
We respond to God’s amazing and boundless love for us by loving God, our
neighbors, Creation, and ourselves.
Imagine an empty goblet. When we begin to pour water from a pitcher,
the goblet slowly fills to its rim. If
we continue to pour water into the goblet even after it is filled, then the
water will begin to overflow, spilling over the edges and down its sides. Similarly, we open ourselves to God’s love
through faith in Jesus Christ, and God’s love fills us to overflowing. Filled to overflowing with God’s love, then
we respond by loving God, loving our neighbors, loving Creation, and loving
ourselves. We do not love out of
obligation but simply because we are so filled with God’s love.
In the proclamation, I will suggest
that self-compassion is critical to this process of love. If we cannot accept ourselves and have
compassion for ourselves, then we have not truly accepted God’s love and we are
incapable of loving our neighbor or God’s good Creation. That is, if we cannot love ourselves first,
then we are unable to keep Jesus’ command to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
In her study of self-compassion, Dr.
Kirstin Neff suggests that there are
three core components:
1. “Being
Kind to Ourselves.” Being kind
to ourselves means that we end our harsh self-criticism, in which we condemn
and beat ourselves up whenever we make a mistake or have a failure. Dr. Neff writes, “But self-kindness involves
more than merely stopping self-judgment.
It involves actively comforting
ourselves, responding just as we would to a dear friend in need. …We make a peace offering of warmth,
gentleness, and sympathy from ourselves
to ourselves, so that true healing
can occur.”[ii]
2. “Recognizing and Acknowledging the
Common Human Experience.” Loneliness
and isolation are enemies of self-compassion.
As Kirstin Neff explains, “When we focus on our shortcomings without
taking the bigger human picture into account, our perspective tends to narrow.
We become absorbed by our own feelings of insufficiency and insecurity. When we’re in the confined space of
self-loathing, it’s as if the rest of humanity doesn’t even exist. This isn’t a
logical thought process, but a type of emotional tunnel vision. Somehow it feels like I am the only one who is being dumped, proven wrong, or made a fool
of.”[iii]
By contrast, we need to recognize and
acknowledge that failure and set backs are simply part of the common human
experience. No one of us is perfect. We all make mistakes; “to err is human.” And, each of us experiences failures and
disappointments. So, an important
component of self-compassion is acknowledging and accepting these common human
experiences of mistakes and disappointments.
3. “ Mindfulness.” Mindfulness simply refers to the ability to
be cognizant of what we are feeling, when we experience failure,
disappointment, or pain. Neff describes “mindfulness”
in this way: “We certainly feel the
sting of falling short of our ideals, but our mind tends to focus on the
failure itself, rather than the pain caused by failure. This is a crucial difference.”[iv] By developing mindfulness, we develop the
ability to recognize what we are feeling.
Through this recognition, we gain control over all of our negative
self-criticism and this facilitates our ability to be self-compassionate.
Kirstin Neff spends some time discussing
suffering, which she argues is caused by resisting pain. When disappointments and failures occur in
our lives, Neff argues that we experience pain.
The temptation is to resist that pain; to fight against it. Yet, when we resist pain that is beyond our
control, then the resistance only exacerbates our suffering. As she concludes, “Pain is unavoidable [in
life]; suffering is optional.”[v]
To summarize, there are three core
components to self-compassion: (1)
Self-kindness; (2) Recognizing and acknowledging that our set-backs are part of
the human experience; and (3) Mindfulness.
If you live in the Lincoln, Nebraska area, come, join us this Sunday,
August 28th, at Christ United Methodist Church, as we continue with the second
of our five-week study concerning self-compassion as a Christian virtue. Our classic worship services are at 8:30 and
11:00 on Sunday mornings.
Everyone is welcome and accepted because
God loves us all.
[i] Kirstin Neff, Self-Compassion,
The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself (New York: William Morro, An Imprint of HarperCollins
Publishers, 2011).
[ii] Neff, 42.
[iii] Neff, 63.
[iv] Neff, 81.
[v] Neff, 94.
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