Uninvited to the Party

Many years ago, I lost a board game I was playing with my family. I don’t remember if I was irked because I lost by a little or by a lot, but I do remember joking that I was going to invite my family to a pity party to lament my loss. I even mentally designed invitations that would say something like, “You are cordially invited to Hannah’s pity party.” I was not seriously bothered by losing this game, although I did like making a bigger deal out of it than was necessary. But in the years following that game, I threw many smaller pity parties for myself: I would wallow in self-pity and focus on what I lacked.

When someone asked me a few months ago what God taught me this year, I had my answer ready: God has taught me to recognize thoughts of self-pity, see the selfishness behind them, and repent of them.

Strangely, even as I wallowed in self-pity, it took a while to recognize it for what it was. Self-pity, I think, can masquerade as sadness or anger, and I labeled my self-pity as such. But God began to show me the sin of my self-pity, and I began to learn that God’s people cannot live comfortably in self-pity.

When we focus on self-pity, we selfishly refuse to see the abundance of grace God has lavished on us, and the gifts—both spiritual and physical—God has given us. Instead of delighting that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights (James 1:17),” we focus on the gifts that we think we deserve to have. Instead of rejoicing that “God our father... loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace (II Thessalonians 2:16),” we wonder why God hasn’t given us other, lesser, things we want. Self-pity orients our hearts toward what we don’t have or what others didn’t do for us and rejects God’s exhortation to abound in thanksgiving. We forget that we deserve nothing and convince ourselves that we deserve more than we have, and we disobey the command found over and over in scripture: Give thanks to the Lord, not only for what he has given us, but because He is good (Psalm 136:1).

God’s people cannot live in self-pity because self-pity allows us to focus on how others should serve us, rather than how we can serve others. Think of the well-known hymn of selflessness in Philippians: Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interest of others (2:3).” Wallowing in self-pity trains us to look to our interests and seek the service, admiration, or affirmation of others instead of seeking to serve those around us. When we focus so much on how we’ve been wronged, we don’t have much room to focus on how we can serve others. And when we’re not thinking about how to love others, we don’t spend much time demonstrating the love that Jesus says will mark us as Christians.

Self-pity hardens our hearts, leaves us sulking in ingratitude, and hampers our ability to be the selfless ambassadors God calls us to be. It leads to unhappiness, but it momentarily allows us to feel good about ourselves as we think of all the things our wonderful, wounded selves deserve. And it’s a beast to fight. It takes constant reminding of our sin and unworthiness while remembering the gifts of God. It takes choosing not to dwell on things we feel we deserve and focusing on how God delivered us from the domain of darkness and gave us wonderful, physical gifts to enjoy. Fighting self-pity takes a lot of prayer and much, much repentance.

And in the end, we won’t completely conquer it.

I’d like to say after I started recognizing and repenting of self-pity, I’ve made great strides, but I can’t. Some days, it would seem I’ve made little progress. But God does promise that he’s sanctifying his children, and he does draw us out of our self-pity and closer to himself. We’ll never be free of self-pity, regardless of how much we fight it. But we will get better at thankfulness and looking to the interests of others. At the end of our lives, we’ll be a little better at fighting self-pity, but still die in our imperfection. But in death, our self-pity will be purged from us through our selfless Savior.  

Things to Consider:

• What ways does self-pity “mask” itself in your own life?

• How can you make changes in your heart to serve others above yourself this week?