In this chapter, Moore offers a few helpful strategies for dealing with insecurity “in the moment.” She offers several scenarios that serve as examples for when women are especially tempted act on insecurity rather than “that secure person God has placed within us.”
The first step is “to start catching ourselves in the act of comparison and call ourselves out.” Moore also says it’s important that we speak healthy, encouraging words to ourselves.
The second step is to personalize other women. Drawing from Eugene Peterson’s translation of Galatians 5:21 (“…the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival.”), Moore says that to feel threatened by another woman means that we have first succeeded in stripping her of humanity and slapping a label on her. Instead of depersonalizing, Moore encourages her reader to look at her “rival” as just another broken person who has “real problems, pain, hopes, dreams, and disappointments.” The next bit of advice is to pray for the woman. Moore writes, “I’ve also found it difficult to keep despising someone I consistently pray for.”
The third step is to be sensitive to the feelings and insecurities of other women; do not do something that you know will exacerbate the insecurities of another woman. Do things to stimulate your girlfriend’s security rather than feed her insecurity. This leads to the fourth step…
Exemplify security. Moore says the main way we can do this is to remember WHO lives in us. Citing 2 Corinthians 4:6-7, she says,
“We have this treasure! We are aflame with God’s glory and radiating with the light of His knowledge in the exquisite face of His Son, Jesus Christ. And we’re insecure? What kind of lies have we believed all this time? We, of all people on the earth, possess the reason, the residence, and the ongoing revelation to be, of all things, most secure.”
The fifth step involves an interesting interpretive twist on Psalm 84 which she picked up from Jennifer Rothschild’s book, Me Myself and Lies. Psalm 84:1 says, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!” Bringing together that verse, 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 6:19, Moore determines that it is doctrinally correct to say that because God’s dwelling place is believers, then believers’ physical bodies are lovely. The final step is for a woman to tell herself, “I am lovely!”
That’s all fine and good until you get birds making nests and laying eggs in your hair (see Psalm 84:3). Oh, I kid.
The above is just a very distilled version of this chapter. I appreciate Moore’s instruction to us to be mindful of our thoughts, to take specific measures to combat insecurity when we sense it, and to be an encouragement to one another. Most of the chapter is high on anecdotes, many of them discussing how a woman goes about dressing and making herself up.
I know that being considered physically attractive is one of the main ways women attempt to feel secure, but I think the connection she makes between God’s dwelling place being lovely and our physical bodies is a bit of a stretch. Many other scriptures about how God does not look on the outward appearance, how our bodies are wasting away, and how beauty is fleeting also come to mind. Perhaps a more spiritual perspective would have been better: we are beautiful (and secure) in as much as we are a display of the beauty of the Lord; He looks on our hearts and declares us beautiful in as much as we reflect the attributes of His Son. Perhaps? I don’t know….just thinking out loud.
It would have been very appropriate had she placed greater emphasis on how the gospel (the “we have this treasure” part) fundamentally transforms who we are, how we behave, and what/how we think of ourselves and others.
There are three more chapters to go. I’m hoping for greater depth.
She actually drew a comparison to that verse in the Psalms? LOL. Wow. How do people get suckered into this kind of thing?
BTW-Good to see you’re back.
Thanks. I needed a little break from the book, but now really want to finish blogging through it.
Disclaimer: I haven’t read the book. However, I tend to be wary of any emphasis at all on our appearance because it seems that so many women are obsessed, to one degree or another, with their appearance. I have a small circle of acquaintances that it seems their one talking point is exercise and working out! Nothing wrong with either of those things except for the fact that they can easily become an idol, as with anything else good and admirable. I agree with your point, Leslie: let’s focus on the transforming power of the gospel and on the beauty of Christ. We will not become more secure by telling ourselves we are lovely. Our only security is Christ and His work on the cross!
Perhaps I lean too far to the opposite extreme?
I don’t think you lean too far, Lisa. I agree with you. I’m in the middle of “Becoming a Woman of Excellence” by Cynthia Heald. Just last night, our group was discussing how we must walk a line between being too caught up in our appearance and not paying any attention to it at all. Either can be a stumbling block (for us or for others).
I haven’t read this either, but it sounds like a typical feel-good self-help book. Do we really need another one of those?
That one is in my “to read” pile! I hope I can get to it soon.
First Things has an interesting blog post up from a bit back on Moore’s handling of Paul in this book: http://firstthings.com/blogs/evangel/2010/08/more-on-beth-moore/