Sadly, tragically, there seems to be a lot of hatred in the world today. Where is all of this hate coming from? Several causes come to mind:
- The internet and social media have contributed significantly to the amplification and rapid spread of hatred. Activists, podcasters, influencers, and others who express strong emotions such as hatred tend to get more clicks, and their passionate and hate-filled posts are more likely to get shared and go viral than more rational, civil, and nuanced expressions of political and cultural opinion. The extensive indulgence in hatred on social media also makes hate seem more common and widespread than it is in the general population.
- In our increasingly secular age, many people have made politics their new religion, ascribing ultimate rather than relative importance to politics and political issues. When politics becomes the central focus of a person’s life, civil and reasonable discussion regarding political issues can easily get supplanted by a bitter and vitriolic hatred for anyone who dares to voice even the slightest disagreement with one’s own opinions.
- Cynical politicians often foment and encourage such hatred, knowing that stirring up strong emotions like anger and hatred can generate political activism and support for their candidacies and their policies.
- We fallen human beings are prone to envy and resentment of those who seem to have a better life than we do, and we sometimes look to scapegoat other individuals or groups as being the cause of our problems and disappointments.
Undoubtedly, all of these factors (and others) have contributed to the rising levels of hatred in contemporary society. But one of the deepest causes of the increasing hatred of other people is the increasing hatred of oneself.
St. Augustine wisely observed, “If you do not know how to love yourself, you cannot truthfully love your neighbor.” The ability to genuinely love other people is crucially dependent on the ability to love oneself. If you don’t love yourself in a healthy way, then you will find it difficult, perhaps impossible, to truly love other people.
Jesus, and Scripture as a whole, establish self-love as the standard for all love among human beings.
That’s why Jesus assumed love of self in expressing the second greatest commandment (“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”—Matt 22:36-40; Mark 12:28-34; Luke 10:25-37), and that’s also why this inextricable connection between the ability to love oneself and the ability to love other people is emphasized over and over again in Scripture (Lev 19:18; Matt 5:43, 19:19; Rom 13:9; Gal 5:14; Jas 2:8). Jesus, and Scripture as a whole, establish self-love as the standard for all love among human beings.
Surely there is no lack of self-love in the world today, when we live in an era of rampant egocentrism and even narcissism? But of course, egocentrism and narcissism are not genuine or healthy forms of self-love. Egoism and narcissism are often attempts to compensate for an actual lack of self-love. For many, there is an emptiness inside of them, a void that they’re trying to fill up through an exaggerated sense of self-importance, the gratification of their excessively self-centered desires, and efforts to convince others of their greatness or uniqueness.
But it’s not just egoists and narcissists who suffer from a lack of healthy self-love. There are many other people today who, although they may not be egoists or narcissists, also fail to develop or maintain a healthy love of self. All of these people, whether egoists or not, tend to lack two of the key elements of love: approval of the beloved (in this case, oneself) as good, and willing the good of the beloved.
In order to be able to love anyone genuinely, you need to be able to see good of some sort in that person, as Josef Pieper pointed out:
In every conceivable case love signifies much the same as approval. This is first of all to be taken in the literal sense of the word’s root: loving someone or something means finding him or it probus, the Latin word for “good.” It is a way of turning to him or it and saying, “It’s good that you exist; it’s good that you are in this world!”
In order to be able to love ourselves in a healthy way, we need to be able to approve of ourselves, to see some good in ourselves, to be able to say to ourselves, “It’s good that you exist!” Many people today find that difficult to believe about themselves.
It’s also difficult for many people to will their own good today—or better said, to will their true good rather than what they mistake for their good. Many people today are confused about where their good truly lies, and they end up seeking fulfillment via goods that will never truly fill them up (money, status, fame, power, etc.) instead of more fulfilling goods (loving relationships with other people, meaningful work, and a sense of purpose in life) and the ultimate good, God.
So the question of why so many people today find it difficult to love themselves in a healthy way is, in part, a question of why so many people find it difficult to see the good in themselves and to know where their true good lies. Why is that?
Once again, there are certainly multiple potential causes here, but two of the main causes for the lack of healthy self-love today are also the causes of many of our other societal problems: the prevalence of broken families and the loss—or outright rejection—of faith in God.
Parents are typically our first exposure to love. We need and want our parents to see the good in us and to will our genuine good. With the increase in broken families, fewer of us experience such approval and loving care. It’s difficult for us to love ourselves when the people who should love us the most and the people we most need to love us when we are young don’t seem to truly love us.
Also, as Hans Urs von Balthasar has emphasized, our parents are not only the source of our first exposure to love; they are also our first exposure to the beauty, goodness, and truth of the world and of life itself and, most importantly, our first exposure to the God who is love.
Which brings us to the other fundamental cause of a lack of healthy self-love: the rejection of God in our increasingly secular society. Our ultimate good as human beings is ut in Deo sit—that we might be in God. Our ultimate good is that we might share in the divine life and love (2 Pet 1:4). We crave God’s love, whether or not some of us will admit that craving to ourselves. Even Jean-Paul Sartre, an inveterate atheist, is quoted as having acknowledged, “That God does not exist, I cannot deny; that my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.”
The deepest source of genuine self-love is knowing that we are loved by God, as Balthasar has also explained:
I only appreciate fully that God is my “highest good” when I learn (in the Son) that I am a “good” to him, affirmed by him; this is what guarantees my being and my freedom. And it is only when I learn that I represent a “good” and a “thou” to God that I can fully trust in the imparted gift of being and freedom and so, affirmed from and by eternity, really affirm myself too.
When you hate yourself, it’s easy to hate other people. But when you can see yourself as good and lovable in God’s eyes, it’s easier to love yourself, and then it becomes easier to love other people too.