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02 November 2024
If you have a deeply-ingrained sense that you are a bad person, perhaps one which is at least to some extent borne out by the facts, where can you go for validation in this world? Your friends and family may tell you everything is OK. After all, don't we show our friends and family the face that will please them? What would they know of our secret darkness? Your therapist may not really emphasize the dark truth, either. Liberal Christianity and evangelical Christianity may offer too much acceptance and the optimism of good news. Perhaps non-evangelical conservative Christianity is the main current in our culture that will affirm how you feel about yourself. But many are cut off from that current. (There might be other, secular ones that I'm not aware of.) Christianity is tempted to always make the story be about your forgiveness and redemption. But what you seem to need is someone who will look at your sins without flinching away to a view of a better future you, or to you through the lens of freedom from moral accountability.
But one person who will surely agree with you is the person you abuse so badly that despite any of their attempts to see things positively (attempts to fit in with the Christian or post-Christian insistence on optimism), their brains are tattooed with your foul language, so that they can't help but see you as a bad person. Them, at least, you can convince, even if no one else will see you as you really are.