Against Impostor Syndrome--November 3, 2022

Against Impostor Syndrome--November 3, 2022

"Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many.  If the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose." [1 Corinthians 12:14-18]

You belong because God says so, not because you say so.

Think about that--it's kind of humbling and empowering at the same time.  Each of us belongs in the community we call the body of Christ, not on the grounds that we each see our purpose and recognize our contributions to the whole, but because God see our worthiness and chooses to include us.  

Presumably, that also means I can't lose my belonging just because I go through a season of struggle, or face a time of depression, or wrestle with burning out or feeling useless.  Because my place in the body was never really up to me or my achieving it, and it certainly doesn't depend on how I compare to somebody else. It has always been God who says I belong, and who says the same of you.

So much of the world we inhabit operates like everything is a competition--like there are only so many spots on God's "team," and if you don't make the cut you're out.  So much of the way we operate in the "grown-up" realms of business and marketplace, of politics and power, and of academic achievement assumes that if you don't measure up to someone else by some particular metric, you don't have value.  The more we hear that, the more we end up believing it, until the echo chamber convinces us that we are impostors just waiting to be found out. But from Paul's vantage point, it was never up to someone else, and it was never even up to you to decide if you "think" or "feel" like you are worthy of belonging to the people of God.  

Part of the problem, of course, as Paul points out, is we so easily use one set of criteria to determine who belongs.  When ears start using "vision" as the criterion for worthiness, of course, they are going to fall far short of the eyes.  When feet assume that the determining factor for worthiness is having opposable thumbs, they will never measure up.  But maybe that's just it--when we use someone else's gift and turn it into a standard by which to judge ourselves, we will always find ourselves disappointed and dejected. Mozart was an amazing composer--but I'll bet his skill at laying brick was less than mediocre.  Einstein revolutionized physics in the 20th century, but I'd wager he couldn't perform a triple-lutz in a figure skating program on the ice.  Your grandmother might well have known how to write in shorthand or make a pie crust from scratch without a written recipe, but she is likely to have some trouble installing new software on her computer or configuring a wireless router for her internet connection.  You will not be a virtuoso in some area, but you'll have skills and excellence in others.  It's a losing game to try and measure up to someone else's gifts when you have different ones, and yet we keep telling ourselves we have to play it.  But we don't.

Today, maybe it's enough to stop playing the old games like that.  Today maybe it's enough of a revolt against impostor syndrome to hear these words from Paul that tell us our worthiness does not depend on how we measure up.  Today, just let the words hit you and sink in: your belonging in the body of Christ isn't up to you--it isn't up to your own self-evaluation or how you compare to someone else.  It is up to the God who first chose you to belong and calls you forever beloved.  

What we can do in this day is to believe what God says about us.

Lord God, help us to believe in the belonging you have given us by your choosing, and to trust your promise that we do not have to compare ourselves to anyone else to be worthy of a place.