Bernard Bush, in his essay, Coping with God (quoted here), sends a message to many a depressed Christian.
“We may find that we punish ourselves mercilessly for real or imagined sins, and even then we will not forgive ourselves.
… fortunately, Christ has revealed the real God to us in unmistakably human form, exposed projection for the idolatry that it is, and given us the way to to become free from it.
It takes a profound conversion to accept the belief that God is tender and loves us just as we are, not in spite of our sins and faults, but with them.
God does not condone or sanction evil, but he does not withhold his love because there is evil in us.
The key to understanding is the way we feel about ourselves.
We cannot even stand or accept love from another human being when we do not love ourselves, much less believe or accept that God could possibly love us.”
Amen.
That’s both biblical, and yet also heretical in most evangelical churches and circles.
This idea that we should love ourselves.
Oh, we’ll hear sermon after sermon about how God loves us, but how many times will be told that we should feel about ourselves the way God does?
That kind of message is “the domain of the Joel Osteen, squishy” kind of church.
It’s simply not acceptable in “true, Bible-believing churches.”
But all those “true, Bible-believing churches” would say “God loves you,” and yet deny that luxury to someone’s own feelings towards themselves.
It is not biblical. Far from it.
It is a lie — one meant to steal the joy of our salvation; in fact, if you were to categorize it, you should place it in the realm of the demonic because if Satan can’t steal our salvation, he’ll certainly try to steal the joy from our salvation.
And this is the way to do it — tell people it’s a ghastly lie that you should love yourself (even though God does).
But it’s okay to love yourself. It really is. And again, how do we know? Because God does.
If it’s okay for God to do it, it can’t be a sin, right?
Again, if God loves you today, love yourself today.
It’s not easy to take that attitude towards ourselves when we’ve been told that kind of thinking is a modern sickness in the church.
If so, it’s an ancient sickness in God himself, because he’s loved you since before you were born.
So, as Brennan Manning says, take sides with God, against your own self-evaluation.
[Painting: La Douleur, Cezanne]
