By Christina Holder
In Dante's allegorical poem The Divine Comedy, sinners who are guilty of pride circle the rim of the mountain leading into Hell with large boulders on their backs. It is impossible for them to look upward. The weight of the rocks forces their faces toward the ground.
These sinners have defied God in favor of themselves, and their pride has painful consequences. Their slow trudge, with their bodies hunched over, is symbolic of the agonizing road they must walk in order to learn humility.
When Dante wrote about the prideful in The Divine Comedy, he had the self-lovers in mind -- those who reject God because they think too highly of themselves. They are defiant toward God. They don't recognize their position or their worth in relation to Him.
But there's another class of defiant people. Their defiance is subtle, although much more dangerous. They also carry stones on their backs as they trudge through life. They don't recognize their position or their worth in relation to Him. They reject God because they love themselves too little.
If given the choice to describe myself, I probably wouldn't use the adjective "unlovable." Most of you probably wouldn't either. As children of God, we should have pretty good opinions of ourselves. After all, we were created in God's perfect, holy image. He has great purpose for our lives. And He gushes over us. Who can top His promise to adore us -- for eternity?
But despite all this, every day I find myself confronted with little lies that threaten to undermine God's true feelings. They pop up in unexpected places and affect me in unexpected ways. A boss's unwarranted criticism. A loved one's frustrations. A friend's insensitive words. Even the little disapprovals I cast upon myself.
These lies are like heavy stones stacked upon my back. Left there, they only force my face to the ground and prevent me from looking up to my Creator. And worse, when I believe lies, I slowly begin to walk the road of defiance. That's because rejecting God's truths is the equivalent of rejecting part of Him.
The Lovability Factor
There's a thin line separating loving myself too little and loving myself too much. God's desire is that I don't spend too much time on either side of that line. I live in a society saturated with messages about how much I should love myself. Oprah and Dr. Phil send this message to their faithful followers all the time.
Love your wide hips.
Love your small bust.
Love your crooked teeth.
Essentially they're saying, "Love how God made you" -- just without the God part. But having a healthy opinion of oneself didn't begin with TV personalities. It began with the Bible. The Bible is, after all, full of God's compliments to His creation. His words define my "lovability factor." Consider:
All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you. (Song of Solomon 4:7)
In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye. (Deuteronomy 32:10)
For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:10)
A healthy self-love begins and ends in the Bible. That's because God's truth and what I ultimately believe about myself can never be separated.
So often, however, I am quick to separate. I find it easy to affirm others in God's truth. I'm eager to lift up a friend who's discouraged and to remind her of all the good things God says about her. But when I'm feeling disheartened, I often find it difficult to even open my Bible and to seek out God's truth. For some reason I'm more content with filtering lies through my heart and mind. I become similar to the suffering Job, who questioned whether His Creator even knew what He was doing when He formed Job in the womb (Job 3:1-26). I'm like the disobedient follower described in Isaiah:
Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker -- An earthenware vessel among the vessels of earth! Will the clay say to the potter, "What are you doing?" Or the thing you are making say, "He has no hands?" Woe to him who says to a father, "What are you begetting?" Or to a woman, "To what are you giving birth?" (Isaiah 45: 9-12)
I become a defiant child, standing apart from my Creator who adores me.
What I've discovered is that veering from the road of defiance requires effort -- and lots of it. I must force myself to cast off the stones on my back.
Cast Off the Stones
Dante sentenced his prideful subjects to grueling hours of lugging stone. But in my moments of self-loathing, God asks me to do the opposite: I must learn to fling off the slabs of untruth that are pushing me low to the ground. I must learn to love what God says about me.
When I'm feeling weighed down by life's circumstances, I've found it helpful to remember these ways to "cast off the stones":
Darkness is at work and aims to overtake me. Both the books of Job and 1 Peter cite Satan's aim to prowl about the Earth, looking for someone to devour (Job 1:7, 1 Peter 5:8-9). When I begin to doubt God's love and admiration for me, then it's possible I'm being provoked into a spiritual battle with the Great Deceiver himself. Being aware of this gives me the knowledge and the power to know how to pray.
There's power in pressing myself to pray. Often when I'm feeling down, the first thing I want to do isn't to talk to God about it. But I've found that merely opening up a conversation with God has the power to lift my spirit and to give me clarity. I'm able to tell God what's troubling me and to ask Him to help me believe His truths.
Casting stones requires preparation and practice. I'll never forget how my girlfriend Jessica ministered to me one night when I was feeling especially low following a big breakup. She pulled out a bookmark filled with God's truths and read them aloud to me. There was such power in hearing those words. Seeing how she responded showed me how important it was to prepare for the days ahead when I'd struggle again with Satan's lies and my defiance to God. Now while I'm driving in my car, sometimes I'll speak those truths aloud. Other times, I will write them in my journal.
Casting off stones is hard work. But believing in God's truths gives me the power to cast them off. What I'm left with is the best feeling possible in the world -- love.
Discuss this article on our blog, Fresh Brew.
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Christina Holder is a freelance writer based in Liberia, West Africa, where she is recording post-war stories five years after Liberia's brutal 14-year civil war. She is a former reporter for the Naples (Fla.) Daily News and a former reporter/researcher for syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak in Washington, D.C. She writes for the blog Beautifully Broken, which encourages women with God's promise to take their brokenness and to make it beautiful.
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Copyright © 2008 Christina Holder. All rights reserved. This article was published on Ungrind.org on June 2, 2008.
