Christian Living

Is It Really Ok To Be Not Ok?

by J.W. Phillips
05/29/25
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A popular K-drama series is called “It’s Ok to Be Not Ok.” But is it?

In his book, I’m Okay; You’re Okay, Thomas Harris estimated that 93% of our population have what Alfred Adler first called inferiority feelings. That these feelings are so widespread shouldn’t really surprise us, since we were all born inferior!

In the beginning, we were completely helpless—without knowledge, without skills, and without much of an ability to communicate.

The earliest memory for most of us is that of a small person living in a “big people’s” world. Why, our parents, teachers, and relatives could do all sorts of things we couldn’t do!

This perception didn’t change when we began school, for we soon discovered that there were others in our class who were either smarter than we, or, if not that, more athletic, more popular, or better looking.

Accordingly, the opportunity was present, almost from day one, to question our self-worth.

Putting forth a somewhat different slant on this, G.D. Watson wrote:

There is hardly an animal, or bird, or insect, that cannot in some particular excel me, either in speed of motion, or beauty of song, or hardiness, or docility, or some trait which makes me as a creature feel my inferiority.¹

It should be obvious, then, that this sense of inferiority is one to be reckoned with.

People will respond to feelings of inferiority in various ways.

There are some who will find themselves so criticized, so rejected, that their hearts get bruised, if not totally and devastatingly crushed!

Consequently, their ability to relate to others becomes severely impaired, prompting them to withdraw, to drop out, or to identify only with those people who, like themselves, have been shunned by society.

Then there are others among us who will become “people pleasers,” “approval addicts”—each of these desperately craving acceptance or love.

This desire for acceptance may translate into sexual promiscuity, gang membership, or a series of “clinging vine” relationships that always have a way of bearing rotten fruit.

Tragically, the very acceptance these people want, they never seem to get—from lovers, from their children, or from society at large.

Of concern, too, is the collateral damage that results from pursuing society’s approval in the wrong way.

T.S. Eliot wrote, “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important.” The full impact of this damage scarcely registers with the people who caused it, Eliot said, “because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.”

Many others in our midst will fall into what is sometimes called “the performance trap.”

Of these, a rare few will become “overachievers,” attempting through grit and guile to prove early failures an exception and those predictions about their future in error.

And, yes, before it’s all over, they may even exceed the most optimistic projection of their most positive friend, achieving a success that astonishes everyone.

Having done so, we would conclude that they are no longer a part of that 93%—because, good golly, Miss Molly, they have everything going for them now!

Nevertheless, if we could see into their hearts and retrieve a printout from their brains, we would discover that all those “not okay” feelings from earlier years are driving them harder than ever.

For no sooner do they reach the top of one mountain, when suddenly there is another one in view to climb—each mountain presenting keener competition, a greater risk of failure, and a climate with many more hostility factors.

Therefore, what others may envy isn’t nearly as satisfying as it may appear.

The performance trap will claim many victims, generating many disappointments; because big bucks, notable achievements, and advanced college degrees just won’t meet our need in the way many people suppose.

Even if one has a Ph.D. behind his name, that still sounds like Fudd, as in Elmer!

So what’s the solution? If it is true that in the eyes of God our good works will never be good enough and that we, like everyone else, still will have come far short of his glory (Romans 3:23), then the morality option of lifelong improvement will never work. In the only perspective that counts, we’ll still be not ok—and eternally so.

Precisely! Therefore, our need isn’t moral renovation generated by self, but getting another source for the way we live—a new nature, God’s nature, completely replacing the nature we were born with.

In his book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis contended that God didn’t come to this world to make us nice; instead, pursuing a much more radical objective, he came to make us new!

Lewis wrote: “God became man to turn creatures into sons: not simply to produce better men of the old kind but to produce a new kind of man.”²

The infusion of this new nature transacts not in Heaven someday where all is glorious and perfect—but right here, right now, at that precise moment when the Lord Jesus enters a person’s heart.

In one of the most remarkable verses in Scripture, we find this divine declaration: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new” (II Corinthians 5:17).

Instantly, the corrupted heart is totally and eternally changed into a being whose hidden glory will one day outshine the sun.

Explaining this truth, as the Bible indeed does, is too extensive to present here, except to say it isn’t a hybrid humanity being proposed—part this and part that.

No, we become new nature and nothing but new nature from the first moment salvation becomes ours. In the most profound way, we have been changed from the inside out.

Notes:
1. G.D. Watson, Soul Food, (Hampton, TN., Harvey Christian Publishers, 2000), p.90.
2. C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1977), p.182.