Self-denial is one of the foremost teachings of monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam. In order to be saved, one must obey God, and God often wants you to be as untrue to yourself as you can possibly be. In fact, he wants you to be just like him, and that inevitably means denying human nature. "Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires," Paul says in Galatians 5:24. According to countless believers, our world and nature is corrupted to the point that we are born in sin, and so it makes sense to reject these allegedly immoral influences. But just how true is this corruption fable and is self-denial really something to be praised and admired?

I. Identity Crisis

Religious believers frequently and mistakenly conflate self acceptance with narcissism. They have the cliche stories to point to about husbands who neglect their families and indulge in alcoholism, or thieves who decide that they have the right to other people's belongings simply because they want them. This is why it's important to surrender your will and life to God, they may say, because it's better to act selflessly than selfishly. However, the more selflessly one acts, the easier it is to lose sight of your sense of self. When your concern is constantly revolving around how to benefit others, and your own desires are suppressed, the pendulum of misery often swings in the other direction just as strongly as it does for a person who is self-absorbed. There is certainly a lot of truth to the adage, "everything in moderation."

Why is it important to have a strong sense of self? Most, if not all, of us recognize the dangers in low self-esteem. Feelings of worthlessness and an inability to do anything right can lead and have led to failure in relationships, self-mutilation, homicide, suicide, and other destructive behaviors. Many harmful addictions can be linked to an underlying lack of self-esteem, including drug abuse, alcoholism, overeating and so on. Contrary to what some theists may tell you, it is not because these people have too much self-esteem that they engage in these things, and it is not teaching of self-denial that remedies them. They may deny themselves that additional beer or piece of cake, but what they are practicing is self-responsibility, and this can only come from a healthy sense of self.

Having a strong concept of self is not tantamount to narcissism though, because one of the ways we find gratification for ourselves is through our peers. Psychologist Abraham Maslow noted this in his famous hierarchy of needs, explaining that human beings require and obtain self-esteem both from other people and from inner self-respect [1]. An inflated sense of self worth does indeed have the potential to be dangerous, but throwing out the baby with the bathwater on such a basis has just as much capacity for damage. Our personal identity is one of the very few things we have some control over in this life, and surrendering it for the narcissism of a god or religious leader is not healthy in any sense.

II. Robot Clones for God

One of the reasons theists often give for the existence of evil is free will, and one of the reasons given for free will is that God does not want worship from robots - he wants us to be free to choose him. That's about the extent to which God desires our free will though. You can decide not to choose him, but it will result in an eternity of unimaginable suffering. And if you do choose God, you will be expected to conform to his standards, beyond a simple profession of belief.

Consider the full implications of what Paul is saying here in this passage from Galatians. He is saying there is no more Paul, only Christ. As mentioned earlier, Paul claims that those who follow Jesus have "crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires," and the complete picture of this is a denial of the self and a rejection of our humanity. Isaiah 64:6 states, "all our righteous acts are like filthy rags" in the eyes of God. Paul reaffirms this teaching in Romans 3:10 and 3:23, where he says that, "As it is written, there is no one righteous, not even one... for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God." The bottom line is that God is holy and we are not, and therefore God must change us to be holy so that we may be acceptable to him. Unfortunately for us, to be human is to err on quite a tremendous scale according to religion.

Many Christians declare that Jesus accepts us no matter who we are or what we've done, but the New Testament is filled with instruction on turning from your sinful life and rejecting the impure ways of the world for the ways of Christ. Loving or caring for someone while aiming to change their lifestyle is not accepting them as they are. It is quite the opposite, it is an effort to mold a person into what you consider to be acceptable. Though this seems contradictory, that Christianity would both advocate self-denial and pretend to accept everyone as they are, it is not generally recognized as such by the faithful. In their mind, God is simply wanting us to remove corruption that was not originally present. It is assumed that God knows who we are meant to be even better than we do.

Does this resolve the problem though? Not in the slightest. Wanting to 'restore' a person to their former self or to some ideal version is still not accepting them for who they are at that moment in time. A great fuss is made about the fact that Jesus ate with sinners in the bible, supposedly showing his tolerance and love for the lost. Yet how admirable is it to take such initiative purely with the intent of converting people? Before any believing reader cries that their god loves and accepts everyone and would never ask us to deny who we are, it's worth pointing out that requiring a change in behavior or in beliefs that affect behavior is expressing an intolerance for the individual's current way of life.

III. Is Human Nature Really So Wrong?

Not surprisingly, there are many religious believers who openly dismiss psychology and self-esteem because they think these things reinforce a reliance on our fallen nature and our sinful lifestyles. In one article, author Kerby Anderson goes so far as to mention that "a baby is an example of the ultimate in selfishness" and it "comes into the world totally centered on his own needs and oblivious to any others" [2]. Of course, this is not because a baby is a true narcissist, but more because real consideration of other entities and their needs is a complex thought process that requires a higher level of conscious development. Selfishness requires less conscious development because survival is encoded in our genes. Nonetheless, what is important to see here is the conviction felt by the author that human nature is so de facto corrupt and evil that even newborn children are guilty.

What is so wrong about human nature? Yes, there is war, rape, abuse, suicide, and many other ills among our species, but a large part of what it means to be human is to have the capability to override our animal instincts with these wonderous brains we have. Unlike the majority of the animal kingdom, we are able to empathize, to put ourselves into others' shoes and reflect on their needs, desires, and experiences. Doing this is what allows us to transcend our selfish instincts when necessary, or even to find ways of achieving a compromise of interests. Our legacy may be bloody, but nature has provided us with the tools for rational thinking and morality. The blame must be affixed to individuals who choose to ignore these tools, not with all of humankind.

I do not believe that human nature is intrinsicly good or intrinsicly evil, because the concepts of good and evil are evaluations made by human beings, and so it is human nature from which these evaluations originate. If we are all intrinsicly evil, then how can we trust our own understanding of right and wrong when it could be severely skewed in the first place? Human nature is human nature. We act according to circumstances, and we may either act in a way that benefits ourselves and those around us, or in a way that does not benefit one or the other. Morality is structured around the interactions of human beings, and so we have labeled benefitial interactions as 'good' and non-benefitial or harmful interactions as 'bad'/'evil', and there is no evidence of a transcendent source making good and evil into more absolute standards.

In addition to falsely labeling us all as inherently evil, many religions also ask us to deny parts of human nature that ought not be considered immoral. Sex is a big issue for religion, with the premarital kind, homosexual kind, and sometimes certain specific activities being chalked up to desires and passions of our 'sinful nature'. Wisdom and free-thinking are other elements of human nature that are vibrantly denounced by religions like Christianity (Colossians 2:8, 2 Corin. 10:5), and simply not believing in the particular god of choice is enough to qualify as a rebellious inclination owed to our fallen nature. Each of these aspects that must be denied, according to many religions, are personal choices, and the desire to exorcise them exposes the controlling nature of religion. When two or more people consentually engage in things that are harmful to no one, and when one person merely makes their own decisions, calling this evil when it's none of your business is almost an act of immorality in itself.

IV. A Neurotic Devotion

I've said multiple times now that the self-denial practiced by monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam is a rejection of our humanity. A Christian or Muslim who does not believe in the doctrine of original sin may argue that their religion has nothing against human nature, but this is not quite correct. If the theist believes that God wants to make us more like himself, then there is certainly still a rejection of humanity. In Matthew 5:48, Jesus encourages his disciples, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Perfection is just one attribute of God that doesn't square with human nature. Paul advises his fellow believers to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" in 2 Corinthians 10:5. Like I stated above, thinking and reasoning for ourselves is a definite characteristic of humanity that sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, and God wants us to hand that responsibility over to him.

"Put on the new self," Paul says in Ephesians 4:24, "which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth." He continues with this language of identity replacement in 2 Corinthians 5:17, stating that "if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" The notion that God accepts you for who you are is one of the biggest jokes in Christianity, and it is just as ludicrous in any religion that teaches salvation. To be saved is obviously to be saved from something, and this almost always means you will need to change who you are and what you believe. The goal of these religions is to conform you, not accept you, and the way they do it is by persuading you that you need to be rescued from the corrupted world or even from your own inherently immoral nature.

Faith in the gods of these religions is a neurotic devotion, trying to appease a god that will never be satisfied and will always find your acts of worship to be nothing but "filthy rags". Selfless behavior has its merits, there is no doubt, but the virtue in it comes from will, not a compulsion or demand for self-denial put forward by a deity who wants more mindless drones to inflate his ego. The religious brand of self sacrifice is an unhealthy extreme that devalues humanity and destroys individualism.

1. Maslow, A.H. (1987) Motivation and Personality. 3rd ed. New York: Harper & Row.
2. Anderson, K. (2003) Pop Psychology Myths. Retrieved July 31, 2010.