We all want to be known and want to know that we matter. This longing for significance is something that all humans share. We can pursue significance in countless ways, trying to fill up our hearts with a sense of belonging, worthiness, or importance. Hidden underneath our clamoring for wealth, power, beauty, popularity, and so much more is the universal human need to be recognized. In a sense, we are all hearkening back to the garden of Eden where God looked at Adam and Eve and declared them to be "very good". We long to have those words spoken to us by someone who looks upon us and sees beauty.
Personally, I tend to turn to myself, telling myself that I am good enough on my own, that I am smart enough to figure it out alone, and that I am better off moving ahead under my own strength. My own personal idols of performance, competence, and productivity are the greatest sources of pride and sorrow in my own life. They continually fail to deliver the "very good" proclamation my soul longs to hear.
I think that somewhere hidden in our souls is the knowledge that anyone or anything besides God saying those words ultimately rings hollow. That isn't to say the affirmation and encouragement of others isn't needed or important. Rather, it is exposing the underlying reality that we have areas of our life that we know are not "very good". These ugly areas contribute to a sense of being unloved because we know that somehow, they are quite the opposite of what God created to be "very good".
Some people compartmentalize the "very good" and the ugly parts of their lives, only letting others see the parts of them that will bring praise and affirmation. All of us also have a measure of ignorance regarding ugly areas of life with blind spots of various sizes. Others of us, myself included in seasons of anxiety and depression, can become buried in the ugliness in our lives, failing to see that there are indeed areas of our lives that are praiseworthy.
Becoming more aware of the ugly areas of our lives, the things we think that make us unlovable, drive us to our idols if we aren't careful. We mistakenly think that perhaps the next achievement or pay raise will help us feel "very good". Or maybe we chase a number of the scale or a level of fitness. Or perhaps if we can have a certain kind of family we will feel "very good". Ultimately, these things are unable to deliver on their promises to make us feel loved.
There isn't much rest to be found in our striving to be lovable. Whatever it is that we are chasing for some measure of affection and acceptance will fail to fill the God-sized void of love and acceptance that we were created for.
I've been in a season of repentance over some of my idols. I like to be told that I'm well-read, or a deep thinker. I like for others to think of me as competent and kind. I relish the affirmation that comes after giving a word of wisdom. What is so tricky for my heart isn't that those things are bad. They are part of how God has wired me after all and part of what is "very good" in me.
The problem is that my heart runs to those things for comfort when I am feeling unloved or unlovable. When I am keenly aware the ugly parts of my life, I make sure that only the those good parts of me are visible to others. Rather than owning the ugly in my life and bringing it into the light so that I can move towards a fuller and deeper restoration of the "very good" in me, I will bury it. I will cast more and more chips on the bet that those few "good" things in me will outstrip the ugly in me.
God doesn't want that for me or for any of us. He doesn't want us to just bring our best parts to him. He wants all of us, and perhaps more than anything, he wants us to bring the broken and the ugly and the unlovable to him. He wants to cleanse, heal, redeem, and bring into the light the very things that we are most inclined to hide. God's love for us is precisely the kind of love that wants to enter into our deepest places of pain and shame.
What I have often failed to understand is that God's love for me isn't the result of me polishing up the best parts of my life for him to admire. That soul-ache of loneliness that comes from knowing my unlovable parts is actually why God sent Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for my sins. God, in His magnificent, adopting love wants me because he chose me apart from any lovable things I might have in my life. God loves the unlovable parts of me because it is where the glory of the cross shines most brightly.
When feeling unloved or unlovable we don't have to turn anywhere besides God to be reminded that his love speaks a better word than our feelings. Whatever we have deemed to be "very good" in our lives and whatever ugliness we try to hide doesn't matter because as His redeemed child, he declares all of our being to be "very good" in Christ. We don't have to earn his affection or impress him to experience intimacy with him. He takes all of us for himself.
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