Lent, Days Nine, Ten, Eleven & Twelve: Self-Hatred
It got me. I got sucked into the deadly maelstrom that is when repentance spirals into self-hatred.
I think back to how I wrote, so matter-of-factly, about the eradication of pride through a process of repentance. I am laughing at my arrogance now. It was an accurate representation of how I was feeling…at the time; but unlike the description I gave in a previous post, repenting of pride was not as procedural as I had imagined it. It was more accurately like fishing garbage out of the ocean from the edge of a whirlpool.
I started the ninth day of Lent by giving repentance a real and honest “go.” Here I am on day twelve still working through the pain and nursing the lingering tenderness that resulted from just one day of engagement. This is my third draft of this post. The first one was my attempt to encapsulate my immediate, visceral reaction to dredging up the sin of my life (which, as it happens, is stuck to everything like tar, even the good parts). But the experience was so layered, I just kept uncovering new things. I still am, but here’s what I’ve got so far.
In an attempt to stop anything from burrowing down where it could do ongoing damage, I wrote as many of the “blurts” (shameless Artist’s Way reference) as I could on a stone and went on a walk to the lake post haste. They couldn’t all fit on the surface area of the stone, even with overlapping words. These are words that come up whenever I try to be self-positive and affirm my God-given qualities. You probably know these words as some of the same that come out of your own mind’s megaphone when you are innocently trying to love yourself as you are, so I won’t utter them here. I was soon dropping the stone unceremoniously in the rushing fall of lake water draining into the reservoir, knowing I couldn’t come back home with that physical representation, even if I couldn’t fully expel them from my mind as easily.
Why did repentance bring me so quickly to self-hatred? The approach I was using wasn’t intentionally violent. I was trying to honestly expose the ways I have failed and am failing, with the hope that holding them in the light would burn them away. Instead, I rapidly went the other direction–deeper into darkness–when I saw that my “good things” were all cast in shadow by my brokenness. I could come to no other conclusion at that moment than that all my giftings and gifts to the world can never be good because they are hopelessly rooted in selfish and ugly motivations. That took me to a pretty dark place.
I was specifically trying to draw out my sin of pride, and discovered that not only pride, but a great many areas of cruelty, carelessness, and unhealth, are all deeply connected to self-hatred, as tangibly as if by visible ropes. Is this the lynchpin of the whole debacle? When you hate yourself, maybe you have to maintain a vice grip on pride to cloak the depth of your inner chasm, and serve as a root to keep you from plummeting in until you can, maybe, hopefully, one day, scramble back out. Is this what my “enemies” are experiencing, too? Those who have said, done, or orchestrated awful things towards me and mine–what if they also hate themselves? The pride I see causing such wide ripples of anguish and pain across our communities might just be rooted in the same place mine is. That is frightening, humbling, and awakens my compassion. Starting with myself, for I cannot give what I do not possess.
Despite this recent experience, I still don’t believe that the act of repentance is something to discard—though I admit that it has led (and can lead) to a lot of dark and damaging places. I dare to believe that it is a healthy exercise meant to protect us and lead us towards wellness. In Mark 2, Jesus says “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (v17). If Jesus is calling the sick to repentance, knowing his compassionate character, it would have to be a practice that heals, not harms: a practice available even to the weak and wounded that transforms them from bed-ridden people to those leaping and running.
I would be willing to bet on a wealth of research out there proving a vital connection between our physical health and our sense of self-worth. Just in my own life, I know it well: It is only when I am believing in my own value that I find motivation to listen to my body, eat in a way that responds to its needs and reactions, and show up to exercise in a life-giving way. When I start to shift my focus to things like size/weight/comparison to other bodies, diet and exercise are quickly skewed and lead to things like under-nutrition, binging, and uncareful, overdone exercise that results in injury. It is love that leads to care, hate that leads to violence, and that is as much as true within us as without.
In Jesus’ statement, I see both a warning to the religious folks and exaltation of the spirit of the lowly. Repentance for the “healthy” gravitates towards self-deprecation in order to “feel the weight of sin” so as to be compelled to “do better,” or often as a way to fashion a particular image so that those on the outside feel compelled to offer them the admiration and love that they can’t give themselves–what an endless mind game that is (I know from experience). I almost hear Jesus crying out to them:
“Don’t engage in repentance until you can recognize your deep self-hatred and need for deliverance. You have denied Love, and are filling that lack with so much striving that there’s no room for me. Hate and love cannot share space: I must be welcomed there instead.”
Repentance for the “sick” is an honest crying out for love, arising from the undeniability of their poor state of being. They know they are sick, so perhaps to them, Jesus is saying:
“I see how tired you are of putting yourself down. You are begging for the emptiness to be filled and dear one, I am pouring myself into you like a waterfall into a cup.”
A new approach to repentance has been slowly awakening in me. I am used to confessing from a place of self-hatred, but what if instead, confession was an act originating in a place of–or with a practice of–self-love? Repentance has often become a ritual of drudging up all our darkest parts, intending that the weight of them will somehow change our future behavior. Through the life and death of the person Jesus, God has demonstrated beyond doubt that only Love has the power to transform the heart, and the behavior that flows from it. Therefore, could repentance simply be a willing surrender to the Breath-become-our-breath: Love Itself? Not begging for It, grasping for It, groveling for It, but releasing into It with the recognition that all we are is already shot through with the light of It.
This morning, I felt ready to try a new stone: to hold one of the lies I tell myself and practice loving myself to the other side of it. I chose one to represent “not enough.” Very soon after I stuck it in my pocket, it disappeared–presumably falling out somewhere in the house. But I haven’t come across it all day. I like to think that it’s a little Divine joke; God showing me that when I am filled with love for myself, poured into me from the Font that never runs dry, nothing can stand against its flowing, life-giving waters for long.
