In Defense of Self-Loathing

The Gate Leading to Destruction is Wide and Many Will Find It¹

Despite reports to the contrary, religion seems alive and well in America.  Every major city seems to have a megachurch or two, if not more.  Thousands have multiple “campuses” (campi?)—among them are churches like Willow Creek, Mars Hill and Saddleback.  Is Christianity the draw?  Is the gospel the Jesus commanded the apostles to preach the message that fills millions of seats in churches like these?  This is an important question for every Christian to ask, because even though your church may not be a multi-site megachurches, the pastors of such churches author the books on the shelf of your pastor’s office, or that are the center of discussion in your Sunday school or small group study.

Don’t get the wrong idea.  This post is not a rant on megachurches.  This is actually one of the more intensely personal posts I’ve written so far.  If you read on, you’ll see that I’m harder on myself than anyone else, in this particular post.  But I want to ask this question: is the true Gospel ever going to fill a church the size of the shopping mall?  Jesus described the road to life as narrow and few will find it.  The shelves of bookstores are lined with opinions of every color, shape and sort regarding God’s Word.  Isn’t it important to nail down what the Bible really says while navigating this hurricane containing every wind and wave of doctrine? ² 

So what is that narrow road?  Are there really only a few who find it?  If the gospel is really good news, why does Jesus warn us that the world will hate those who keep his word?  The truth is, the narrow path travels through truly appalling news before it gets to the good news of the Gospel.  When faced with this hard to swallow stuff, many take a turn to the wider path.

I Have Not Come to Call the Righteous but Sinners to Repentance³

I used to watch Dr. Phil.  I saw an episode where they were talking about leading causes of death in America.  There were things listed like heart disease, cancer, etc.  He finally revealed the number one cause of death:“denial”.   Of course, as Christians, we know that the one and only cause of death is actually sin, because the wages of sin is death.  But the number one cause of dying in our sins is also denial.

Jesus came for the sick, not for the emotionally moved or the mentally convinced.  The Jews looked for miracles.  The Greeks looked for fine arguments, eloquent speech.⁴   But Jesus came for the sick, for the publican, beating his chest, despairing because of his wretchedness and wickedness.  The rich young ruler, on the other hand, was in denial.  He said claimed to keep the law.  Jesus pressed him, trying to draw him out of his denial.  If you look at the Sermon on the Mount, you know that, in Jesus view, the young man lying in saying he kept the law.  But the young man could not face the truth.  He walked away. ⁵

The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things, And Desperately Wicked.  Who Can Understand it?⁵

Our whole culture is in denial, and for the most part, the church in America is not helping.  We have lost the idea of sin, of lostness, or wretchedness.  We like teachers who say how wonderful we are and hold to a theology of positive affirmation.  You rarely hear from the pulpit that our heart is desperately wicked, beyond cure and beyond understanding.  We don’t like to believe anything is beyond cure of our multiple drugs and brands of therapy.  We are hoping, I think, to cure death itself.

And we certainly don’t want to admit anything is beyond understanding.  Whole sections of Barnes and Noble are devoted to the idea that the heart can be understood.  Various sections of book stores, both secular and religious, are populated by books authored by those who claim to understand the heart’s inner workings.  But the vast majority of these self-help gurus will get it wrong.  There theories fail to factor in our fallenness.  We are considered malfunctioning machines in need of reprogramming rather than wicked and selfish creatures who ought to be exterminated for the good of the planet.  (Do we really think we’re that much better than those who lived in the days of Noah?)

No we’d rather think we’re not as bad as all that.  We’re just a bit off-course.  We just need a little assistance.  A little life coaching will do the trick.  What the bible claims that we are seems so unpleasant, sounds so hopeless!  Dead in trespasses and sins?  It sounds so negative!  We don’t want to listen to discouraging messages like that.  We rather hear that we need a bit of tweaking. We just need to try harder, believe in ourselves, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and take another trip to the bookstore to find a different strategy.

These are the positive messages, paired sometimes with Vegas-style entertainment, that fills churches to capacity.  There might be talk of salvation.  Everyone wants to take care of the eternal end of things.  God may be mentioned, and perhaps Jesus. There is the obligatory altar call.  Some speak of salvation, but don’t say what we need to be saved from.  Some say we need to trust God, but don’t say what to trust him for.  They might—and this is a big might—even use the word “sin”, but likely substitutes include words like “brokenness”, or “baggage”, or “mistakes”, or “hang-ups” or “mistakes”.  Is this what we think of God’s justice?  That he would condemn us for “mistakes”?  We are in denial of our outright rebellion against the God who created us.  We are in denial regarding the fact that we have not even the ability within ourselves to submit to God or even to want to do so. 

There is No One Righteous.  No One Seeks God⁵

For many years, I was told in order to be saved, I needed to admit I was a sinner, but sin was never really defined.  I was told that a person stands condemned before God if he even breaks one of God’s laws.  But this always seemed pretty unfair to me.  And perhaps it would be.  The problem is, this scenario is completely hypothetical.  There’s no one that has only broken one or even just a few of his commandments.  We were born into sin, being descendants of Adam.  Without regeneration, every single one of us has a heart that, though maybe outwardly submitting to God, inwardly shakes its fist at God as a complete rebel.

Do Not Be Surprised at the Fiery Trial as Though Something Strange Were Happening⁶

So many teach heaven can be found on earth.  It would be nice to believe, but I see no basis for that belief found in God’s word.  Some have tried to tell me that the wretched man struggling with sin in Romans 7 is only struggling because he does not yet have the Holy Spirit.  And they teach Romans 8 contains some miraculous key.  If I could just understand it well enough, they say, I will be victorious over my sin and will no longer struggle. I was taught, over and over, that I just could grasp that I’m an “overcomer” that I could finally pull my life together and reach that new level of maturity I’ve been waiting for.

“More than Conquerors” Describes a Life Full of Trials and Tribulations (in all these things…)⁷

This is just one more angle on the same old prosperity gospel.  When people work to get the Bible to say what they want it to say, they tend to have a common theme.  God wants to make your life in this world better.  It’s not all about a future hope.  He is waiting to bless you with earthly blessings and wants to provide way of escape out of our current trial.  The only way that we will find such promises is if we isolate verses and read into them what we want to.  This is how I used to study my bible.  Some verse would suddenly means something new to me that I never meant before.  I would assume my epiphany was from the Holy Spirit and proceed to pull that verse from context and allegorize and make it all about me and apply it to my life, whether it was meant to applied to me or not.

But God is so gracious.  I spent much time studying God living and active word and seed was sown in my heart to lay dormant, then germinate, until I finally heard teachers that help everything fit together as it should.  As it was, the way I was approaching God’s word, I was fitting square pegs of His Word into round theological holes.  For a long time, being the smart girl that I am, would find ways to wiggle verses into odd-shaped holes.

Through the Law Comes Knowledge of Sin ⁸

Then the light came on—almost blindingly so.  I stumbled across teachers of God's Word who were so sure of truth and preached from broad tracts of scripture all at once and had such confidence in its interpretation.  They spoke of the wonderful thread of law and the gospel that ran through the whole Bible, from Eden to the New Jerusalem.    God’s law is given to expose sin.  Man either keeps trying merit favor with God and fails, or the law drives man to his knees (through the Holy Spirit’s conviction) and he repents and appeals to God’s mercy and depends on God for his salvation rather than self.  It has been by faith from first to last.⁹

Now actually, the way was paved for this new sight from a prayer I had prayed a few years before.  I started making some connections from what God clearly laid out in his word.  His word says he is completely and totally just¹⁰.  If God is just, then I truly deserved to have been on that cross myself and would be understanding, just as the thief to one side of Jesus who knew he was only dying for his crimes.¹¹  I knew in my head, then, that I truly deserved to die for my sins, and if I could just see my sins through  God’s eyes, I would know I deserved not only every lash and nail and thorn suffered by Jesus, I also deserved Hell for eternity.¹²  I wanted to understand it. I wanted to be like the woman who anointed Jesus, who Jesus said loved much because she was forgiven much.¹³

So I prayed to God to help me see my sin for what it is.  I remember it well.  I was singing up on stage, and it was a musical interlude between two songs, and I prayed for God to show me, to help me understand exactly why I deserved death, why I deserved Hell.  It was probably a Good Friday service and my mind was on the cross.  He has certainly answered that prayer since then, and is still answering it.  I pray the Holy Spirit will continue to bring my sin into the light so that I may hate it, flee from it, and may be more and more grateful to my dear Savior who was willing to take it upon himself.

Everyone Who is Angry With His Brother Will Be Liable to Judgment¹⁴

Here is some of what I began to see.  I now see that much of the same misery that I’ve experienced I’ve also caused others.  I saw that murder dwelt in my heart at those times when I was angry with another.  Jesus said that we commit murder with these thoughts, and I was starting to see why that was true. 

You Will Be Delivered Over to the Jailers if You Do Not Forgive from the Heart¹⁵

For the first time, I experienced truly being wronged by people I really cared about.  I knew that I had not suffered much in my life.  Not really.  I had formerly considered forgiveness pretty simple.  But I had not experienced much yet in my life that would be hard to forgive.  Over the past few years though, I have been hurt deeply.  I know many have experienced worse, but for me, this was as bad it had ever been.   Hatred and anger and bitterness were so close to the surface in my heart.  So close that I realized I had been long infected and it was just waiting to metastasize.  I always thought of myself as someone who deserved to be treated well.  The seed of self-righteousness is all it takes to be infected.  Self-righteousness is at the root of so much evil.

Whoever is Slack in His Work is a Brother to Him Who Destroys¹⁶

The Holy Spirit also revealed my laziness.  I realized that resentment was my constant companion through my daily tasks.  Every time my family needs something from me, I became aware of the resistance that was simply always there, every time I was required to do what I’d rather not, whether it be cooking dinner, getting water, getting up to help a child who asked for help the minute I finally sit down to rest.   And yes, I love my husband and my children, and if I ever lost them… well I don’t like to go there or dwell on what that would be like.  But taking others for granted is what comes naturally when I don’t make an effort to be grateful.  I don’t have the emotional or mental capacity to constantly hold the picture in my mind of their possible loss.

So yes, I am lazy.  And most of the time, I manage to maintain a façade of outward diligence, but it doesn’t change that I’d rather be doing something else.  And when a moment presents itself for me to actually rest, I spend that precious time, most likely, in restless agitation, looking for entertainment or a way to fill my belly.  Or perhaps I waste those precious moments of leisure on worthless pursuits like Bejeweled, or Angry Birds.

And don’t get me started on the taming of the tongue and how quickly that lashes out to create wounds I wish I could take back as soon as I’ve caused them, especially in my children.  And there are the times I knew I should discipline a child, but didn’t want to take the effort.  There are the times I didn’t care enough for justice and didn’t listen well enough to my child’s explanation of “what really happened” and why.  I could go on, couldn’t I?  I won’t.  I would fill pages and pages at this point.

I get lectures from some friends who get mad when I talk like this, saying I’m being negative and that I’m inviting curses into my life by talking this way.  But I don’t worry about that any more.  I have stopped living under the law.  “Speak positively, you receive blessing.  Speak negatively, receive curses.”  This is simply another regulation to follow—another form of the law.

Living under the law is not just about the Mosaic law of the Bible.  You live according to the law whenever you do action A and expect result B, whether or not “B” is a promised reward or punishment.  The whole idea of living by faith is living under God’s grace and mercy and I learn to expect, or hope for, what I do not deserve or merit.  So whether it’s the perfect law of God, that Jesus fulfilled when he walked this earth, or some sad facsimile made by man, which Jesus rejected, I know I will fail if I live under either.  Every time I hear an “ought to” or “you must”, sin springs to life and I die.¹⁷

And this kind of negative talk, by which my friends are so certain I’m sinning, is biblically ordained.  It’s called acknowledgment of our sin that goes along with repentance.  If I live in denial of my sin, this is proof that his Word does not dwell in me.¹⁸

I know now that everyone, if they’re honest with themselves, could make a list quite like this. And even if they manage to reach a later stage of sanctification, this mess is not far beneath the surface.  And this is why the gospel is for “saints” as well as sinners.  I sin daily and I sin much and, though I will never cease to struggle against sin and God will continue to sanctify me, to keep me headed in the right direction, I will not be free of this struggle this side of Heaven. And I rejoice that his forgiveness is available daily and his Word contains the gospel in many and varied words to be a balm to my soul as I come to him for cleansing.

Our salvation is a process.  I have already been saved from the penalty of sin.  I am secure in Him.  I am being saved and delivered from the power of sin.  And one day, when I go to be with the Lord, I will be saved from the presence of sin.  And since I have believed, since he has given me the faith that saves, since I am sealed with the Spirit, then I will grow in my hatred of sin.

Anyone who has been born of Christ does not continue in sin.  As John said, “Do not love the world, or anything in the world.  If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.”¹⁹

Would we really tempt God that way, to continue purposely in the things that were paid for by the blood of his son, saying it doesn’t matter because it’s already paid for?  If you are a murderer, and someone else gives you complete pardon, do you say, “Well, I am in the good graces of him who would convict me, so I will go and murder as many people as I want!”  Have we no fear of God?  

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, but fear of God is sort of out of style these days.  We do not tremble.  We are told that God is in love with us and would do anything for the apple of his eye and we step into the role of spoiled rich kids rather than pardoned criminals.  We would rather play the part of the bride, purified and ready for the wedding, and forget our role as maidens waiting for the groom, keeping our wicks trimmed, our oil filled and watching and not sleeping.²⁰

I said before, the path to the good news leads through bad news.  (The good news, of course, is forgiveness of sins, in Jesus’ name, trusting in his work on the cross and his resurrection from the dead, rather than trusting in our own works.) But it’s not really bad news.  It’s the news we always knew to be true, but were spending all our energy covering up.  The good news is that our deep-seated sinfulness is forgiven as we take refuge in the strong tower of his name, “Jesus” (God saves) and “Emmanuel” (God with Us!)  This is good news: God’s blessing does not depend on my behavior. 

Humble Yourself Under God’s Mighty Hand ²¹

Why do others recoil at my low view of myself?  I’ve never been happier.  Pretending that I could actually live a righteous life was exhausting.  Always feeling like I was falling short was depressing.  Trying to be a “super-christian” or measure up to one, it’s a miserable way to spend this life on earth.

But the simple message of repentance of forgiveness of sins will not fill thousands of seats.  It will fill souls who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The default of the flesh is to run and hide like Adam and Eve.  But the life that is eternal is lived in the light.  Our nature loves flattery and the messages that tickle itching ears, saying “You can do it!”  But if by God's grace, you get a taste for the truth, nothing else will do, even when the truth offends.  I pray that I will always say, as Peter, “Lord, to whom shall we go?  You have the words of eternal life!”²²