on imposter syndrome

 

I do some work for the Church of England nationally. Such working groups bring together people with a wide and relevant range of knowledge and experience; but—self-deprecation being a national pass-time—it is not unusual to recognise the expertise of others in the room, while failing to recognise the particular expertise you yourself bring to the table, and so to experience imposter syndrome.

One person in the room was asked whether they still experience imposter syndrome, and they replied, no, they had worked through that between 2008 and 2016. Which is both (intentionally) humourous and also carries truth: that imposter syndrome is real; that it can be overcome; and that it takes a long time.

The biographer John records Jesus praying in the hours before being arrested, and the prayer includes the statement that God, whom Jesus called our Father, loves those whom he has given to Jesus as he has loved Jesus:

‘that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.’ (John 17.23)

Jesus isn’t saying that God loves him, and also loves us, but not necessarily as much or in the same way; he is making the claim that those whom the Father has given to the Son—all who are united to Jesus by baptism—are loved by God in exactly the same way as Jesus is. Fully, and unbroken, from before the creation of the world. As the church planter Paul would go on to write, ‘nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8.38, 39). (And it is not that God does not love others in the same way, but that we do not know it until we know it revealed by Jesus.)

And this is where I come across imposter syndrome more often than any other context.

Those who believe that God is too occupied with global problems to be interested in them.

Those who believe that they are less worthy of God’s love than other, more deserving, people.

Where we have not known love, or known love conditionally, it can take years—and a supportive community who gently but firmly remind us the truth of who we are—to work through that sense of imposter syndrome. Again, the church planter Paul describes this work of declaring what God has said—prophesying—as one of building up; restating God’s decision to those who need encouragement; and consoling, or bringing closer to God, those who feel distant (1 Corinthians 14.3)