One thing the Church of God has been good at is making members feel totally inadequate in everything in regards to their spiritual life. It is bad enough being a married couple and having to deal with this, but if you are single there are extra burdens placed upon you. As usual, it is your fault. You love yourself more than God...or others. You are a vile sinner. You are unhappy because you are a sinner, according to the Philadelphia Church of God, and the only way to cure that is to let the holy spirit move in. Your human nature is a disgusting vile aspect of your life.
What is Satan’s nature? It is vanity—exalting the self.
God pins Satan to the wall in Ezekiel 28:17: “Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness.” This is actually where sin started (verse 15)—when Lucifer, whom God had created perfect, changed his attitude. He went from loving God to loving the self. He got absorbed in his own brightness, obsessed with his own beauty. He became self-centered. Self-impressed. Vain.
That is Satan’s nature!
“Lucifer was like a speck in all of God’s creation, but he selfishly focused on himself,” Gerald Flurry explained about this passage. “In his own eyes, he became more important than God and all His creation.
Can we become that vain about beauty? Or about things? Can vanity corrupt our wisdom? Certainly. Oftentimes, human beings become self-absorbed—wrapped up in our own beauty or looks or things” (
John’s Gospel: The Love of God).
That is our human nature! Do you really see how much you love your self? How much self-love you have?
As Mr. Armstrong said in a sermon in 1982, “Self-love is the very essence of sin.” God’s way of life is always outflowing—it is give. Anything other than that is sin—it is a result of loving our self more than God, or more than the other guy.
“God’s law is, simply,
love!” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “It is the perfect way of life. Every particle of
human suffering, unhappiness, misery and death has come solely from its transgression!” (
The Plain Truth About Healing). Whenever there is a problem—conflict, discouragement, unhappiness—
sin is the cause, which means that
self-love is in there somewhere! Every particle of unhappiness is caused by
sin, and
self-love is the
essence of sin.
Are you unhappy as a single? Then examine yourself for self-love. You are trying to satiate that gnawing inner hunger with something other than God. To some degree, most probably, you are combating your inferiority complex with conceit, self and vanity!
This Satan-inspired human nature makes us miserable. Sin makes us miserable. Self-love makes us miserable! Yet, so often, in specific situations, we put ourselves first because we think that is going to make us happier. We are certain that putting the other person first is going to make us miserable! We prioritize our own desires. We focus on how we want to be treated. Our service and sacrifice are required somewhere—someone needs us—but we are into what we’re doing, so we insist that we’re too busy, or we pretend like we don’t hear or don’t see the problem.
We do these things all the time—and we may even feel justified in doing so. But the reality is that self-love is sin! It is not the way God thinks! It is not His nature to do that. It is not His love.
