Paul tells us in Ephesians that no man ever hated himself. But at first glance, this might seem counterintuitive to some, especially in this age of self-absorption. Can we really say this about someone who is consistently depressed, filled with self-loathing? Or assert that a suicide really loves himself? Why could we not say that Paul is simply making a general statement, as Scripture does elsewhere, and that this is not meant to be taken as a distributive claim for every member of the human race?
Certainly it might be possible to take Paul’s statement as a general truth. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and occasionally a fellow will win the lottery. But that is not what usually happens. As a general rule, poverty comes in like a bandit. And perhaps it is the same here, and Paul is telling us simply that most folks don’t hate their own flesh.
But there are good reasons for taking Paul’s statement as a necessary truth, and a profound insight into the very nature of creatures. Every individual seeks only that which that individual desires. How could it be otherwise? This should not be controversial; it simply means that at the point of choice an individual cannot want what he does not want. In his masterful treatise on free will, Jonathan Edwards showed that the idea of autonomous free will — the idea that a man can choose contrary to what he wants — is not so much erroneous as it is incoherent.
And this is what Jesus teaches us. We make our choices from the heart, from within our nature. A tree bears fruit according to the nature of the tree, and a man can only remove from a chest that which the chest contains. In the same way, a man chooses to do what his heart desires, and the will is the mechanism which God has given to creatures to enable them to identify their heart’s desire. The will is not an organ which can bring choices into being without any antecedent desire. This means that every man chooses what he wants, and at the foundational level, never chooses what he does not want.
This includes those behaviors which we have come to identify, wrongly, as motivated by self-hatred because they are so clearly destructive. The fact they are destructive only means that, at some level, the individual making the choices is seeking destruction. Even the extreme example of suicide shows us this. The person who chooses to “end it all” is not doing so for the benefit of others. He is seeking to end his own misery. Neither is this law of creaturely choices limited to the ungodly; all men, when they choose, seek that which delights them.
So a humble man and a proud man are not distinguished from one another because the latter does what he wants and the former does not. Rather, they are distinguished because they want different things. No creature ever desired anything from a base outside its own desires. So a humble man delights in God, and a proud man delights in that which is not God. But both delight, both seek, and both reach out to grasp the object of their desire.
A man who delights in God is a humble man. A man who delights in anything or anyone else is a proud man. And this brings us to consider some common contemporary counterfeits of humility. It is important for us to understand this as Christians because pride is being marketed as humility, and unfortunately, many in the Church are buying it. Those who have what we call low self-esteem, or a poor self-image, are actually struggling with their arrogance and pride. Despite surface appearances, they are not dealing with the unfortunate consequences of having a surplus of humility. A conceited man thinks about himself all the time. A morbid, self-absorbed man does the same, and this means the two men have the same problem. A humble man turns to obey the two great commands — to love God and to love his neighbor. We are told to love our neighbor as we already love ourselves, not after we learn how to love ourselves. “Learning how to love yourself” is not the first step in obedience; it is clambering on to a veritable squirrel cage run of disobedience.
Humble Christians seek their own delight in delighting God. The essence of sin is to turn away from this, and seek our own delight through delighting ourselves. Of course, in the midst of this sin, tastes differ. Some seek to delight themselves through sensual indulgence, for example, while others seek to delight themselves through self-pity. This self-pity looks unhappy to the outside world, but within are secret emotional “treasures.” And this is why the way of self-absorption is chosen by so many in our day; the fleshly reward is there. But like many perversions, the taste for it has to be cultivated.
And this is what our culture is doing. We live in therapeutic times, and this means that we have organized the system so that everyone can play this game. This is not an isolated problem here or there; the cultural ramifications are all around, and rampant in the Church. Those who refuse to play are contemptuously dismissed as “prideful.” We have come to the point where a man can get into the pulpit, and spend all his time talking about himself, and be thought to be gracious and humble. But let a man ascend into the pulpit, forget himself, and preach Christ . . . “Such dogmatism! Such pride! Such arrogance!”
As Isaiah put it, woe to those who substitute light for darkness (Is. 5:20).