Guess what one of the most searched-for topics of the year in the UK is, according to Google? Along with the US election and David Bowie, it's this: 'How to accept myself for who I am'.
It's easy to pour scorn on this as meaningless psychobabble, and not entirely unfair. But beneath that Google search ranking there's a whole hinterland of unhappiness. Many, many people are discontented with themselves. They feel they ought to be happier, more confident, wiser, wealthier, better looking. They don't feel they can achieve their goals and they want to know how they can live with that.
Way up in Google's answers is an article from Therapists Spill entitled '12 Ways to Accept Yourself'. Among the suggestions offered by practising therapists are "Celebrate your strengths", "Create a support system" and "Shush your inner critic".
It's all excellent advice. Anyone really struggling with low self-esteem or general unhappiness ought to read it. We can, to a certain extent, affect our mental state by being aware of what brings us down. We can practise good habits in how we think about ourselves and how we relate to other people.
But there's still something missing, and it goes back to the initial question: How do I accept myself for who I am?
It's a question framed in secular terms that seeks a purely secular answer. It focuses on the autonomous individual, with no reference to any kind of external authority or standard. It assumes we're OK, and that our feelings of guilt and inadequacy are aberrations, to be cured by therapy or self-help. Self-acceptance is a sort of secular heaven.
Christians want to offer a different vision – less immediately attractive, but more true to life.
We say, based on our reading of the Bible and our experience of human nature, that we're not OK. We've done things we ought not to have done and left undone things we ought to have done. We have dark places in our hearts. We sometimes think things we're ashamed of.
For Christians, that question 'How do I accept myself for who I am?' isn't a bad one. We know the power of destructive and negative thoughts. We draw on the wisdom of therapists just like anyone else. But we ground our acceptance not in a rejection of guilt, but in an acknowledgment of it – and in the knowledge that we are loved with an infinite, passionate and sacrificial love anyway. "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8).
And we believe the question needs to be followed by another one: "How can I change?" Because accepting ourselves as we are involves accepting that our dissatisfaction with our character and behaviour has a purpose. It isn't something to get over. It's God's way of holding us to account and challenging us to do better.
I don't want to accept myself as I am if that means accepting my bad temper, my laziness or my indifference to other people's needs. I'm glad of the divine discontentment I feel when I'm challenged about these things. I don't like feeling guilty, but that doesn't mean guilt is unhealthy; it's normal and right. It's meant to make us do better in future.
Sometimes Christians wonder where they can touch the lives of people who don't seem to need the gospel and appear to run their lives perfectly well without it. But there are millions who are asking a question to which the Church has an answer. It might not be one they like, but it speaks straight to their hearts.
'How can I accept myself?' It starts with realising you are already accepted.
Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods
