Dying to self

 

  In many churches I've attended, there is such an emphasis on our sinful nature that I feel it can lead to self-loathing and self-hatred. Personally I find it repellent and I don't think it's what Jesus meant when He spoke of dying to self. The following is a piece that describes the good within us that God implanted when creating us in His own image. I think it has a balance that rings true. 

  "It is not true that self-love is the worst thing about us or our only driving force or principle, or that it constitutes ourselves any more than other principles, and the wrong done to our nature by such modes of speech, and thinking, needs to be resisted. Our nature has other elements or constituents, and vastly higher ones, to which self-love was meant to minister, and which are at war with its excesses. 

For example, we have reason, or intellectual energy, given to us by God for the pursuit and acquisition of truth; and this is essentially a disinterested principle; for truth, which is its object, and is of a universal, impartial nature. The great province of the intellectual faculty is to acquaint the individual with the laws and order of the divine system, a system which spreads infinitely beyond himself, of which he forms a very small part, which embraces innumerable beings equally favored by God, and which proposes as it sublime and beneficent end, the ever-growing good of the whole. 

Again, human nature has a variety of affections, corresponding to our domestic and most common relations; affections which in multitudes overpower self-love, which make others the chief objects of our care, which nerve the arm for ever-recurring toil by day, and strengthen the wearied frame to forego the slumbers of night. 

Then there belongs to every man the general sentiment of humanity, which responds to all human sufferings, to a stranger's tears and groans, and often prompts to great sacrifices for his relief. 

  Above all, there is the moral principle, that which should especially be called a man's self, for it is clothed with a kingly authority over his whole nature, and was plainly given to bear sway over every desire. This is eminently a disinterested principle. Its very essence is impartiality. It has no respect of persons. It is the principle of justice, taking the rights of all under its protection, and frowning on the least wrong, however largely it may serve ourselves. This moral nature especially delights in, and enjoins, a universal charity, and makes the heart thrill with exulting joy at the sight of hearing of magnanimous deeds, of perils fronted, and death endured, in the cause of humanity." W. E. Channing.