You're Not Enough (and That's Ok): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love

by Allie Beth Stuckey

We don’t have enough time or energy to be all that we need to be for the world around us.

The next second, when we look at the monitor and see our supposed-to-be-sleeping toddler wiggling just minutes after we’ve put him down, or remember that we have about fifteen pages left on the assignment due tomorrow, or look in the mirror and hate the body we see, our feelings of self-assurance quickly fade.

The idea that you’re enough is central to the culture of self-love. The logic goes: because you are complete, perfect, and sufficient on your own, you don’t need anyone else to love you to be content. All you need is yourself.

The solutions to our problems and pain aren’t found in self-love, but in God’s love.

While self-love depletes, God’s love for us doesn’t. He showed us his love by sending Jesus to die for our sins so that we could be forgiven and live forever with him.

Self-love is superficial and temporary. God’s love is profound and eternal.

And his love compels us to something much better than self-obsession: self-sacrifice. While the thought of putting others before ourselves is considered blasphemy in the culture of self-love, it’s the joyous mode of operation for those who follow God. God’s love frees and empow...

My counter was this: you’re not enough, you’ll never be enough, and that’s okay, because God is.

No amount of yoga or sage burning or energy shifts or personality tests or essential oils or closet organizing or food prepping or booty exercises or whatever else the self-love stars say you need to finally, truly, be happy with yourself will ever convince you that you’re enough. Because you’re not. Neither am I. And that’s okay.

The first step to getting out of whatever unhealthy cycle you’re currently in is realizing just how not enough you are. That means letting go of the responsibility to be your own source of fulfillment—a responsibility that was never yours in the first place.

Self-love is unreliable, conditional, and limited. Chasing after it always brings us to a dead end.

There’s a reason Jesus describes himself as Living Water and Bread of Life: he satisfies. The searching for peace and for purpose stops in him alone. He created us; therefore only he can tell us who we are and why we’re here.

And aren’t these the questions everyone’s trying to answer: Who are we and why are we here? The world’s answer to these questions is “You.” You define your identity, your purpose, your value, your truth. Jesus’s answer is “Me.” He defines your identity, your purpose, your value, your truth.

If we were enough, we wouldn’t need Jesus to do these things for us, but we do. Without him we’re hopeless, purposeless, and dead in our sin.

We have the privilege, as children of God, to “cast all our anxieties on him, because he cares” for us and to allow his power to be perfected in our weakness (1 Peter 5:7).

While the truth that we’re just not enough is simple, it’s not easy. Unfortunately, young people are bombarded with this lie on a daily basis—and many of us don’t even know it.

When our reason behind our rest is to ensure better service to the Lord and to others, we don’t have to worry whether or not taking needed breaks is self-centered. It’s not.

If we worship the God of Scripture, we trust him. We trust him with unexpected pregnancies. We trust that he made us in the body he meant to make us in. We trust that he has called us and will equip us to be mothers. We trust that his commands are better and more trustworthy than our feelings.

Our culture encourages us to defer to what’s true for us, even if it contradicts what is true—scientifically, biblically, historically, and so on.

If I wasn’t enough for him, I told myself, that’s fine. I can be enough for myself. And I’ll prove it by doing exactly what I wanted, when I wanted.

Time spent worshipping the God of Scripture is never time wasted, but time spent worshipping the god of self is.

We are not enough to decide the truth, but God is.

Studying God’s Word is necessary for Christians to form their worldviews and establish their moral compasses, and yet, tragically, many Americans who identify as Christians don’t know their Bibles.

God’s definition of marriage has both physical and spiritual significance—Gospel significance.

Neither the prosperity gospel nor Hipster Jesus Christianity have much to say about sin, because meology—like the Cult of Self-Affirmation—is concerned with temporary happiness rather than lasting holiness. Meology of any kind looks nothing like Jesus’s teachings.

The one, true Jesus cares so much about our sin that he endured a gruesome death on a cross to save us from it. On earth he healed and he comforted, but he also called those he encountered to repentance (Matthew 4:17).

That means reading our Bibles is crucial in differentiating between our truth, which leads to confusion, and the truth, which leads to life, joy, and peace.

He slayed the ultimate giant—sin and death—when he died on the cross for our transgressions and rose again three days later.

God’s truth is present and sustaining.

As available as God’s truth is, though, understanding it is a lifelong process.

In the article she argued that it was “cheating” that “hundreds of athletes who have changed gender by declaration and limited hormone treatment have already achieved honors as women that were beyond their capabilities as men.”

Men have greater bone density than women, higher aerobic and anaerobic capacity, more muscle mass, and are, in general, more aggressive than women, even when hormone treatments that decrease testosterone slightly diminish these characteristics. This gives most men who identify as women an advantage over biological women in athletic competitions.

“Canceled” is what happens to you when the court of public opinion (held primarily on Twitter) decides that something you’ve said or done at any time in your life is unacceptable by today’s social and moral standards.

I think a lot of good has come from the Me Too movement. Women previously too scared to come forward with their stories found the strength to speak up.

“What a difference it would be if our system of morality were based on the Bible instead of the standards devised by cultural Christians.” I would add, “or by culture, period.”

The assumption that differences always imply discrimination is based on feeling rather than fact. In

But guess what? We don’t have to worry at all whether the world thinks we’re compassionate or not.

We answer to Christ, steady, faithful, and sure, who calls us to be set apart and obedient.

This is a small price to pay for the freedom and joy of answering to a king higher than earthly authority, whose truth stands firm against the latest cultural dogmas. When we confront confusion, we have clarity in his Word.

It’s not our or society’s truth that matters, it’s God’s. That’s because he’s perfect, and we’re not.

You are not perfect the way you are, and you never will be.

This means mistakes and failures and sins do exist.

If God cares about sin so much that he sent his son to die to pay the price for it, we should care about it too.

“You’re perfect the way you are” leads us into accepting parts of ourselves that we should be rejecting, making excuses for ourselves when we should be repenting, and believing things about ourselves that hold no lasting value.

The Enneagram isn’t our source of knowledge about God; the Bible is.

We understand that each of us was made on purpose with purpose by a Creator who does nothing arbitrarily.

No matter what our natural inclinations, strengths, or deficits may be, we are all called to live holy lives.

We are all to repent sin. We are all to be obedient. No quirk or characteristic makes us exempt from the standards God has set for us.

Until you realize that the reason you matter is because God created you and sent his Son to die for you, you’ll be running a rat race toward the prize of...

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