You are not a product to be perfected
Contrition versus compassion
My teenage years were punctuated by Christian youth camps, retreats and revival days. An altar call or at least a call to look hard at our sins from where we sat was always a centrepiece. I was there for it with the powerfully emotive music, the rhythmically paced words, sometimes the adjusted lightning and the instruction, whether implicit or explicit, to stand or do something with my hands.
Throughout my life into my early 30s, I willed myself to feel the Holy Spirit moving through me, which was synonymous with a profound sense of my unworthiness and a self-scanning for wickedness. I relied on returning again and again to the emotional experience of contrition to give me the sense that I was allowed my place in the world.
One of the choices I’ve made in redefining my own spirituality has been to actively and continually practise leaving behind self-flagellation and instead invite self-compassion. A younger version of me would call this “calling evil good and good evil”. I know that with certainty because she still lives in me.
Recently, I had to make a difficult but necessary decision to stop serving others in a particular way. Many were understanding but the voices that came through loudest for me were the ones that echoed my inner altar call, which told me that I could only be loved if I called myself wretched.
It’s led me to reflect on what contrition versus compassion can look in the wider landscape of our lives particularly around decision making. Maybe you’ll identify with this, having had a similar religious upbringing but the colonial reach of Europatriarchal Christianity in shaping cultures means that we probably all reckon with at least some of this to at least some degree. Let me know what you think.
Contrition…
Requires you to exhaust all your resources before giving up on the thing you set out to do. It expects you to pour out everything for others. It demands that you burn out in order to validate your choice to stop serving.
It withholds compassion until its hunger for suffering is satiated. It calls for suffering to be visible and extensive, and marked out by externally set parameters.
It expects you to be ultimately dictated to by fear of others’ disappointment in you.
It upholds the image of an impossible “best self” that never makes mistakes so long as it remains in alignment or grounded or in submission.
It doesn’t really accept that you have needs.
Compassion…
Asks that you honour yourself. It cautions you to stop before you break down and have nothing left to give. It prioritises your wellbeing. It values you based on your being not on your service.
It does not demand an apology or an excavation of self before it permits you to change course.
It reminds you that requiring endless servitude is rooted in many intersecting oppressions.
It recognises that it takes great strength and softness to do so much of what life invites us to do. It loves you and holds you as you feel the weight of everything.
It champions not only your needs but your desires, knowing that this is where the life is.
As I move through this moment, I see that when I rely on the emotional experience of contrition or self-flagellation, I’m treating myself as a product to be perfected over time. On the other hand, self-compassion smilingly makes my life about the process of learning how to learn, rather than about getting it right.
By leaning into that process, I’m building self trust and developing wisdom. I’m growing willing to disappoint others where it’s necessary and to step back and ask myself hard questions - not about my worthiness but about simply what is mine to do in this season.
What is yours to do, friend?