Do you hate yourself?

Well do you? I was reading a blog the other day that I can't seem to get off my mind. It spoke about verses that are challenging to us. I didn't respond, but since then, I think that Jesus has answered for me... and there are so many. (all of these are NKV: New Kara Version. For actual verses click on the link at the end)

I took you into the desert to humble you and to test you and to see what was in your heart. (Deut 8:2)

Anyone who is not disciplined is illigitimate and not a true son . (Heb 12:8)

Woe are you when men think well of you, like you, you are well fed, are fat and rich. (Luke 6:24-26)

There are so many more, and maybe I will keep adding to this as more are shown to me.... but one that keeps coming back to me over the past couple of years is when Jesus talks about the price tag that is stuck on the product we sometimes call discipleship.

Anyone who wants to follow has to kill everything he knew about his life, and leave it behind to follow a different life. And if you like the old life better, in fact, unless you HATE the old life, you are not worthy to come.

I remember once sitting in a Dunkin Doughnuts in Bankok, Thailand and just weeping over this text. I was longing for an earthly home, and yet I knew that I was going to get on a plane in a couple of days, and I was going to go back to China for another semester- going back to this other foriegn home that I had made. I felt the weight of denying my father and mother for the first time in my life. But hating myself. This has been a much longer journey.

When I was in DC I went to the Holocoust Museum. It was a really amazing experience, but one of the things that I stopped to write down- was a quote from a German Jew who was a famous writer (so famous that I can't remember him) and came to America during the holocoust. This is how the quote read:

"I think I am so lucky to be alive.
But last night as I lay in bed
I thought
'survival of the fittest'
and I hated myself."

Do I hate myself? He had been among the "saved" yet he felt the weight of self-hatred because he knew of those who were dying. I know this is not the same thing that Jesus meant when he said we are to hate ourselves... but for some reason I can't help but think that there has to ba an anology there. To find the weight of the lost in the light of my own salvation. What does this look like?

how might ours read?

I am so lucky to be alive.
But last night as I lay in bed
I thought
"predestination"
and I hated myself?