Politics With Peyton: Our Self-worth Can Only Come From God

So often we hear society tell us, “You need to love yourself,” or “Self-care is important” and – my personal favorite – “You are enough”. 

We are called to place the needs of others first (Phil. 2:4). We are called to have a selfless love (Gal. 5:14). We are told that we cannot take a step in life without the help of the Lord (Prov. 16:9). 

We cannot find worth and self-fulfillment from ourselves. If we live without Christ and we are looking within ourselves to find fulfillment, then we will only find emptiness. Our identity must come from Jesus because it is He who gives us purpose in life. 

Without Christ, our life is meaningless. 

The truth is, we are not enough to go through life on our own. Our nature is sin; therefore, if we look to ourselves, we will only find sinful desires like pride, envy and arrogance, which are all rooted in selfishness. 

We don’t need to love ourselves; we need to love the Creator who gives us our purpose. When we recognize our body as a temple in which Christ resides, we have a reason to take care of it. We are not enough, but we serve a living God who is and that is what gives us our purpose. 

If we were enough on our own, then we would not have a need for Christ. 

This is why society is lost. Society is trying to find its identity, purpose and meaning for life but is looking in all the wrong places. We are imperfect creations, but we serve a perfect Creator; therefore, we must turn to Him. 

Allie Beth Stuckey is a podcast host who discusses all thing politics and theology. In 2020 she released a book that exposes the toxicity behind the self-love culture, called “You’re Not Enough and That’s Okay.” Through this book she furthers this idea and explains how needy we are of God. 

Any time Biblical figures decided they could do it on their own and insisted that they were enough, destruction was the consequence. This is a common theme throughout the Bible, and especially in the book of Judges. They learned the hard way that they were made to need God. 

“I am completely empty, I am completely useless, I am completely inadequate and sinful and depraved, and have no capacity for righteousness; but God,” said Stuckey on episode 85 of her podcast, “Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey”.  

We recognize we are not enough. We can never be enough to find fulfilment, purpose and identity. We can only find those qualities within the Creator of the universe; only God can fill the God-shaped hole in our life. 

“That longing lives within us until we find communication with God and experience His love. It is only in God that our restless hearts can find rest. Otherwise, we spend our days trying to silence longing with food and drink and money and sex and power. None of it works,” Saint Augustine wrote in his Confessions of Faith. 

MacKenzie is the opinion editor. Follow her on Twitter at @PeytMacK.