“To hate oneself is to walk alongside oneself.” Leanne Payne
There are those who will openly admit to hating themselves, but for many it comes up in more subtle ways. It may be a dislike of your name, or a jealousy over the life of another, or something about your appearance that displeases you, or it may just be the constant grumbling of your inner critic.
Self-hatred is a deadly peril to one’s well-being, but for the believer in Jesus, it poses a deeper peril. What do I mean?
The origin of self-hatred
Let’s start here. Where does self-hatred come from? There are a number of culprits. A common one is the lack of emotional attunement. We need reassurance, empathy, and conversation in our early childhood to help us understand what is happening to us. If our parents or others aren’t able to give that, we start trying to make sense of it ourselves. This is how the inner critic starts and the soil in which self-hatred grows. Without outside help, we will misinterpret events and often blame ourselves.
But there is another huge culprit — shame. It’s the feeling of being exposed as a failure or not meeting others’ expectations. The feeling is so horrific that we will shift it to anger to deal with it. And if the anger doesn’t go outward to others, we turn it on ourselves, speaking words of condemnation and self-hatred.
Self-hatred as sin
This idea sometimes come as a shock to men I work with. I’ll just ask, “What do you think about self-hatred as sin?” Most have never equated the two. But self-hatred breaks the law of love in massive ways. You are hating the self God loves, and you are abusing the self He crafted. It runs counter to the grain of the created order. We are to love God first and then love others as we love ourselves.
Tragically, I have seen how Jesus’ command to deny yourself is twisted into a call to hate yourself. What Jesus means here is to leave behind the old self, whatever the cost, so that we could follow Him and become like HIm. But Jesus did not hate Himself. He basked in the Father’s love. That’s our path as well to become like Him.
Further, self-hatred is just the obverse of pride. Rather than thinking of yourself and better than others, you think yourself worse. In both cases, you are still consumed with yourself.
The deeper peril of self-hatred
When we live in self-hatred, we end up walking alongside ourselves. We hate the self God formed for us to live in, so we split off and form another self, a false one, to live in. This false self then becomes the breeding ground for all sorts of addictions, compulsions, and sins. We are desperately trying to fill the split inside of us. But our attempts only widen the crack.
And because we cannot be at home inside ourselves, we cannot be at home with Jesus inside of us. We struggle to experience His indwelling presence, love, and power. For He can only dwell in what is real and true, and the false self is a phantom built on lies. This is the deeper threat of self-hatred.
How Jesus heals our self-hatred
Jesus can deal with our self-hatred by healing the memories behind it and by surfacing the vows that bound us to it. For me, self-hatred began looking at myself in the mirror at age 12 and hating what I saw. Then as I walked out of one door from the bathroom, I made this vow: “I will only be happy if I am someone else.” When Jesus surfaced this memory about 15 years ago, I was shocked with how much power it had had over me. The Bible constantly talks about the power of words, both blessing and curses. The vows we make really have that kind of binding force.
When I asked Jesus to enter the memory, He stood with me in the bathroom, looking at my reflection in the mirror. Then he opened the other door out of the bathroom onto a huge landscape of forests and mountains. He was inviting me to go with Him on a journey of healing that would end in those towering peaks. I also renounced the vow I had made, asking Jesus to help me love myself as He did.
These last 15 years have been ones of stunning growth and healing that I could have never imagined. So much of my work with men is simply offering to them what Jesus has offered to me.
A final note
We are created to love the awesome realities of this world: the majesty of creation, the wonder of being male and female, the piercing beauty of the cross, and the incredible kindness of the Father. Self-hatred cripples our ability to love these. But Jesus can heal our crippled souls so that we can walk upright and even run!
Curious? Want to hear more? Contact me.
Bill
