So are we supposed to hate ourselves?

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It seems like a lot of saints/influential people thought so. It doesn’t seem to be in the abstract “love the sinner hate the sin” sort of sense either.

Saint Louis de Montfort "Now, our Lord, who is infinite Wisdom, and does not give commandments without a reason, bids us hate ourselves only because we richly deserve to be hated. Nothing is more worthy of love than God and nothing is more deserving of hatred than self. "

and Thoms Kempis in the Imitation of Christ said “then love to be unknown and
considered as nothing. Truly to know and despise self is the best and most perfect counsel. To think
of oneself as nothing, and always to think well and highly of others is the best and most perfect
wisdom. Wherefore, if you see another sin openly or commit a serious crime, do not consider
yourself better, for you do not know how long you can remain in good estate. All men are frail, but
you must admit that none is more frail than yourself.”

and from Dom Lorenzo Scupoli " warned by His inspiration and illumined by a clearer light than before, you may come to know yourself, and learn to despise yourself as a thing unutterably vile, and be therefore also willing to be so accounted and despised by others"

So did they mean something other than hating yourself or what’s up with those sorts of stuff?
 
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Jesus Himself used this type of terminology in his dealings with people. I believe at His time, the prevailing culture saw accumulation of wealth, power, and prestige as a sign of approval from God. I believe Jesus’s use of that imagery of hating oneself was directed more to the idea of being selfish, self seeking to the point of not only ignoring others, but lording one’s status over those less fortunate. He was attempting to get people to turn away from seeing themselves, and seeing God, especially in others.
I think those who have followed this type of thinking are doing the same thing. Hate your own selfishness, greed, arrogance, and all other emotions/traits that make oneself one’s own God so to speak.
Remember, every man, woman, and child is made in the image and likeness of God. Do you really think we are supposed to hate ourselves given that incredible “fact”?
 
I mean Jesus didn’t really use that terminology. He did say “hate your mother, possessions, life” but He never said “hate yourself”. Also they seem to use pretty strong words and they don’t seem to refer it only to actions. Like they say “unutterably vile” (this implies more than just some actions), or “none more frail than yourself” and “we richly deserve to be hated.” I don’t know but to be it reads a bit like conventional hatred of self quite frankly. I honestly don’t think it is possible to actually hate yourself and love others. If you literally think that it is a virtuous thing to consider that “none is more frail than yourself” then you places yourself in a contradictory position, we can’t all be the most frail so the outlook is clearly false. Also if you hate yourself how could that lead to anything but despair (barring a miracle)?
 
That’s fair enough. My trouble is that all of these people don’t really seem to be implying that. The undertone seems to be actual and proper self hatred.
 
That’s all fair enough but the whole self-hatred stuff is a different and much weirder/fishy page.
 
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That’s because the spirituality of a number of saints (including Louis de Montfort) involved purging oneself of self-love in order to achieve a pure love for God. The path to Heaven being dying to self.

Bear in mind this isn’t officially the teaching of the church, but rather it falls under the category of private revelation.
 
It’s not a fair way to begin a topic, cherry-picking a few quotes out of context in order to get to your foregone conclusion.

We should detest our fallen nature, our tendency to take offense, our tendency to hold tight to our opinions, our way of always seeming to take the least effort in our work.

We should HOPE to be repulsed by our pride, our many vanities, our seeking of pleasure at every turn.

Some of our tendencies are downright injurious to our holiness, happiness, and the good of others. Detest away our tendency toward sin. But be sporting about it, not dour, we reject the tendencies that slow us from getting closer to the great good: holiness and closeness to Christ, and making life more pleasant for those around us!

It’s a positive affirmation to hate our sins, lesser tendencies. Rejoice always!

More specifically, we should hate our defects, our
  • high opinions of ourselves
  • interior complaints
  • annoyances with those who counter our points
  • anger when we don’t get our way
  • tendency to gossip and gripe
  • slowness in recognizing our errors
  • hesitancy in us to serve or to give up our preferences in family life
  • impatience while we drive or wait on others
  • imposing negative motives in other people’s actions
  • slowness to forgive
  • nursing of resentments
  • moodiness
  • seeking praise from others
  • dwelling on compliments we get
  • giving up our principles when they run against the grain of the group or the political tone
  • worrying about our reputation, defending it
  • seeking comfort, the most comfortable seat in a room, the best looking food in a buffet line
  • stopping short of giving full effort to a task
  • doing the easy task first, hoping someone else will do the harder one
  • sacrificing when we don’t feel like it
  • jumping to conclusions
  • daydreaming, with ourselves in focus
Hating, properly understood, is not what you want it to mean nor what the saints were saying.
 
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That’s fair enough. deMontfort also has this weird “slave” language because he didn’t associate slavery with the same level of oppression as we do. When I hear of something owning a slave I immediately think of them being a terrible person so there’s no way for me to see God or the Blessed Virgin quite in that way because I don’t think they are terrible people. I know it is just private revelation but it seems to be a common theme and I was trying to get to what is behind it. But why would you be interested in purging yourself of self-love? Didn’t Jesus tell us to love our neighbor as ourselves, which implies that we do love ourselves.
 
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I mean Jesus didn’t really use that terminology. He did say “hate your mother, possessions, life” but He never said “hate yourself”. Also they seem to use pretty strong words and they don’t seem to refer it only to actions. Like they say “unutterably vile” (this implies more than just some actions), or “none more frail than yourself” and “we richly deserve to be hated.” I don’t know but to be it reads a bit like conventional hatred of self quite frankly. I honestly don’t think it is possible to actually hate yourself and love others. If you literally think that it is a virtuous thing to consider that “none is more frail than yourself” then you places yourself in a contradictory position, we can’t all be the most frail so the outlook is clearly false. Also if you hate yourself how could that lead to anything but despair (barring a miracle)?
Click to expand...
Mirriam Webster - Hate: extreme dislike or disgust, aversion

I guess I should have first asked you to define how you understand hate. If you see it as you seem to state it, a disgust or aversion to yourself, I reiterate my statement that do you really believe that the God (in the Second person of the Trinity) is commanding you to hate what he created in His own image and likeness.
When Jesus spoke of marriage he stated (and don’t hold me to verbatim) “love your wife (the two become one) as you love yourself for no man hates his own flesh”
And remember, you are reading a translation in English. Jesus spoke in Aramaic to his disciples (and possibly some Greek). May something have been lost in the translations?
On this one as on so many other issues, I would simply have to defer to the teachings of the Magisterium on how Christ meant His words.
 
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Tranquillo… you seem to feel personally attacked and I do apologize if that is the case. I do not intend to be aggressive at all and I hate to say this but it hurts me a bit that you’ve been so. There clearly is a common theme. I don’t think I’ve cherry picked them. I was reading both deMonfort and the Imitation of Christ as a whole text so I read those quotes in their given context. I can’t quote the whole chapter but you may google it if you like, I can even give you the reference. I’m sure you empathize with the fact that that they sound plainly horrible. I was just trying to get a convincing view of how they can be interpreted in a larger context and why this seems to be such a big theme. I do get that there is an undertone of plainly “hate sin” but to me there seems to be a full on proper undertone of actually hating yourself.
 
Not attacked.

I think you’ve unfairly attacked some great saints, choosing a few googled words from their large body of writing, all without context, certainly historical context.

I am defending the saints that you’ve attacked, unfairly so too.
 
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That’s all fair enough. I don’t consider the writings of those saints authoritative or anything and yes that is exactly how I interpreted hate (the way you stated it above). I do see why people try to say that the writers didn’t mean it that way, which may be true but it does seem to be an undertone of actual hate as in “dislike the whole thing very strongly because it has been corrupted” which to me seems almost impossible and unhealthy but I guess you’re right about just sticking with the Magisterium. I was just curious to see if anybody had any Eureka type insights that’s all.
 
Well, I think in moments of remorse most of us would relate to this. I also believe that a vast majority of people develop a sense of pride in any virtue or selflessness that they manage to achieve. I don’t think this is cynicism; it is ‘watchfulness’ as St. Paul would put it. The moment you put this watchfulness aside or think you have enough grace to forego it, you get into trouble. You battle the inclination to sin until your last moment. Ironically, awareness or thinking on this is not negative self-debasing; it is opening the door to real grace and humility, joy in your life, here and after. I worry sometimes about how the modern I am ok you are ok mentality and Christianity are going to coexist. Not well. We are not of this world. Are Christians getting too sensitive for Christianity? Catholics I should say to be more specific.
 
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Are Christians getting too sensitive for Christianity? I know I am lol I literally cried when reading those bits from those texts.
 
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If love is to will the good of a person than hatred is the opposite. To hate is to will the worst. So what is the worst? Eternal separation from God. So we should we aspire to that if we are to hate ourselves? Should we commit mortal sin in order to properly hate ourselves?

I think what the Saints call for is humility and the recognition that we as sinners are completely undeserving of God’s mercy and not self-hatred. By God’s grace we are saved not of who we are or what we do but because of who God is. The offer is salvation from God is a gift which we, truth be told, do not deserve.
 
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That’s all fairs and the point about what hatred actually means is even more fair.
 
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