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

by Allie Beth Stuckey

A truth that we all come to terms with at some point in our adolescence is that we don’t have what it takes for one thing or another. In other words, we’re not enough. We don’t have enough talent, a high enough IQ, enough coordination, or enough facial symmetry to do the thing we were sure we would end up doing. Facing our inadequacies is crucial for appropriate development.

We’ve spent our lives prioritizing ourselves, our wants, and our happiness, and, guess what. We’re still not happy. So how in the world could it be that self-love is the answer to our problems when there’s no evidence whatsoever that we’ve ever stopped loving ourselves?

Maybe we’re unfulfilled, lonely, and purposeless because we love ourselves way too much. Yes, many of us struggle with insecurities and even self-loathing. But these are just other indicators of self-obsession. Even when we don’t like ourselves, our perpetual prioritization of our wants, needs, problems, and dreams above all else proves that we still love ourselves a whole lot.

That’s the essential lie young women are believing in this culture of self-love. Young Christian women, even. The lie that “you are enough.” 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 self can’t be both the problem and the solution. If our problem is that we’re insecure or unfulfilled, we’re not going be able to find the antidote to these things in the same place our insecurities and fear are coming from.

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 empowers us to consider and serve other people before and instead of ourselves.

I was actually enslaved by my lifestyle.

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.

feels content despite focusing on self-love because self-love is inherently unsatisfying. It depends on our feelings, which are subject to constant change based on our circumstances, our performance, and other people’s opinions. Self-love is unreliable, conditional, and limited. Chasing after it always brings us to a dead end.

For a generation obsessed with personal happiness and self-discovery, we’re startlingly unhappy and lost. Our rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide are staggering. Even the memes we make highlight the problems that ail us: social anxiety, insomnia, insecurity, a fear of “adulting.” At best, we’re discontent and confused. At worst, we’re totally hollow.

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.

It took reaching her breaking point for Cecily to learn she would find peace not in conquering her not-enoughness, but in embracing it. She realized that God made her not enough.

This is why Christianity and the Cult of Self-Affirmation can’t coincide. The values of the Christ follower aren’t authenticity and autonomy. They’re Christlikeness and obedience. We have an objective standard of right and wrong found in the Bible, which means we’re not ruled by cultural trends or our feelings. God’s moral standards lead to peace. The cult’s lead to chaos and pain. Authenticity and autonomy certainly aren’t bad at all times in all ways, but they must be subjected to God’s objective standards to produce anything good. Otherwise, they’re just trendy-sounding excuses to sin.

The Cult of Self-Affirmation wants its members to center their world around them and their feelings. So it makes moms feel like we are victims of motherhood rather than what we are: blessed beneficiaries of 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.

we get older, we don’t automatically grow out of the tendency to believe things that aren’t true; the lies we believe just become more complex and consequential.

It’s impossible to simultaneously submit to the God of Scripture and the god of self.

The prosperity gospel and Hipster Jesus Christianity are self-worship disguised as genuine faith. They focus on what we think we deserve rather than who God is. They obscure the true Gospel in exchange for a message that appeals to our natural self-centeredness.

The hours we spend in church should be defined by self-forgetfulness, not self-fulfillment.

As Sinclair Ferguson states in his book, Preaching the Gospel from the New Testament: “Jesus is the true and better David, whose victory becomes his people’s victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves.”

Following God means embracing a love not for our own truth but for objective truth. We look to the Bible as the steady standard of right and wrong. Without a belief in God as the final moral authority, people are left to their own devices to determine good versus bad. And if, as the Cult of Self-Affirmation dictates, we are all our own gods, who’s to say whose moral code is enforceable? As you can tell, this kind of moral subjectivism sounds like confusion and chaos. That’s because it is.

Without objective benchmarks for right and wrong, this is about the best a world ruled by subjective truth can do: accept morality defined by the mob. Whoever controls our means of communication and information arbitrates what’s true and what’s false, what’s right and what’s wrong, and who’s canceled and who’s not. This is not a culture Christians should be a part of. We don’t discern good and evil based on the latest rage trend. We don’t use Twitter as our source of truth; we use God’s Word, which never changes. We don’t have to be tossed by the waves of cultural relevance. We have God’s absolute truth as our anchor.

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Totally misses the underlying academic ridiculousness

The claim is true—in a sense. Women do make $0.79 to every $1.00 a man makes when factors such as hours worked, education earned, or positions held are not considered. This is called the uncontrolled gap. But when all factors are the same, women make more than $0.99 to every $1.00 a man makes— a difference that’s within the margin of error. In other words, the “wage gap” between men and women is virtually nonexistent, and even if a slight gap exists, there is little proof that injustice is to blame.

Where are the citations?!?!?

Women and men, even in a society ruled by social justice, are still inherently different and therefore the outcomes of each group will not be the same.

In his book The Quest for Cosmic Justice, economist Thomas Sowell exchanges the term “social justice” for “cosmic justice” because of the unreachable, intangible results social justice advocates fight for. Sowell describes cosmic justice this way: Cosmic justice . . . is about putting particular segments of society in the position that they would have been in but for some undeserved misfortune. This conception of fairness requires that third parties must wield the power to control outcomes, over-riding rules [or] standards.

Social justice is concerned not with equality of opportunity but equality of outcomes. In order to achieve this, it must hold back those who are ahead and push forward those who are behind. Equality of outcome is never possible without government force.

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. If God is our only source of morality and truth, that means he also defines justice. 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.

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.

This doesn’t discount the disadvantages people indeed face nor the uneven playing field that inevitably characterizes life on earth, and it certainly doesn’t abdicate our responsibility as Christians to help those in need. The Bible is clear: “to whom much is given, much is required” (Luke 12:48). And “‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:40).

throughout our lives, showing up in more profound ways. Today, we most often see it in the online culture of self-love and self-help. In her bestselling book You Are a Badass, Jen Sincero writes: “You are perfect. . . . You are the only you there is and ever will be. I repeat, you are the only you there is and ever will be. Do not deny the world its one and only chance to bask in your brilliance.” Sincero’s sentiment is a popular one in this world of trendy narcissism: who you are on the inside—who you really are— is perfect. And all you have to do is manifest that perfection, and you’ll be happy, successful, and whole.

“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.

But none of these things will ever make us perfect because “who we really are” isn’t some flawless goddess marred by unfair societal standards or unhealthy relationships. 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.

“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.

That we are not called to constant introspection and self-discovery is good news. We can finally be relieved of the duty to constantly search for ourselves. 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.

It’s important to distinguish between real and valid. Our feelings may be real in that we truly feel them, but they’re not valid if they’re not based in reality. Our feelings can be very much irrational. If followed, they can send us into a spiral of discouragement and despair. They can lead us to resent people who don’t deserve our resentment. They can fill our minds with fear that doesn’t need to be there. Worse yet, they can compel us to say or do something that we’ll regret and will hurt those around us. To determine whether our emotions are truly justified, we should ask ourselves a simple question: Why? Why are we upset or fearful? What are we really worried about? What are we actually hurt by?

While all valid feelings are real, not all real feelings are valid. That means we can acknowledge our emotions without affirming them. The question of “Why?” can help us determine the difference between valid and invalid feelings. Sometimes we just need to dig a little deeper and realize that we’re not being logical. Hanging on to an illogical emotion is only going to make us and those we love feel worse, not better.

The culture of self-love tells us our feelings are valid because deep down we’re perfect. Therefore, we can and should trust ourselves. But this is both irrational and unbiblical.

The book of Proverbs has a lot to say about ruling our feelings rather than allowing our feelings to rule us. Proverbs 14:29 says this: “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly.” How true is that? When we’re quick to validate our anger, we often say and do stupid things. Most of us have blurted out something hurtful or harsh in the moment that we didn’t really mean. God wants to spare us and those around us from making choices based on our fickle, and at times, invalid feelings. Sometimes our feelings—not just our outward reactions—are not just illegitimate but also sinful. In Matthew 5, Jesus teaches us that sin starts in the heart. He makes clear that hate and lust are sins, not only the murder and adultery that may follow. In the same chapter, he reminds his followers to let go of anxiety and fear. The ninth commandment God gave Israel was a command against covetousness. Ephesians 4:31 instructs Christians to abandon all “bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander.” This means some of our feelings need to be both discounted and repented from. Jeremiah 17:9 warns us that our hearts are “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick.” The emotions that flow out of our hearts can be the opposite of valid: they can be based entirely on lies. Why follow a heart that God promises will lead us astray?

Insecurity was unattractive, she learned, so she would need to figure out a way to love her body as it was—while also working endlessly to perfect it.

As hard as that job was for me, I learned a valuable lesson: I’m not entitled to success—even in the areas I typically excel in.

This tells us two things about the nature of work: humans are meant to do it, but we’re not guaranteed success.

Those who are physically and mentally able to work but can’t or won’t find employment suffer not just financially but spiritually and emotionally as well. Our minds atrophy. Our existence begins to feel arbitrary and unnecessary. When we aren’t contributing to society, we have the tendency to grow depressed and listless. Human beings need to be needed. Contrary to what AOC and others may say, capitalism didn’t make us this way; God did. Good work done well is both for his glory and our good.

I’m doing everything I’ve ever wanted to do. I work from home getting paid to do the few things I’m gifted at. There really isn’t much that can beat that. But guess what? As grateful as I am for the privilege of doing what I do, my work still doesn’t fulfill me.

The love that we were born feeling for ourselves isn’t romantic or affectionate but is a love that looks out for our best interests.

Meeting our own needs comes more naturally to us than anything else in life.

And I did hate things about myself. I was insecure. I did feel inadequate. But I never stopped loving myself. I was living the life I was living because I thought it would make me feel better. Even in my self-consciousness and loneliness and insecurity, I never stopped considering my best interest. I was just wrong about what my best interests actually were.