Self-reliance and Self-hatred

Leaning on the Lord

Oh how much energy I put into the construction of castles for myself. I trust that my petty structures will provide protection for me in times of trouble. Often I fail utterly in my trusting God. I want to feel safe by taking control of my destiny and making things happen. I am not alone in this because the bookstores are stocked with false prophets peddling self help and life improvement books.

Not that there is anything wrong with learning how to operate effectively in the world. Learning to compete in business is necessary to live in our world and if we do it fairly and with integrity it may be blessed by God. There is nothing wrong with saving for a rainy day or planning for retirement, these too are necessary in the financial structures into which we have been born. But it is where we ultimately place our trust that matters.

Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed are those who trust in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit. (Jer 17:5-8)

If our ultimate trust is in our self power rather than in our creator and redeemer, we cheat ourselves of love and we impoverish those around us. The result of self-dependence or dependence upon mortal flesh (vulnerable and limited, contingent humanity) is fear. Fear is a devouring lion which wreaks havoc upon our relationships and upon our ability to truly live in the freedom which Christ gives to us. Love drives out fear and so it is to love which we must turn and in which we place our ultimate trust.

When God shows up in the midst of our crisis, it is to love He calls us to return. When he withholds the rain, it is to the stream our roots must go. I understand roots and radical to be etymologically related and so I take this to mean He calls us to radical trust in him, even in the danger and disaster of the drought. In The Wound of Knowledge, Rowan Williams reflects on the idea of a God acting in crisis to call us to dependence upon Him, “Self-dependence is revealed as a mechanism of self-destruction; to cling to it in the face of God’s invitation to trust is a thinly veiled self-hatred.”

If our ultimate trust is in our self, this is the opposite of self-love, it is self-hatred in disguise. If we trust in God we are fully alive, if we ultimately trust ourselves, we are in the dance of death and drowning in the fear which is a symptom of the nascent loveless-ness the enemy calls us into.