Surely not.
An idol?
That is the thing God hates most: an idol that draws our worship away from Him.
Self-loathing is the barrage of emotion we bring against ourselves, tallying up all the ways we perceive that we fall short--short of some artificial measure influenced by media from the outside and envy and/or shame from the inside.
It takes a lot of energy and time to keep up self-loathing day after day.
But most importantly, we are loathing the thing that God loves most: us--as His creation.
If your child created the most amazing picture, would you trash him for it, or watch idly by while he trashed it himself?
Yet we persist in obligating ourselves to the trashing of ourselves, when in fact, we learn in the Bible that we are to love others as we love ourselves.
That puts us in a pickle, doesn't it?
In Matthew 22, the two most important commands from Jesus are to love God with all of our heart, and love others as we love ourselves.
If self-loathing takes us away from one of the top two commands in Jesus Land, it sounds like an idol to me.
In the land of all of our American idols, self-loathing may be the most elusive to release.
God's help to turn our self-loathing into self-love is there for the asking. Don't delay.
