So are we supposed to hate ourselves?

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The pursuit of holiness is not a walk in the park, it’s for stout souls.

I think we’ve become artists in taking personal offense and in rejecting any form of criticism.
 
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Like so many other questions this goes to methods of interpretation, the order of inspiration, authority. etc…

Christ is the fulfillment of all revelation. To interpret a saints writings or a scripture passage or a Church teaching, you must run it by Jesus Christ. The Church does this in all areas. We are Christo-centric.

Hate in the manner of self loathing is inimical to the Gospel. Sin is to be rejected, and shame can be a powerful motivator. But they must be seen in light of the whole person. " And God saw that it was good".

“you are my beloved son/daughter”: applies to all of us. Self image that detracts from our “Imago Dei” is from the deceiver.
 
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You hate your vulnerability to sin, this includes things like pessimism, hate, negativity, all sins. You love Christ and his grace to the extent that it transforms you; you love yourself, in that you reflect it, the image of God. Christ does give us a unique soul, individual integrity, dignity. We need to be clear on which is which, grace v. sin, how our dignity is lost. That is part of my gripe with the so called Francis effect. Mercy and doctrine (teaching) cannot be separated. They co-exist. Pitting them against each other is unChristian.
 
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I think it depends on your life experience too honestly. I’ve heard this guy once talk about how once you get over your own negative emotional patterns it is much easier to develop positive ones (ie love) for other people and that one of those negative patterns is actually self hatred (in a different sense than we’ve been using it). I’ve found puffing up is actually an effect of insecurity. People who are confident don’t actually feel the need to brag and people that know they’re loved don’t feel the need to fish for attention. I heard my Ancient History teacher say that if Alexander the Great hadn’t had such a massive need of affirming himself he wouldn’t have divinized himself or gone through the trouble of trying to conquer as much as he did. Whether this is true is debatable but the point stands. The personal way I deal with the raging hormone in me which cause over-sensitivity is precisely this affirming of undeserved love which I have the privilege of getting.

That’s why (as I think you understood by now Edward) I got massively irrational over those bits of text because they seem to invalidate a particular mechanism of defense. I still don’t believe that what I would term “proper” self hatred can actually honestly be sustained without massive cognitive dissonance or detrimental effects to how others are perceived. If we were to hate ourselves because we’re sinful and fallen and whatnot then what have we done? God doesn’t hate us because we’re like that. We’ve tried to view through the mind of God and reached the opposite sentiment to what He’s reached which shows that (shocker) we can’t actually view things through the mind of God and reach the proper conclusion by ourselves. As for human standards… well we don’t hate people just because they are sinful and broken. Not really, even the most “disgusting” people can seem lovable to the purely human eye. So why would we hate ourselves because we are like that? Moreover how could we hate ourselves because they are like that and not hate others? Hating the bad attributes… I guess that’s fair enough.

The point that I think it could be argued they are making is that we can do nothing without God and that anytime we’ve tried to go against God’s way we’ve ended up doing massively bad things which we have an instinct to hate. I still hold that they’re maybe doing this in a over-dramatized way but I indeed don’t know their full context (which is why I posted here and asked),

So I’m curious to here your view, how do you interpret “self-hatred” in the context? Cheers.

(btw I really appreciate your change of tone. I don’t think you did it intentionally and I know it is a bit cheesy but I don’t know why or how to say it you have uplifted me a tiny bit. Thank you.)
 
I appreciate your change of tone too. I don’t think you intentionally smeared the great saints, you just found those sentences troubling, perhaps without understanding what they were really getting at, which is the effect of Original Sin in us.

You interpreted these references to hate as “self-hate” when it’s really more refined and directed toward the effects of original sin…“O Happy Fault” as the Church sings.

So my view is similar to what the Church says in “O Happy Fault”…Jesus came to us because of our faults. And what a happy result.
 
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Remorse - is Memory - awake -
Her Parties all astir -
A Presence of Departed Acts -
At window - and at Door -

Its Past - set down before the Soul
And lighted with a Match -
Perusal - to facilitate -
And help Belief to stretch -

Remorse is cureless - the Disease
Not even God - can heal -
For 'tis His institution - and
The Adequate of Hell -

Emily Dickinson
 
“Love one another as you love yourself” seems to me to be the highest wisdom.
 
Theresa of Avila used to commonly refer to herself as a worm because of the thoughts she would have and the fact that she was a sinner.

Even the smallest sin is a stain on our soul.

We all should use this knowledge to try to become better people…the type of people that God would want us to be for our own salvation.

Sin is something we all must be on guard to prevent. Knowing that we are mere worms compared to the glory of God keeps us rightsized. But always realize that we are all good people who can always be better.

Never hate yourself, but always remember that there is room for improvement. Self improvement is a lifelong goal…even for a Doctor of the Church like St. Theresa.
 
Yes, we should.

One thing clearly taught in the spiritual battle is to not trust yourself. We rationalize all too easily, to get what WE want.

Of course, the maxim to love your neighbors as yourself implies we love ourselves. Indeed we do. But we should not succumb to pride or idolatry of self. We should die to ourselves and live in Christ.

Surely, this sounds all very countercultural in an age where we are taught we are perfect “just the way we are” or that we don’t need to change, but how clearly false this is when we ruminate on our faults. We are taught to be perfect. Surely this is not done by embracing delusions of perfection.

“Self-esteem” is seen as so ultra important, yet to me it would appear that this self-esteem just tends to make one more egotistical, focused entirely too much on oneself.

It is very hard, and I cannot say I am some great person in the right necessarily, but this is how it seems to me. I know I am not yet successful in being detached from worldly things or my own desires. I think hating ourselves might help balance out how ultra loving of ourselves we are, at least a little.
 
In some branches of theology there are two parts of the soul the superior part which wants to do good and the sensual and inferior part that drags us into wanting to sin. We are supposed to hate the inferior part and mortify and humble it. Anyone who loves God should hate what brings Him displeasure and since it is this part of ourselves that displeases God through sin then we should hate that part. It is not as bad as it sounds. Didn’t Jesus say that those who love their lives will lose it?
 
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The problem with hating yourself for your faults is that if we apply that logic to other people we’ll quickly start hating them as well. You cannot actually apply one principle to yourself and another one to other people without massive dissonance. It also implies that love/ hate is something you gain or loose based on your faults or virtues which doesn’t seem to be how God sees it and it isn’t how parents view their kids either.

People don’t really love themselves (in my opinion) They flip between three images: neutral, negative and positive. The positive is really simply an attempt to combat the negative. People who are confident in themselves never feel the need to act superior to others because they have nothing to prove to anybody (including themselves). This doesn’t mean that we’re perfect, simply that we don’t need to be perfect to be loved and neither does anybody need to be perfect to be loved by us.

Also if you actually hate yourself the moment people start insulting you you’ll crack. There’s no point in being a dual self and sometimes being your own friend and other times your own enemy.

Could you hate yourself and not hate others and not have cognitive dissonance and not feel the need to succumb to the first occasion of pride and not be super sensitive? By the grace of God I don’t see why not but I don’t think it would be His Plan A and there seems to be no indication of it being His prefered way of going about it.
 
I’m going to say it. I respect the writers a lot but I think in those contexts they either had really fishy wording or were plain out not being totally honest with themselves or were using a hyperbole or something was up anyways because the principle is plain destructive and impractical.
 
I suggest that reading hagiography is like reading the Bible. Reading both is best done under the guidance of a spiritual director.

Less chance of misinterpretation providing of course that the spiritual director is one who is well educated in such things.
 
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Think of love. We are to die to ourselves, and give ourselves to others.
 
But that is different to hating yourself and I’d argue you would have neither the guts nor the love for others to do that if you actually hated yourself. “Hate” is a strong emotion and honesty implies as much self absorption as loving yourself if you want to put it that way.
 
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Ahh thinking that you are absolutely vile and detestable and should not be loved and deserve everything bad that comes your way. Worthless, good for nothing… generally a really strong a pessimistic outlook abut yourself.
 
I think the key to understanding the saints quotes you gave us is to consider deeply what Jesus in Luke 14 says
“If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”
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Or when He says in Matthew 18:
“If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life maimed or crippled than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into eternal fire.
And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into fiery Gehenna.”
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What He says here is no less striking than what the saints said in your quotes.
 
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It is a very different kind of striking. Jesus doesn’t seem to be throwing out the baby with the bathwater but if you are saying that they are using a hyperbole fair enough.

Should you literally gouge your eye out?
No.
Should you literally properly hate you mother?
No.

So then why should the answer to the question “Should you literally hate yourself?” be different. I don’t think it is.
 
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