worldview and perspective on Self-Acceptance

We admit that embracing slowness is hard . But slowness transforms us. One of our favorite theologians, Dr. John Goldingay, served for decades as a professor of Old Testament theology. Goldingay ...

Origins matter to humans. The Antiques Roadshow has held the interest of its viewers for over thirty-five years with a simple formula of determining the origins of items people have not properly...

It would have been sad for me to spend my life just trying to superimpose stuff on people rather than trying to encourage them to look within themselves for what's of value.

You don’t need to look far today to notice that personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. A gym near where I live advertises itself with the slogan: “Be Fit. Be Well. Be You.” A new apartment com...

The attentions of others matter to us because we are afflicted by a congenital uncertainty as to our own value, as a result of which affliction we tend to allow others’ appraisals to play a determinin...

To know oneself, is above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against the Truth, and not the other way around.

The final mystery is oneself.

A survey in 2015 found that 91 percent of adults in the United States agreed that the best way to find yourself is by looking within yourself. Everything else flows from this conviction. The thinking ...

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.

Gracious God, we confess that we are often dissatisfied with our lives. We recognize the gap that exists between what we are and what we want to be. Lord, like the woman at the well, we know our failu...

…there are two ways to fail to let Jesus be your Savior. One is by being too proud, having a superiority complex—not to accept his challenge [to accept what the gospel says about our unworthiness]. Bu...

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am...

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

George Herbert Mead, an influential early 20th-century sociologist, coined the term “generalized other” to describe the vague group we consider when shaping our actions. How often do we behave a certa...

I must register a certain impatience with the faddish equation, never suggested by me, of the term identity with the question, “Who am I?” This question nobody would ask himself except in a more or le...

Know yourself and you will have a wholesome fear of God; know him and you will also love him.

We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

Practicing attention, people can now receive their world as a place of belonging.

The desire to feel loved is the last illusion: let it go and you will be free

We think our problem is with God, but remember, God is perfect. Our problem is really with ourselves.

Once you can accept the universe as being something expanding into an infinite nothing which is something, wearing stripes with plaid is easy.

A common trait of human beings is a fear of failure. Most of us find ways of coping with it, but whenever failure rears its ugly head, it’s difficult not to experience the sting of feeling like we are...

I have had to accept the fact that my life is almost totally paradoxical. I have also had to learn gradually to get along without apologizing for the fact, even to myself. And perhaps this preface is ...

There is no way out of one’s inner life, so one had better get into it. On the inward and downward spiritual journey, the only way out is through.

The key for successful personal relationships and ministry is to understand and accept others as having a viewpoint as worthy of consideration as our own.

“It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept.

Heavenly Father, we confess that we have too often forgotten that we are Yours. At times, we live our lives as if there was no God and we fall short of being who You created us to be. We have lived fo...

The pyschologist Carl Rogers, a person who would know quite well the interior lives of others, has this to say of our inmost thoughts: I have most invariably found that the very feeling which has see...

And so, like runaway slaves, we either flee our own reality or manufacture a false self which is mostly admirable, mildly prepossessing, and superficially happy. We hide what we know or feel ourselves...

People can say one thing and do something totally different. You see the darkness that is often hidden from polite society. The thing that you see is a widespread insecurity. I think people put on a f...