Tag: perfectionist

According to the great theologian Paul Tillich

anxiety appears in three forms:

anxiety of death

anxiety of meaninglessness

anxiety of condemnation

another great theologian Karl Barth

wrote that God condemns no one to hell – 

we create our own hell –

thus in Church Dogmatics Barth radically departed

from John Calvin’s doctrine of double predestination –

God predestines some to heaven

and some to hell – what kind of God would do that?

so, Barth favored a simple predestination to heaven

however, people can create hells for other people –

going beyond Barth, higher education allowed women 

to create postcolonial/liberation/inculturated theologies –

the spread of women’s voices across the world

gave them the power to address unjust global structures

of finance and business

and to connect capitalism/colonialism/racism

the basic motivation in healthy Christianity 

is based in union with God –

from there the sacred water keeps flowing

and washes away all women’s sense 

of inferiority/unworthiness/low self-esteem

but women today can get caught up

in perfectionism – “having it all” – 

making unrealistic demands on themselves

the pursuit of excellence on the other hand 

allows women to take pleasure 

in striving to meet their own high standards

without castigating themselves 

they learned that loving themselves

means embracing their own

strengths and weaknesses

insights and stupidities

successes and failures

body and soul

badness and goodness

finiteness and infiniteness

so there is no longer any shame or self-condemnation.