I have met Christians over the years who seem to look at any sort of writings from the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis etc. with a great deal of suspicion. My own feeling is truth is truth. Just a couple of quotes for this blog and not much else. They have come back to my mind recently as I come to terms with certain changes in capacity. It is easy for me to fall into a wrong type of disdaining of myself.

I hope what I share here may help. I am pretty sure some of us would struggle with quite a lot of what  Carl Jung says, however I hope you can hear an echo of the compassion of Christ in these  particular words , and can think of the obvious Scriptures that are relevant without me telling you. I hope they might challenge you to love the tender  and weak places in yourself, the parts of you that may even hide from you! I hope what I quote here will help some of us become a safer place for ourselves. By the grace of God and the power of the Spirit I pray these various hopes I have will be fulfilled.

Here are the quotes:

“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ — all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself — that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness — that I myself am the enemy who must be loved — what then? As a rule, the Christian’s attitude is then reversed; there is no longer any question of love or long-suffering; we say to the brother within us “Raca,” and condemn and rage against ourselves. We hide it from the world; we refuse to admit ever having met this least among the lowly in ourselves.“(By the way Raca means calling ourself “fool!”)

– Carl Jung in Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“You cannot apply kindness and understanding to others if you have not applied it to yourself.”

– Carl Jung, Letters Vol. II, Pages 515-516

Happy thinking. Allow yourself to come out of hiding and be loved by God and by you.

Kenny