Welcome to the world of self-pity, which often sounds like this:
- Why does everything bad happen to me?
- No one else understands.
- No one else has gone through what I’m going through.
- If anyone else had to deal with this, they would have given up long ago.
- No one cares about me. God must not even care about me.
- I’m worthless.
- What’s the point in trying anymore?
These statements and questions sound sad, and they are. But let me ask you, how does that kind of thinking fit with the command to give thanks in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:18)?
Unmasking Self-Pity
Thinking biblically here, I would classify self-pity underneath complaining (Philippians 2:14). Self-pitiers intentionally rehearse and embellish what they perceive as wrong to garner pity for themselves. And therefore, self-pity is a sin. It is not just a struggle. It is not just some unpleasant experience that we want someone to overcome to make life better. It is a sin we need to repent of.
However, I want to clarify by giving place for biblical expressions of grief and sorrow. It is not a sin to groan. Generally, the difference between self-pity and lament is that lament is done with God’s promises in mind, whereas self-pity pushes out the promises of God to intensify the dilemma.
Sometimes we think of self-pity as a form of self-harm. Now certainly all sin is self-harm in the sense that it multiplies your sorrows and separates you from God. What I mean is that we can think that people who practice self-pity do it with the intent to harm themselves. But we must remember, “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it” Ephesians 5:29). No sinner truly hates himself. So, those who practice self-pity do it to benefit themselves, not harm themselves (though it could result in harm as well, but that is not the highest aim). This is because it feels kind of good to just meditate on and rehearse how hard your life is. So, on the outside, self-pitiers look like they are being hard on themselves or hating themselves. But the reality is, when you look behind the mask, it is a sinful and self-absorbed way they love themselves. Here are a few examples of how I have seen or experienced this play out.
Sometimes people practice self-pity because it helps them feel special for the suffering they are enduring. The more they can rehearse how terrible they and their circumstances are, the more special and unique they become. And that allows them to derive a sense of self-worth from their suffering and gives them some reason to admire themselves or be admired by others.
Sometimes people practice self-pity as a form of self-protection. If I can tear myself down and say and believe the worst things about myself, then guess what? You can’t say or do anything worse to me than I’ve already done to myself, so your harm becomes meaningless. And by tearing myself down, I get to be in the driver’s seat of my view of myself. I don’t have to be afraid of you anymore. You can’t make me think I’m a piece of garbage if I already think I am. So, who’s in control? Me, not you.
Sometimes people practice self-pity as a form of atonement. If I can beat myself into a pulp, then maybe God will believe that I am sincere. Then maybe he will think that I am truly sorry for what I’ve done. Instead of relying on the finished work of Jesus who was punished to gain their right standing with God, they instead rely on punishing themselves with their own thinking.
Or sometimes when people practice self-pity, they are building a case in their minds for why they are the victim. And so, the more they rehearse and embellish what is wrong, the more they can free themselves from the weight of being held responsible. “If I was dealt a different hand of cards, I wouldn’t be this kind of person. I’m stuck like this because of how my parents raised me.” If I can convince myself I am a victim, I no longer must feel guilty for how I contributed to getting myself here or for how I have responded since getting here. I don’t need to change. Everything and everyone else need to change. And my self-pity makes me feel justified for how I’ve responded so far.
Self-pity offers us a lot. That’s why it’s hard to cheer self-pitiers up. They don’t want to give up what they are gaining from it. If you are going to overcome and repent of self-pity, you must begin fighting your self-pity at the heart level. When you practice self-pity, there is something fundamentally wrong with what you’re believing. You interpret all your circumstances through the beliefs you are holding in the moment. If you believe the world is out to get you, every knock on the door will frighten you. If you believe your amazon package is on the way, every knock on the door will excite you. So, it’s necessary to reshape the beliefs we hold in our hearts if we are going to overcome self-pity. In moments of self-pity, you are likely holding some of these beliefs:
- You deserve good. You deserve better circumstances than what you’re going through. That’s why you believe you should be pitied.
- Your trial is not good.
- You believe the good in your life is incomparably insignificant to the difficulties that you are facing.
- Your sins and guilt are too great. God would never love you or be pleased with you.
I believe the gospel reverses all those beliefs. Though I cannot address all these beliefs, my goal is to help you see how the gospel offers us a supply of gratitude that can outlast and overpower any temptation to self-pity.
Remember What You Really Deserve
As a pastor and counselor, I have seen people bitter at God as if He has wronged them in some way. But the Bible has a very different perspective. It teaches us that we are all sinners (Romans 3:23). This is the reality. And so, we must ask the question, what do you really deserve?
Well, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Your wage is what you deserve. You work two weeks, and you say to your employer, “give me my wages.” Well, as a sinner when you shake your fist at God and say, “You short-changed me! This is not what I deserve! Give me my wages!”, you have no idea what you’re asking for. If you’ve earned anything, its death. Not just physical death, but eternal death under the wrath of God (2 Thessalonians 1:9; Revelation 14:11). That’s what we deserve. If you think, “I don’t deserve that”, then you are ignorant toward the depth of your sin and the holiness of God. So, when I go through a difficult season, here’s what helps me be content and fight the urge to self-pity. I say, “This is still better than what I deserve. A person in Hell would trade places with me in an instant if they could. This pain, this loss, is filled to the brim with God’s mercy toward me.”
That is why the great lamenter could say, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23). We put that verse on our t-shirts and on our home décor. But what you need to understand is that those words were not born out of prosperity. Those words came from Jeremiah as he looked around at the ruins of his city after God brought judgement upon it. Loved ones were dragged off by enemy armies. There were dead people lying in the streets. Mothers were eating their own children to survive. Yet Jeremiah could look around and say, “Lord, your mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning, including this one.”
How can Jeremiah say such a thing at this time? Because he knew they deserved even worse than that, and that knowledge allowed him to see the mercies of God in the darkest of circumstances.
The reason Jeremiah could stand on the ashes of his city with gratitude, even in the middle of his mourning, is because he had a right view of what they really deserved for breaking God’s law. When you realize what he realized, the scales will fall off your eyes and you will see the mercy of God everywhere. And you will be able to say with integrity, “his mercies are new every morning” even as your life is in ruins all around you.
Surely, in sparing us from judgement alone, God has left us with enough to be grateful for an eternity. But he has done more than this.
Remember that You Have Been Fully Qualified in Christ
Now, some of you are thinking, “That didn’t help at all. I agree with everything you said. I don’t think I deserve anything good. In fact, that’s what leads to my self-pity.” If that’s you, thank you for your patience so far.
Some practice self-pity because in their pride they think they deserve better than what they have. Others practice self-pity because in their pride they place more weight on what they have done wrong than on what God has done for them through Christ.
In our self-pity, it is easy to think thoughts like, “If I were God, I wouldn’t love me. I don’t even know why you waste your time with me.” And it’s in moments like those when we need to humble our own opinions to the truth of the Scriptures. Because we are indeed unqualified for eternal life. We are, in and of ourselves, unfit for such an inheritance. We have met zero conditions. But what you need to understand is that everyone who is in heaven today is not there because they somehow met the qualifications.
The Bible says that it is “the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:12-14).
This verse doesn’t say that you must qualify yourself. It says that the Father has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance. This means that the Father has caused all the conditions to be qualified for heaven to be met on our behalf.
This can be difficult for us to wrap our minds around because most things in life do not operate this way. You apply to a college, and they first make sure you are qualified for their school. They look at your grades, community service hours, SAT tests, etc. When you’re trying to land a job, you spend hours crafting your resume. And you stand before a person who interviews you and asks you questions about your experience, education, competency, and so on. In sports, you must ‘make’ the team and qualify for the playoffs. If you want to take out a loan to buy a house in this hectic market, you must qualify for a loan. Even in the church elders and deacons must be qualified. And the list goes on. We spend most of our daily lives trying to be qualified for what is at hand. We are always striving, and always trying to be enough, always trying not to disappoint or let people down.
So, it is no wonder that when it comes to the One who’s love opinion matters most – God’s – our normal habits can kick in and we can think, “I must be qualified for this too.” And we realize what a daunting and impossible task that is. “How can I possibly do this? If I am not qualified for most things in this world, how can I be qualified for the kingdom of God?” But it is in these very important and eternal matters that you can put to rest those anxieties because it is not you, but God, who qualifies you. Every qualification, condition, and pre-requisite for you to inherit eternal life and be accepted by God has been accomplished by God through Christ. Here’s how.
In every area that we have failed, Christ succeeded. In every temptation, suffering, season of life, and occasion for good and the glory of God, Christ was without sin. He was perfectly qualified for an eternal inheritance. That is why the Father said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased” (Matthew 3:17).
Yet, when he went to the cross, he took upon himself our qualifications. He was punished in our place. And by doing so he “wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14). Therefore, we don’t need to try to punish ourselves with pity parties. We don’t need to finish what was lacking in Christ’s death. When Christ said, “It is finished”, he meant it (John 19:30).
Not only that, but Jesus gave us his qualifications. Remember what the Father said about being well pleased with Jesus? Well, just as the Father looked upon Christ with our qualifications and responded accordingly, the Father now looks upon us and sees Christ’s qualifications covering us. Clothed with Christ’s qualifications, God responds by declaring us righteous in His sight (2 Corinthians 5:21). That is why we can stand before God fully accepted. And God’s assessment of you in Christ is more accurate and authoritative than your assessment of yourself in your sins. Even if you say, “I am dirty, horrible, defiled, and unrighteous”, your words hold no weight in the heavenly courtroom. Only God’s words do, and he declares you righteous in Christ.
So, when we think thoughts like, “I am scum in the eyes of God”, we need to recalibrate our thinking to the testimony of Scripture. We must remember the beautiful truth captured in the song My Worth is Not in What I Own: “Two wonders here that I confess. My worth and my unworthiness. My value fixed, my ransom paid at the cross.” Since our standing is permanently fixed in Christ, gratitude ought to be the permanent posture of our hearts.
Remembering what we truly deserve protects us from believing we have been short-changed and remembering that we have been fully qualified for the kingdom protects us from wallowing in our shortcomings.
