4 Gospel Promises for Self-Hating Christians

I remember being eleven years old, just entering the world of braces and acne scars, staring into our bathroom mirror and feeling consciously insecure for the first time in my life.

I say consciously because for years I had always felt like the odd one out. No little girl gets through childhood easily when her hobbies involve solitary hikes through the woods, practicing martial arts, and hiding from friends on play dates so she can finish reading her book.

But this was different. For the first time, I didn’t like that I was different. My personality felt too obtrusive, my interests too unique, my dreams and desires too passionate and strange for the comfort zones of those around me. For the first time, I felt I would rather be accepted than genuine. I would rather feel beautiful than understood. For the first time, I felt my mere existence as it was, took up too much space in this world.

I had heard the little voice whispering for years, but now I could hear the conscious words – and soon “Stop being so different” became “You’ll never be good enough”. 

For years, I have battled with feelings of depression and anxiety, fueled by a constant struggle against rounds of self-hatred. Sadly, in many Christian circles, these feelings are common, but they are also unspoken, ostracised, and condemned.

Self-hate is a terrible thing. It is a constant look inward. It is shriveling disappointment beneath your own glaring eye. It is condemnation brought upon yourself, even if it is not echoed by the lips of others.

When we feel the heavy burden of shame, the condemnation of sin, the victimization of our own thoughts and differences – when we hate ourselves for how we feel, how we look, what we’ve done, what’s been done to us, or what we’ve failed to do – we need to be met with the Gospel.

1. God has saved you because you cannot save yourself

Self-condemnation – whether it is for what we eat, or what we look like, what we wear, or what we feel, what we do, or what we fail to do – ultimately comes down to one root: a loathing of our own failure.

Our failure to have the perfect body. Our failure to attain the highest education. Our failure to get a satisfying job. Our failure to have and be accepted by the perfect mate. Our failure to be a good Christian.

Deep within, as believers, we are still legalists at heart, striving to save ourselves through self-enforced perfection.

Intellectually we know and believe the Gospel, but we often still live as practical atheists – self-condemning demi-gods, heaping up petty judgments against our own crimes and preaching to ourselves a self-help gospel.

Slowly, bit by bit, as we self-loathe, and self-hate, and self-help, we will self-dehumanize. We will lose our ability to define ourselves as anything but that which we hate.

We are looking to a corrupt standard. We are worshipping a false god. We are trusting in the wrong savior.

The voice of anxiety has told me I need to stay in the car at the party because no one wants to be bothered by my presence. The voice of depression has told me that my existence makes the lives of others more difficult, and this world would be improved if I wasn’t in it. The voice of anorexia has told me that I’ll never be good enough unless I can starve myself into an external, self-perceived perfection.

In all of these struggles, my self had become the problem, but it had also become the savior. It told me I wasn’t good enough, and also told me I could pull myself out of the badness. With its constant condemnation and promise of future perfection, it trampled me into a continuous struggle of trying to be better, only to knock me to the ground with shame over my own failure, and have the cycle viciously repeat.

When this happens, my self-condemnation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. In an ugly mini-cycle of loss and redemption, I am flouting the Gospel of Christ and shirking His promises. I am my own law bringing condemnation, and my own gospel offering myself empty hope. I am slowly being crushed beneath another cross – a cross that was never meant for me to bear.

2. God has justified you by Christ’s blood

There was one period so low that I tortured myself, not with the thought that God hadn’t saved me, but with the thought that He had. Christ had died for me – I who am nothing, who am worthless, who have failed in every way a human being can fail. I am such a pitiful example of a Christian. Why had He wasted His blood on me? Why couldn’t I make His death worth it?

But that is why the Gospel is such good news for sinners, for Christ’s death was only for the unworthy. Christ died for the sinners, for the outcasts, for the failures. “For He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted, and He has not hidden His face from him but has heard when he cried to Him” (Psalm 22:24).

We are beloved. We are cared for. We are accepted. We are saved. Not because we are not sinners, but because we are sinners who have been redeemed. Not because we never fail, but because He has taken our failure upon Himself, and clothed us with His own perfection. We must not condemn ourselves, for God Himself has pronounced us justified.

3. God has called you to Himself by His abundant grace

Christian author and theologian, Ed Welch, was interviewed on Desiring God in reference to his book on this topic: Shame Interrupted: How God Lifts the Pain of Worthlessness and Rejection.

In the interview, Tony Reinke asked the question: “What would you say to those who struggle with self-hate, especially outside the Church, who assume the worst thing in the world for a self-hater to ever do is to believe in God because He would only condemn them and fuel their self-hate further. What would you say to this person?”

Welch replied simply: “Your idea of God is my idea of the devil.”

He explained: “You are viewing God the way that the Scripture portrays Satan: this relentless, accusatory, hard master who means ill for you and is always there to scold you. And that is not the God of the Bible.”

Yes, God is just. Yes, God hates sin. Yes, He hates rebellion against His perfect law. Yes, in His righteousness and holiness, He condemns, He damns, He destroys.

But this is also the God who, by His grace, called you into His created story. This is the God who humbled Himself and came in human flesh.

Weak believer, God Himself became weak and took our human weakness upon Himself.

Sinful believer, Christ has been tested in all ways like as we are yet without sin, and through His blood, has brought us before a throne of grace, with a well of forgiveness that runs deeper than our trespasses.

Christ has loved us while we were yet unlovable. He has accepted us while we were still unacceptable. He has declared us righteous while we were yet in sin.

4. God has loved you with an everlasting love

The self-hater who has been clothed in Christ’s righteousness has been given new eyes with which to see, a new mind with which to think, a new heart with which to believe, a new Savior to whom to cling.

Though this is still a struggle I am facing, one of the major turning points for me in this battle was a sermon by Pastor Ian Hamilton in which he stated: “The best proof that God will never cease to love us lies in that He never began.”

All of a sudden, I understood.

“The best proof that God will never cease to love us lies in that He never began.”

God has loved you with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3). He has redeemed you with an eternal salvation. He has resurrected you to a never-ending hope.