Grief and Self-Pity
Copyright 2004 by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
Grief is honest and cleansing. Self-pity is dishonest and self-reinforcing. These two responses to loss bear a superficial resemblance to one another but nothing more. They are not the same. Christians, like all human beings, are susceptible to either condition but only one is acceptable to God.
The shortest sentence in the Scriptures is "Jesus wept." It was on the occasion of His arrival at the home of Lazarus who had died four days before. He encountered the crying and wailing of those who had loved this disciple and was soon weeping Himself. In doing so the sinless Son of God ratified grief as the proper human response to loss. Elsewhere in the New Testament we are told to "mourn with those who mourn and rejoice with those who rejoice." At no point does God condemn this kind of expression of sorrow. Why would Christ condemn what He, in His humanness, had experienced himself?
It has been said that human beings grieve because on a deep level we know that something has gone horribly wrong with our existence. We were designed for unbroken communion with the God who created us, with all the peace, acceptance, meaning and permanence such communion implies. When we fell as a race and death entered our reality we lost the world we were designed to exist in. Ever since the Garden all flesh has cried out in the pain of displacement from who and where we were meant to be. We have been banished from paradise and not yet restored to the place of fully realized atonement that our resurrection will bring. The only right response to the loss that sin visits upon us as we live in this between time is to lament. While we live "East of Eden" we cannot help but cry out with the innate sense that something we once had we have no longer. This is true for both believer and unbeliever. It is part and parcel of the human condition.
Yet the Word of God also commands the Christian not to mourn as the world does. What does it mean to mourn that way? The Bible talks of a sorrow that brings death. This is the sorrow that is not touched by the hope of restoration. It is also sorrow that fails to take into consideration the good things God has given us that remain even after we have suffered great loss. Finally it is sorrow that is narcissistic in nature. This unhealthy kind of mourning has a name: self-pity.
Self-pity is dishonest because it does not see, nor does it want to see, the remedy God has provided us in Christ. It is self-reinforcing for the same reason. Self-pity does not lead to anything but more self-pity. If we stay in this state long enough, if we indulge it rather than resist it, it will destroy us. Self-pity is a function of the part of ourselves Jesus said we must die to. In contrast honest grief, especially honest grief we invite Him in to, is cleansing and restorative. Godly grief is part of the healing process that we all so desperately need after losing someone or something near and dear to us. Self-pity, by comparison, heals nothing. In fact it makes the wound become more painful causes it to grow. Ultimately it leads to a sort of spiritual infection.
It is possible to repent from self-pity. We need to recognize this sin for what it is and the death it brings. We can then reject it and ask for the Spirit to bring us to a new place of healthy grief. We can also ask God to make us aware that, while difficult, this redemptive kind of pain is difficult in the good sense of the word. Among other things the hardness of grief causes us to cry out to God and implore Him to draw near and help us bear it. By inviting Him into our grief we give Him permission to enter into our lives in a new way. When we embrace honest sorrow Jesus helps us to reckon with and accept our losses and then realize that "by His stripes we are healed." With this healing comes a new and blessed intimacy with our Lord that redeems the hurt we have known for a season. To paraphrase the Scripture, mourning endures for a night, but joy will surely come in the morning.