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

by Allie Beth Stuckey

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

the self can’t be both our problem and our solution. If the self is the source of our depression or despair or insecurity or fear, it can’t also be the source of our ultimate fulfillment.

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.

“How do you find the pace to finish the race?”

Life is a marathon, not a sprint, which means all of us have to find the rhythms and patterns of activity and rest that allow us to live out the work God has called us to do efficiently and effectively.

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.

Who we “really are” isn’t some mystery we need to solve or path we need to follow. Our sole aim is to honor God by gratefully executing the tasks he’s put before us with his help.

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.

Rather than teaching what Scripture means and what it says about God, they highlight what Scripture means to us and what it says about us. Meology seeks to comfort at the expense of conviction. This results in readers who are both misinformed and uninformed about the nature of God. The consequence is people who are unsure of the truth he offers.

If we view Scripture through the lens of the prosperity gospel, we see the biblical narrative centered on us and what God can do for us, rather than on God, what he’s done for us through Christ, and how we can serve him.

A healthy, thriving church will base all they say and do on Scripture, and the good news of Jesus’s death and resurrection will be at the center of their sermons, ministries, and local and global mission work.

Our truth is both elusive and unsatisfying. God’s truth is present and sustaining. While the world tells us our truths are somehow simultaneously within us and “out there,” God gives us real truth in himself here and now.

A person led by Christ should be on a trajectory toward truth,

Our adherence to God’s truth doesn’t just influence how we read the Bible or what churches we choose; it also affects how we decide right and wrong in general.

Following God means embracing a love not for our own truth but for objective truth.

Cancel Culture is the perfect depiction of how the secular world does morality without absolute truth:

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.

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.

our fight for the “least of these” needn’t be lumped in with the secular world’s definition of “social justice.” Biblical justice is both truthful and direct; it does not advocate for punishing entire groups based on perceptions of privilege.

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.

Without the Bible as our basis for justice, we get a system based on the only tool we have without a supreme moral Lawgiver: the self. The best the self can do is a kind of justice based on perception rather than on objective standards of righteousness and truth.

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.

They’re fruit of the obedience of the new self, not the manifestations of the “best self.”

God made us needy for his strength and salvation. This is a much better comfort than the delusion that we’re flawless.

We weren’t chosen because of our good works, but rather for good works.

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

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.

While all valid feelings are real, not all real feelings are valid. That means we can acknowledge our emotions without affirming them.

Good work done well is both for his glory and our good.

God, our authority, says work exists for his glory and our good. He also assures us that though our work won’t always be fruitful, he will always be faithful. He doesn’t promise that all of our dreams will come true or that our goals will be reached, but instead he commands us to obey him and to work with excellence in whatever realm we occupy.

“the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less.”

This same Jesus calls us not to self-love but to self-denial and full obedience. He doesn’t tell us to learn to love ourselves before we love other people, because his love for us is more than sufficient to equip us to love those around us.

The idea that “you can’t love other people until you love yourself” reeks of entitlement and elitism.

As C. S. Lewis says, “Love is not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s good as far as it can be obtained.”

God doesn’t promise us earthly blessings in exchange for obedience.

marriage is not the goal of the Christian life. It is not when our “real life” begins. Your real life began when you decided to follow Jesus, and, because of his commitment to lead you down a path for his glory and your good, you have everything to look forward to.

marriage is a four-letter word, and it’s not love—it’s work.

The call of those who follow this Jesus isn’t one of self-love or self-affirmation, but self-denial. Jesus asks his disciples to take up their crosses and follow him.