RESOLVING GOOD AND BAD

I picked up Hiding from Love by Dr. John Townsend again after letting it sit on my bookshelf for a long while. Came across this section tonight that shed a lot of light on my struggle with accepting both the good parts and the bad parts of myself.

We have a need to accept the bad parts of ourselves and the world. This need is important because it helps us bring our own badness to a place of forgiveness. Our imperfect characteristics need to be brought into connection with God and others. What we fail to keep in relationship stays unforgiven and broken.
Our "forgiveness muscle" can be injured in many ways:

A perfectionistic environment, or one in which failure is a cause for shame, can keep our goodness and badness split apart.

Relationships and families that overstress the "excellent" parts of people, at the expense of the "mediocre" parts, discourage us from accepting our imperfections and bringing them to Christ.

Over-positive environments that keep us from legitimate grief can also keep our badness hidden.

Idealistic denial is a characteristic of some families who keep their members stuck in a naive position.

Another section that I could identify with was one of the defensive behaviour styles called the "Self-attacking style" or "Turning against the self."

In this style of internal hiding from separateness, the aggression that can't be "owned" is redirected against the self. It becomes more acceptable to hate ouselves than to tell the truth about our rage at the sin of others against us.

In Christian circles, especially, the self-attacking style is often culturally rewarded. This is due to the fact that it's easy for people who are self-deprecating to be seen as spiritual, or under great conviction. The truth is, they are actually lying about their protest against injury.

It's also easy to mistake this hiding pattern as a defense. Since the hurting person seems to be openly dealing with his weakness, it appears that there is no concealment. At closer inspection, however, it's apparent that what the person is hiding is his actual separate, differentiated, justice-loving angry parts. [emphasis mine]

I had often wondered why I didn't often identify "anger" as an emotion in my life. I think I'm starting to see that it's been showing up in alternate ways. And I hope by God's grace, that I'll learn to bring those hidden parts out into the open and learn to tell the truth about myself.

I'm thankful I bought this book. It's proving to be a very helpful gem. =)