One of my favorite books is Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. The plot of the novel centers around a woman who is notably ugly. Without spoiling the ending, her journey is complex and Lewis drives home some of his most powerful literary lessons when the main character confronts her own ugliness. I once asked a professor of mine, a scholar of Lewis, to unpack this theme for me. His brief answer was jarring: “It’s only after you realize how dark you are, and how much you actually hate yourself, that you can begin to be loved.”
While you can certainly take this article as an encouragement to read the book for yourself, its theme of confronting our own ugliness is something I’ve found central to the past year of my life. My professor’s words have churned in my mind time after time. I find that most New Year’s resolutions, self-help articles, and even entire businesses and platforms are built around the concept of “loving yourself,” especially those created for women. Scripture even entreats us to love our neighbors as ourselves, leading us to assume that we cannot love others if we don’t love ourselves (Matthew 23:29). So, a theologian advising me to dive into self-hatred? That seems contradictory.
However, as is the case with so many truths, the reality of self-love and self-hatred exist as a “both/and.” I can both love and hate, yes, even myself. And perhaps, I can only love myself once I have accepted that there are also parts of me that I absolutely hate, too.
Years like 2020 serve a purpose beyond a societal wake-up call. Broken years like this past one––when things seem to repeatedly go wrong and the world around us only grows darker––also perform the duty of stirring up the darkness within us. We wish there was no correlation between our own sin and the sin that surrounds us, but there is. Perhaps the most uncomfortable thing I can do is recognize that the first enemy I must confront, and repeatedly defeat, is not the world, political powers, or flagrant immorality––it’s me.
The battle between the inherently good daughter of God who will inhabit Heaven and the fallen, selfish woman who doesn’t understand who she is will be lifelong––and this conflict can either be depressing or incredibly motivating. St. Paul told us of the struggle: “For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self, but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members” (Romans 7:22-23).
Such is the reality that motivated a great-souled man like G.K. Chesterton to submit “I am” as the answer to the question: “What’s wrong with the world?” Chesterton’s simple statement points to the same humbling, terrifying lesson posed by Lewis in Till We Have Faces: there is a dark ugliness in each one of us, and all the self-love, positive self-talk, and inspirational messages attempting to help us own our goodness are not enough to overcome it. Only Jesus is. The goal is not to stay in the darkness and self-hatred, but to recognize it, quit hiding from it, battle against it, let it rear its ugly head––then let Love Himself answer.
This past year and all of its challenges, events, catastrophes, and changes (both on a global and personal scale) have dredged up a recognition of a darkness in me that has been shocking. It’s surprising what we learn in the face of disruption: when had I become so selfish, so unkind, so prideful, so anxious, so weak? Advice to love and be gentle with myself seemed to do no good. The personal darkness mirrored the divide that steadily increases in the world surrounding me: when had the world become so selfish, so unkind, so prideful, so anxious, so weak?
It’s here, staring in this mirror where the ugliness is finally front and center, that my professor’s words begin to make sense: “It’s only after you realize how dark you are, and how much you hate yourself, that you can begin to be loved.” The messy pile of our own darkness can either sit there silently festering or we can sink ourselves in it up to our elbows. There are parts of me that are undeniably ugly, but I am undeniably good. Until this contrast, this battle, this “both/and,” becomes an integral part of my call to sanctity, no amount of tips and resolutions will make the ugliness disappear. In Till We Have Faces, Lewis says it loud and clear:
When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?
There is a relief in finally showing your face, however ugly it may be; and it’s only once we truly show our face, as Lewis points out, that we can actually see God’s face. His gaze is upon everything in us, and only in His eyes can the darkness become loveable. I have been selfish, prideful, anxious, and weak––and I have hated that. But it was in the tension of accepting my self-hatred that love began to pour in.
There’s a freedom in a life where there’s nothing festering, when all the darkness has been released, the ugliness has been stared dead in the eye, and the hatred finally admitted. The love feels more concrete there, more impenetrable, more eternal. Battling against the darkness in us isn’t something to be feared; in fact, it only reveals how truly victorious love is.
Perhaps, in 2024, loving yourself may start with first confronting the fact that there are parts of you that you hate, the parts that 2023 was really good at revealing. Instead of attempting to cover up those parts with resolutions, maybe try to accept the dark and ugly in you for what it is: an invitation to show your face, to battle what you have been for the sake of becoming what you truly are.
©TheYoungCatholicWoman
