Earning Acceptance
How do you measure up? And why are we all compelled to measure up. Is it the bent of humanity’s flawed design or are we being courted into relationship with our designer. Is it part of childhood development to begin comparing to the pre-school Joneses? What draws us into a particular economy of self?
I asked you what your personal currency was, but you didn’t answer, so now you have to hear more about me. My currency is productivity. I watched the men I admired most contentedly work almost all of their waking hours. My Grandfather would often say, “you’ve got to have your hand on the plow”. Early on I emulated this practice and it soon became the filter that screened the information that became my self-image. Since there is always plenty of work to do I am seldom at risk of slipping into the feelings that accompany idleness. I can even take pride in my building, fixing, creating, maintaining, helping, and improving. I can be self righteous about it in spite of the fact that I have often produced good things with mixed motives.
The power of the self-image is that its product is self-worth. Once the currency of self-image is valued the price of a person is established. If I had planned a big project and entropy foiled my plans I was more than disappointed. There was a desperate need to salvage the day, to find another worthwhile endeavor, so that I would not look back and say,” I didn’t get a thing done today”. The personal stock exchange would rise and fall based on my assessment of personal accomplishment. In short, I attached a daily price tag reporting how I measured up.
So, as I asked you before, what is your currency? What’s your “if Only…” If only I had more money, love, attractiveness, belonging, or accomplishment, I would measure up. Why do you do that? It’s like you have a code you have to live by in order to measure up and earn your keep.
Like my twisted little currency system, there are others that look admirable until the surface is scratched. Then they are exposed as the “working my way to acceptance” systems that they are. Say your system is service to others. Many times your motive is pure and the service brings joy; because it is what we designed to do; but service as your currency is a trap. If you fall in this trap you don’t feel “good enough” and you believe that those who are will want to keep you around if you are useful. This is a manipulative game with simple rules and no time limit. There will always be people willing to play the game with you because while you attempt to manipulate them into accepting you they are being served. Unscrupulous people will happily play the game with you. They know that giving you the acceptance you crave will end the game. Loving and well-meaning people will play the game unwittingly; and when they give you acceptance you will discount it. Because you know that you manipulated them into it.
Until we identify the currency we have chosen to form self-image we will have variable self-worth. Even those with seemingly secure situations; like a Rockefeller who has financial security as his measure of self-worth, can be trapped. Slight fluctuations in financial markets will affect even this person deeply. Beautiful women who have chosen beauty as their currency will crave and reject praise. The things we choose to measure ourselves by have power. The currency is counterfeit, so there is never enough.
Perhaps this counterfeit currency I have used to earn my place in the world is a part of development. By the age of establishing a self-image I am also aware of my own selfish nature. Maybe the currency system I developed is my religious attempt, my works dogma, to earn the acceptance I crave. Perhaps this natural moral development is also evidence of courtship by our designer. Have I fallen into the Pharisee’s trap; following and adding to the letter of the law, while ignoring the spirit inspires it. Jesus said of them,” If I had not come and spoken to them they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin.” Maybe the designer allows for this longing to develop in us. Possibly, the continual struggle for self-worth is like the Hebrew Law in that it is impossible to keep flawlessly. Perhaps both the Law and our self-worth economy were designed to show us our need of grace.