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

by Allie Beth Stuckey

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

Equality of outcome is never possible without government force.

The difference is that, this ruling was based on provable injustice, not on perceived injustice. This is the key difference between social justice and actual justice. The former deals in perception; the latter deals in proof. And this is why Christians should care: we follow God, the transcendent Lawgiver, which means we are indebted to the truth in all things.

And according to the Bible, God’s justice doesn’t judge people based on their identity groups. Biblical justice is concerned with righteousness, not with an arbitrary calculation of how to hold back one group and lift another to achieve equal outcomes.

God opposes partiality either to the weak or to the strong. As James 2:8‒9 says, “If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.” God is a god of justice. He cares about it—not just in a court of law but in how we treat the truly marginalized: the outcast, the poor, the vulnerable, and the victim. God’s justice means restoration for the downtrodden as much as it means repercussions for the wrongdoer.

We work to replace hate with peace and injustice with justice. We believe in holding those who do wrong to account and fighting for the innocent.

Biblical justice is both truthful and direct; it does not advocate for punishing entire groups based on perceptions of privilege. It does not demand that those whom one group views as more privileged hand over their earnings to the government to be redistributed as the government sees fit. When Jesus calls his followers to care for the “least of these,” that is an individual mandate, not a bureaucratic one (Matthew 25:40).

Second, Christians don’t view people through the lens of their collective grievances. We view people as individuals, made in the image of God, valuable and equal, all dead in sin apart from Christ and responsible for his or her actions. The Bible doesn’t give us any other option for how to view one another. Our experiences and even ethnicities matter, but they don’t ultimately define us. We are defined by Jesus. There is no place for intersectionality in the body of Christ.

But Christians need to understand that this isn’t the job of the government, and this isn’t “social justice.” This is the work of the church. This is what Christians have always been called to do. And it is not fueled by resentment for those who have more than we do but by the power of the Gospel, which calls us to love others indiscriminately—literally “as yourself” (Galatians 5:14). This Gospel has been the sufficient driver of true justice as long as it’s existed.

Christians do not need “social justice.” We have the Word of God as our guide to what causes to care about and how to fight for them.

Social justice gives us an overly simplistic worldview of the oppressed versus the oppressor. Applying these categories to all people at all times leads to more unfairness, not less, as adherents aim to reach an impossible outcome of total equality through cosmic calculations that aim to help one group at the expense of another.

It can be so easy to fall into the trap of believing we have to align with social justice advocates to be considered compassionate and empathetic. We want to be seen as good people, and we’d rather not cause controversy. So we go with the flow.

But guess what? We don’t have to worry at all whether the world thinks we’re compassionate or not. In fact, I can tell you from experience that if you align yourself with the Bible on controversial topics like abortion and marriage, you’re going to be labeled a misogynist bigot. People who don’t even believe in God will tell you you’re going to hell. As hard as that is to take at times, it’s okay. There is relief in realizing we don’t answer to the rage mob. We answer to Christ, steady, faithful, and sure, who calls us to be set apart and obedient. While most people build their value system based on what feels good and what’s convenient, Christians are called to a higher standard—one that guarantees self-denial and difficulty. That means there will always be tension between us and the world. That’s good. We’re supposed to be uncomfortable here. This isn’t our home; heaven is. And as we work to ensure that God’s will is done “on earth as it is in heaven,” we can expect pushback and persecution.

It’s not our or society’s truth that matters, it’s God’s.

It’s early on in our lives that we women are caught up in what I call the paradox of perfection: hearing and believing we’re perfect while simultaneously hearing and believing there’s something else we need to do or have (or not do or not have) to make us perfect.

“You’re perfect the way you are” is often a Trojan horse for a product or a program that promises to make our lives better. This means that without these products and programs, it’s an empty mantra. If we were perfect just the way we are, we wouldn’t need their quick ten steps to make any improvements on ourselves or our lives.

From this perspective, you don’t have flaws—you have underappreciated qualities. You haven’t made mistakes—you’ve made decisions the “shame culture” wants to guilt you for. You’ve never failed—you’ve simply rejected society’s unrealistic standards of success.

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

Scripture reveals this fact to us plainly. Biblically, there are only two kinds of selves: the old self and the new self. The old self is enslaved to sin, lost, looking for love and satisfaction in all the wrong places. The old self is totally depraved, hopeless, an enemy of God, and bound for destruction. This is who we all are apart from Christ.

The new self has been redeemed by Christ and is enslaved to goodness, free from the bonds of sin. The new self has everlasting hope, steady joy, and unsurpassed peace because her soul has been saved by God. She is reconciled to him, friends with him, and will spend forever in his presence. The new self h...

The new self follows her Maker, understanding that it’s not the “universe” that gives her strength and direction, but the God who made it. In his Word, he tells her what is “good, right, and true,” and through his Holy Spirit, he empowers her to pursue it. She knows God (Ephesians 5:9) has expectations for her life, and she seeks to meet them: expectations like truthfulness, purity, hard work, generosity, cheerfulness, and self-denial. He has expectations for ...

The new self sees these expectations as good boundaries set by the Father who loves her, not inhibitions hindering her “true self,” because her “true self” is the person God calls her to be, emp...

Obedience to God in all we do is the goal of our lives, which may mean our definition of success doesn’t come to fruition. Our call is to do “whatever [we] do, in word or deed . . . in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” and to “work heartily as for the Lord, and not for man” (Colossians 3:17, 23).

“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.

It makes us feel good to imagine that we’re perfect and enough. But, as we’ve established, we’re neither one. And that’s okay because God made us needy for his strength and salvation. This is a much better comfort than the delusion that we’re flawless.

The idea that the God of the universe can be limited by nine man-made personality types is silly at best and blasphemous at worst.

To constantly focus on our unique attributes is to totally miss the point of what God calls us to do. God calls each of us not to be our “best selves,” but to be filled with the fruit of the spirit, which, according to Galatians, is made up of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We are called to embody all of these qualities, not only the ones that come naturally to us.

Moreover, followers of Jesus know our identity, value, and purpose without taking a personality test. We understand that each of us was made on purpose with purpose by a Creator who does nothing arbitrarily. Our unique talents and gifts are important and are to be used to help the body of Christ for his glory. Our bodies are dwelling places of the Holy Spirit and therefore are to be in submission to God’s will as outlined in his Word. In this sense, we are special. We matter.

But Christians also understand that we are depraved sinners in need of a savior. Contrary to the core assumption of self-love culture, we are not good deep down, and nothing we do could ever merit God’s mercy. Jesus’s followers were “chosen in him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4) and therefore can take no credit in our salvation or sanctification. We are irreversibly and eternally secure in him, knowing that “it is God who works in [us], both to will and to work for his good purpose” (Philippians 2:13). We weren’t chosen because of our g...

The call for Christians is not to be the best version of their personality type...

We don’t need to search for our purpose or the meaning of our lives. We have worth and our lives matter because the God who made us says so.

God tells us something different: that knowing him gives us the peace we’re looking for and that his love gives us the confidence we’re looking for.

But is it true that all the feelings we have are valid? Valid means legitimate, having a basis in logic and fact. I don’t know about you, but I’ve had plenty of feelings that aren’t based in reality at all.