Copyright by Shea Oakley
All rights reserved
It is easy for us to believe numerous lies about ourselves, even not very well-crafted ones. In many cases we believe them simply because they were repeated often to us by others. These are the lies we may have constantly heard told about ourselves by our parents, siblings or peers when we were children, lies that often took the form of insults. What we hear in our formative years can “implant” falsehoods that may haunt us well into our adulthood and it is sometimes very difficult to replace them with the truth about who we are in God’s eyes.
Perhaps the worst kind of lie we believe is that God is disgusted by us. It has been said that while Jesus Christ at times spoke in anger towards certain individuals He never spoke to anyone with contempt. No matter how bad we think we are (and may indeed be, at least relative to His perfect holiness) God is not somehow intrinsically disgusted by us. He may be disgusted by the evil we still harbor within our hearts, but He is not disgusted by us. He hates the sin, not the sinner
In fact God loves sinners and He loves them unconditionally. His love is not, for instance, predicated on our physical appearance and social graces, or lack thereof. Far more importantly than that, it is not even based upon our moral performance. The love God bears for us is actually not dependent on us at all, but on His own nature. God is love and because He is love He loves us.
For some readers this may seem like “Theology 101” but its truth cannot be stated enough for those of us who grew up exposed to people who told us in a myriad of ways that we were ultimately “unlovable”. This is because the lies they repeatedly spoke into our young ears found fertile ground in us in which to put down roots and grow. Such is the heart of a child. It is pliable, like fallow ground in the spring, and the furrows that are plowed during those years often run deep.
This may seem like grounds for despair. What can we do with the seeds of self-hatred that were planted decades ago and have taken hold and grown like poisonous weeds? How do we stop believing lies that keep us from receiving the healing and affirming love of Christ?
The answer can be found in a progressive yielding to our Lord Himself, and specifically to the reality of one of His attributes. The same God who loves us is omnipotent. There is no power in the universe that can resist His and that includes the power of the deceptions we have believed about ourselves since childhood. The children of God have access to the overwhelming might of God to transform and put right even the deepest damage to our hearts. This power is inextricably wedded to His love and its aim is always our complete restoration from the harm we have had inflicted upon us.
In the mystery of His will, and our faith, this restoration will take time. It may not even be fully completed in this life, but completed it will be because in the end there will be no “negative self-image” in Heaven, only the truth that, through Christ, we have been made perfect in His sight and thus perfect in every sense. Then even the most incessantly-repeated insults that we bore in our youth will no longer have any hold on us, any reality in our consciousness. God’s truth, and His love, will be all we know. We will be set free from the lies forever.