Day 5: The Moment Self-Hatred Began

Lord Jesus, what do You want to say to me about the way You love Yourself and the way You want me to love myself?

Now I want to look at what the serpent said. How did he tempt them? What promise did he make? He made two promises. First, that they will not die, though I had said they would, and secondly that they will be like Me, knowing good and evil.

And yet they were already “like Me” in the way I wanted them to be, for they were “made in My image.” So what the serpent is saying is,

“The way you are like God is not enough. The way that God made you to be like Him and gave you to be like Him is not enough. You need to be like God in another way, a stolen way, a forbidden way. You will be better off if you disobey to try to get what you already have and become who you already are.”

Which is very similar to saying,

“The way God created you is not enough. He didn’t do a good enough job. He doesn’t deserve all praise for making you just the way you are. You should try to change and become somebody different, oppose His plans and become what He didn’t intend you to be. You should be discontent with yourself and try to take over, if you can. Like I did.” (And look how well that worked for him!)

Thus, the seed of self-hatred, as well as of self-exaltation and pride, is here. It is such a small seed that you never would find it if you didn’t see later what it grew into and became, but it is here, small as a mustard seed or a tomato seed, buried in the temptation.

What is more obvious is that Satan is suggesting here the first Disagreeing With God, which I told you is the bad thing, instead of Agreeing with God, which I told you is the good thing. Eve can’t be running towards Me yelling, “YES! I AM VERY GOOD JUST LIKE YOU SAY!” and picking fruit to get what I haven’t given her at the same time. She has to do just one or the other. She hasn’t realized that yet.

Like I said, it’s a small seed. I’m not saying that you can look at just Genesis 3, if Genesis 3 was all you had, and say “Eve’s problem was that she didn’t love and accept herself just the way she was, and that’s why she fell.” But I am saying that looking back from where you stand now and seeing all the harm that self-hatred and self-rejection and Disagreeing with God have done, you can see the tiny seed of them here. This is where all that started. Not in the moment they realized they were naked, nor when they hid, nor when I cursed them, but in the moment that she listened to the devil and believed the lie. Part of the lie was, “You’re not enough just the way you are.”