The Gifts of Imperfection
The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are: Your Guide to a Wholehearted Life
By: Brené Brown
“Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we will ever do.”
This is the first sentence I read from this book. And I wanted to stop reading.
Brené Brown is very popular. Her books and TED talks are best-sellers and viral videos. And she’s basically best friends with Oprah Winfrey. She is well-known for her research on shame and fear and how resilience influences our life in these areas.
What could be wrong with this book?
I am here to offer you an unpopular opinion of this book. You may or may not agree with me. Perhaps God has used this book and her intended inspirational teachings to begin to change the trajectory of your life. He can use the imperfect or incomplete to reach you, but if you are seeking truth, the Gospel completes and corrects what Brené Brown leaves unfinished.
I’m not here to bash everything she teaches. I believe some of her directives will benefit how you see yourself and talk to yourself.
There are a few things I felt were helpful or insightful, I’ll share those first and then offer my critique of her philosophy.
The helpful:
“Shame loves secrecy.” (voicing our shame releases its hold over us)
“Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” (critical theory and the woke mob needs this sentiment)
“We can confront someone about their behavior, or fire someone, or fail a student, or discipline a child without berating them or putting them down. The key is to separate people from their behaviors— to address what they’re doing, not who they are.” (great parenting advice!)
“We are wired for connection. It’s in our biology.” (God made us to be in relationship with him and others)
“When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”
“Fitting in and belonging are not the same thing… Fitting in is about assessing a situation and becoming who you need to be to be accepted. Belonging, on the other hand, doesn’t require us to change who we are; it requires us to be who we are.” (interesting distinction to ponder)
“there are days when most of my anxiety grows out of the expectations I put on myself” paired with “What’s on our ‘supposed to’ list? Who says? Why?” (mom guilt comes from wrong expectations and pressures that play into our insecurities)
“‘An attitude of gratitude’... an attitude is an orientation or way of thinking and doesn’t always translate to a behavior.” (do we put our gratitude into practice or just wax eloquent?)
“There’s no such thing as creative people and non-creative people. There are only people who use their creativity and people who don’t.” (if we’re all created in the image of the Creator than we must all have the capacity to create!)
But if I could describe this book in one word it would be: EMPTY.
Her ideas fall squarely in a very popular sphere of life right now: self-love. All of her solutions to achieve happiness and wholeheartedness come from within. (See also Girl, Wash Your Face) Sure, she briefly mentions spirituality, but her spirituality is one we all must select and curate to fit ourselves.
Self. Self. Self.
But WHAT IF, to truly know ourselves and to love who we are, we must know our Creator and who He created us to be?
I found The Gifts of Imperfection to be empty because Brown has sourced everything from the self, turning the self into a god— a god that will only let us down and lead to further disappointment and anxiety. For if we must rely on ourselves, it is up to us to achieve what we seek. We would carry the heavy burden of creating a satisfactory ‘self’ and working daily to be our own hero. When we’re honest with ourselves— who has the strength and capacity for that?
Brown essentially says, ‘Be better, think better, choose better, dig deep enough, and you will find what you are looking for and you will get through anything.’
The Bible says, “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12: 9-10)
There is no freedom in having to be self-sufficient. There is freedom in knowing God is sufficient.
Brown wants us to realize ‘I am enough.'
The Bible wants us to realize that ‘God is enough.’
There is confidence in realizing that an all-knowing, all-powerful God loves me and created me individually in his own image with meaning and purpose. His love is not tethered to my ability to do good or be enough— it is unconditional. And he tells me to come to him for identity, rest, strength, peace, joy, patience, and meaning. His yoke is easy and his burden is light.
Rachel Jankovic bluntly gives us the truth in her book You Who?: Why You Matter and How to Deal with It (one of my favorites):
“We haven’t been called to ‘feel awesome about ourselves’ we have been called to faithfulness. We have been called to His purposes. The reality of following Christ is not that kind of cheap affirmation (you are super important). It is not an emotional Snuggie for our cold hearts. It is a different thing altogether. It is a cross being carried.”
“And he said to all, If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.’” (Luke 9:23)
I realize Brown was not writing this book from a biblical worldview so the idea of surrendering ourselves to another is not her belief and should not be expected to be found here, but if we are reading this book as Christians we are a reading a message that goes against what the Bible teaches us and I would caution us to hold up Brown’s truth to the Word before we fashion our lives in submission to it.
Brown doesn’t really identify what imperfections are (which is quite surprising given the title) but if they are the things deep inside of us that we don’t like, the parts of us that keep doing the things we don’t want to do, or, using a biblical term— the parts of us that are sinful— we can be encouraged that those imperfections were died for by Jesus Christ and we are no longer slaves to them or indebted to them. We are free from our imperfections in Christ and one day we will not experience the pains, burdens, or consequences of them again.
If the imperfections Brown is referring to are the disappointments we feel when we look in the mirror or anxieties about our worth, or the shame and fear we feel when we think about our past or worry about our future, we can be encouraged because God loves us. He chose to love us and there is nothing that can separate us from his love. This love defines our worth and it defines our beauty. It forgives and redeems the past and it offers hope and security for the future.
That is not just good news for me. It’s the Good News for all of us.
Again from Rachel Jankovic:
“Jesus Christ died so that you might die, and he lives so that you might live. Your life in Christ is what happens after your death in him. There will be no resolution to the struggles in your life if you do not willingly give your self-fashioned identity to Christ that it might die.”
“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him… So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive in God…” (Romans 6:6-8, 11)
Brown doesn’t share this good news.
She wants to shackle us to our imperfections and call ourselves saviors.
Her solution has no resolution:
“I now see that cultivating a Wholehearted life is not like trying to reach a destination. It’s like walking toward a star in the sky. We never really arrive, but we certainly know that we’re heading in the right direction.”
I don’t know about you, but if I never really arrive at my destination, what’s the point?
The Bible gives us assurance. We are not picking an arbitrary star and walking in a general direction with no end. Our faith is certain and our redemption is promised. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13, emphasis added)
“hope is a combination of setting goals, having the tenacity and perseverance to pursue them, and believing in our own abilities.”
“Once we let go of scarcity, we discover the surprising truth of sufficiency… Sufficiency isn’t an amount at all. It is an experience, a context we generate, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough… Sufficiency resides inside of each of us, and we can call it forward.” (Brown quoting Lynne Twist)
So if you don’t feel like you’re enough, muster tenacity and just declare it. Fixed.
Does that solution feel sufficient? Not to me. There is nothing concrete about Brown’s philosophy. And if she doesn’t believe in God, then it makes perfect sense. Where else would she go but within herself?
But there is assurance and certainty and resolution and freedom and hope.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” (Eph 2:8-9)
Faith in Christ gives you all of these things and the best part is— you don’t have to earn it. You don’t have to dig deep enough and try hard enough. You don’t have to believe in yourself and your own abilities. You don’t have to muster up the strength to declare it or feel worthy enough to deserve it.
In fact, all of those things are the antithesis of the Gospel.
Stop working to be good enough and looking within yourself for some sort of life-changing power. You won’t find it. At least anything long-lasting enough.
Forget about the gifts of imperfection and find the gift of Jesus. The true source of happiness, joy, hope, worth, meaning. His power gives us courage; His love and sacrifice provides the best reason for compassion; and the fellowship with Him and the church creates the deepest form of community.
Again from Rachel Jankovic (if you haven’t figured it out, read her book instead):
“There is no hope for you that is not Jesus. There’s nothing interesting about you if it is not resurrected in him. There’s nothing defining about you that cannot live in Christ. Your selfishness is dead. Your lust is dead. Your need to be unique is dead. Your envy, greed, obsessions, guilts– they are all dead. Dead and gone in Christ. Stop trying to tidy them up and make them mean something, because they never will.”
To cast a wider net on some of Brown’s words, here are some other excerpts from her book that go against the principles we are taught in Scripture:
“Love and belonging will always be uncertain.”
“We can’t love others more than ourselves.”
“In a society that says, ‘Put yourself last,’ self-love and self-acceptance are almost revolutionary.”
“Powerlessness is dangerous.”
“The opposite of faith is not doubt, but certainty.”
“For me, the risk of losing myself felt far more dangerous than the risk of letting people see the real me.”
“Knowledge is important, but only if we’re being kind and gentle with ourselves as we work to discover who we are. Wholeheartedness is as much about embracing our tenderness and vulnerability as it is about developing knowledge and claiming power.”
“I even have a physical response to ‘not knowing’— it’s anxiety and fear and vulnerability combined. That’s when I have to get very quiet and still… Whatever it takes, I have to find a way to be still so I can hear what I’m saying.”
There is also quite a bit of discussion on authenticity.
“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”
This is the big idea in the world today. We must be our authentic selves. But how do we know what our ‘true’ selves are? We just look deep enough?
Carl Trueman speaks much on this idea of authenticity in his insightful book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. Similarly, Sam Allberry points out the flaw of this internalized focus in his book What God Has to Say about Our Bodies:
“In our culture, the hero today is not the person who risks his body for the sake of others, but the person who lays aside anything and anyone for the sake of being authentic. We most esteem not self-sacrifice, but self-expression.”
I know this book has been influential for a lot of people, and like I mentioned at the beginning, I don’t doubt there are practices she recommends that will be beneficial for your life. The point of my review is to critique her overall philosophy and the source from which all of her material comes— within. How helpful and long-lasting will these solutions and practices be if they are all based on ourselves and our own strength and ability?
If you are reading this and you are not a believer in Christ, I beckon you to come to him and truly find yourself, your worth, your purpose. If you are already in Christ, I caution you to hold Brown’s philosophy loosely and remember our call to surrender ourselves to our Creator, Author and Perfecter of ourselves and our stories.
I’ll end with another blunt quote from Rachel Jankovic but one that is nonetheless true:
“Stop trying to be true to yourselves, people! Hell is full of the true-to-self crowd! Be true to Christ! Let it all go! You are in good hands! It is far sweeter, more fun, and more interesting to die in Christ than to live to self.”
Better Reads: (in order from best to next best)
You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It by Rachel Jankovic
The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness by Tim Keller
The Imperfect Disciple: Grace for People Who Can’t Get Their Act Together by Jared C. Wilson
Becoming a Woman Whose God is Enough by Cynthia Heald
Where I End by Katherine Elizabeth Clark
The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman
Happiness by Randy Alcorn
Alone in Plain Sight: Searching for Connection When You're Seen but Not Known by Ben Higgins
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