Is Ash Wednesday all about the death of the self? Does focusing on sin promote self-hatred? Is practicing Lent a dangerous denial of self that jeopardizes mental health?
But what if there is a therapeutic benefit to Lent? A healing or curing (which is what “therapy” means) of the mind, body, and soul?
Starting today and running through Lent, I will be exploring “The Therapy of Lent”, looking at the similarities and differences between the findings of neuroscience and psychology and the ancient wisdom of Scripture and the church.
Today we are going to talk about Ash Wednesday and self-compassion.
The Cross is the only way home
In 2011, two years before he died, I heard Dallas Willard at a small conference of church planters and pastors. The only phrase I remember from his entire talk is when he said, “The Cross is the only way home.”
Our restless yearnings to belong, our deep longing not only for safety and security, but for creative partnership and co-laboring, our desperate desire to pursue intimacy and practice some independence—in a word, to have a home—is found through the Cross, through pain, suffering, and death.
This is the promise and the paradox of Christianity, of following Jesus.
The march to the cross is called the passion of Jesus. It is called this because “passion” comes from the root word in Latin meaning “to suffer, bear, or endure”. Lent is our preparation and participation in the suffering of Christ who suffered for us. Lent is our co-crucifixion with Christ, so that we can say with the Apostle Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
In a very real way, in the passion of Jesus, we learn compassion (suffering-with another as they suffer-for us). And through this, through Lent up to Holy Week and the Cross, we learn self-compassion.
In the passion of Jesus, we learn compassion and self-compassion.
What Is Self-Compassion?
About 20 years ago, psychologist Kristin Neff began developing the notion of self-compassion as a counterweight to the much celebrated, but now seen to be misguided and backfiring, concept of self-esteem (see The Education of Selves for the critique of the self-esteem movement in psychology and education).
Neff defined compassion as having two parts.
First, it “involves being touched by the suffering of others, opening one’s awareness to others’ pain and not avoiding or disconnecting from it, so that feelings of kindness toward others and the desire to alleviate their suffering emerge.”
Second, it is also “offering nonjudgmental understanding to those who fail or do wrong, so that their actions and behaviors are seen in the context of shared human fallibility.”1
So self-compassion, therefore, “involves being touched by and open to one’s own suffering, not avoiding or disconnecting from it, generating the desire to alleviate one’s suffering and to heal oneself with kindness” and “offering nonjudgmental understanding to one’s pain, inadequacies and failures, so that one’s experience is seen as part of the larger human experience.”2
The details of this mean three things for Neff: 1) We should treat ourselves with kindness rather than harsh criticism or judgment (i.e. treat yourself as you would a small child); 2) Understand your common humanity with other flawed and limited people; 3) Mindfully “aware of one’s painful experiences in a balanced way that neither ignores and avoids nor exaggerates painful thoughts and emotions.3
Some suggest that Neff’s conception of self-compassion is really nothing else than a recovery of the ancient concept of humility (and researchers are finding that humility has a positive correlation to mental health).
"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
These are the words of Ash Wednesday.
These are the words of the common curse over humanity, that sin and death will return us to dust, “for dust you are and to dust you will return” (Gen. 3:19).
For Christians, not only are we fragile and flawed, but we are also captured within the kingdom of sin and death (Rom. 5:12-21), suffering its consequences.
Ash Wednesday is a reminder of the common plight of humanity, not only that death is the great equalizer, but that sin is our constant adversary.
Jesus takes on the dust of our fragile and flawed humanity, even entering into combat with death, as an act of compassion for us.
Ash Wednesday not only reminds us that death is the great equalizer, but that sin is our constant adversary.
The Foundation of Self-Compassion is God’s Compassion
Ash Wednesday specifically, and Lent generally, is not an entrance into self-hatred and self-shaming over sin. Rather Lent is really about positioning ourselves to be embraced by the compassion of God so that we can practice self-compassion.
Psychological theories of self-compassion ultimately fail because they cannot explain why we should have compassion on ourselves (why are we actually worthy of love).
Like the self-esteem movement, self-compassion fails to transform us if it only comes from within, from me trying harder to be kind to myself, from me trying to embrace my own suffering with compassion. In the end, speaking spiritually, this becomes its own kind of well-intentioned “works righteous” in an attempt to “save myself.”
But thankfully, as Psalm 103 reminds us, all this confession and repentance, all this remembrance of sin and death, happens within the great removal of our sin and transgression, for “as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love (hesed) toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so har he removes our transgressions from us” (Ps. 103:11-12).
We can develop self-compassion because the LORD has had compassion on us, just as a parent toward a child, just like coming home.
13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;14 for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:13-14)
Let us embrace the healing of Ash Wednesday, let us practice the therapy of Lent by receiving again the compassion of God who first loved us, so that we could love others, and maybe, even love ourselves.
Neff, Kristin D.. “Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy Attitude Toward Oneself.” Self and Identity 2 (2003): 101 - 85.
Neff, Kristin D.. “Self-Compassion: An Alternative Conceptualization of a Healthy Attitude Toward Oneself.” Self and Identity 2 (2003): 101 - 85.
Warren, Ricks, Elke Smeets and Kristin D. Neff. “Self-criticism and self-compassion: risk and resilience: being compassionate to oneself is associated with emotional resilience and psychological well-being.” Current psychiatry 15 (2016): 18-28.
The therapy of Lent and definition of self-compassion remind me of Cathy Loerzel’s U diagram in which to have the Easter morning experience of resurrection and healing of our trauma, we must slide to the bottom of the U and relive our trauma- akin to Jesus in the wilderness or His Good Friday experience on the cross- but with the presence of an empathetic witness to show us kindness and compassion.
I have attended Ash Wednesday services many times, but I do not recall thinking about the implication you have laid out here. I am always wondering what people mean when they say to be kind to yourself. If you are being ruthlessly honest with yourself and naming what the sin is, it may not feel kind (shame may surface) but if the naming it with specificity and paticularity (as Allender teaches) stops the pain . . isn't THAT being kind to yourself? Hmm . . I suppose if you are naming so that you will feel shame, that could be unkind. That sounds like leaning into mental illness.
Kelley mentioned Cathy Loerzel's U diagram. I have to be sitting face to face in that lecture with others so I can ask them "what did she mean?" immediately after she finishes talking. I can hold onto it in the context of race, an Asian woman in a room full of white people walks into the room at the bottom of the U, where we have to fall into the U. I supposed you could be a woman in a room of mostly men and you would be at the bottom.
And I don't think I would have ever linked ruthless naming with humility. Actually that defines humility well I think.
I'm going to forward this to my people. Did your head hurt after you finished writing this? I was leading a conversation last night about gazing at Jesus or rather His gazing at us. Maybe I'll send this to that group. I think it's part of the conversation.