You’re not alone in thinking God hates you. The question “why does God hate me?” is among the most googled questions about God on the internet.
You feel like God hates you due to feelings of shame or an experience of suffering. God has provided solutions to feeling like He hates you, and there is scriptural evidence to support His love for you.
Why do I feel like God hates me?
You feel like God hates you for two valid reasons: shame and suffering. Believers commonly feel both of these. It is something you must patiently work through in your spiritual practice.
Shame
Many Christians strive for perfection, not only in their faith but in their professional lives, hobbies, relationships, and habits. It’s easy to see why you would feel guilt and shame for falling short under such immense pressure to uphold God’s, society’s, and your personal standards.
Effect of Shame
Feeling shame about missing the mark makes you feel hatred toward yourself. Consequently, you wonder, does God hate me, too? It’s natural to believe that God’s feelings mirror yours.
However, that’s not what the Bible generally portrays about God’s feelings toward you. The Bible teaches that God loves you and that He provided a solution for your shortcomings. He never expected you to be able to meet all the high standards for which you’re constantly striving.
Suffering
Your feelings that God hates you are not only valid but are familiar among the Christian community. That’s because it’s difficult to reconcile a world of pain and suffering – particularly your world of pain and suffering – when religious leaders teach you that God loves you. God must hate you if He allows you to suffer, right?
Just because God allows you to suffer doesn’t mean He hates you. On the contrary, it means the opposite. The trials you go through mold you into the person you are destined to become.
Fallen World Causes Suffering
You are not a target of God’s hatred. The suffering you feel isn’t because God hates you. It’s because you live in a “fallen world.”
In Christian theology, the “fallen world” is the concept that this world is not the perfect creation God originated it to be. Adam and Eve disobeyed God, causing sin and suffering to enter the world, and it remains that way even today. Despite this broken state of the world and the heartache, despair, or frustrations you face, God doesn’t hate you.
God isn’t doing these bad things to you on purpose because He hates you, He is just allowing them to happen because He gave humans free will, and they chose to sin. But, once again, there’s a solution to mend this feeling.
Suffering is a Shared Experience
Notably, believers and nonbelievers suffer alike. You may suffer directly from a sin you’ve committed, but you may suffer for no reason. You may get hurt at the hands of someone sinning against you.
It’s important never to feel that God has stopped loving you in cases like these. Getting hurt is normal and shouldn’t concern you or make you think God hates you. It’s not personal!
“Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you.” – Tim Keller, author of Walking with God through Pain and Suffering
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Is there a solution to feeling like god hates me?
Yes, absolutely! The overarching solution is to trust the scriptures when they declare that God loves you. You don’t need to comprehend it, just have faith and let go of your confusion and worry.
Between the New and Old Testaments, God expresses His love for you over three hundred times. To feel His love, practice loving others, and do good deeds for your family, friends, and community. In your biblical studies, explore these verses to help convince yourself of His love for you.
Solution to Shame
The solution to feeling shame is to accept God’s grace. Receiving grace means that instead of hating yourself or feeling that God hates you for things you’ve done (or not done), you simply open your arms to receive His love and forgiveness. Let go of the guilt, the expectations, and the resentment because God already has.
Solution to Suffering
God provided you with a way out of this suffering after death. You’ll have the opportunity to live in heaven if you worship His son, Jesus Christ, who lived and died on Earth to save believers from hell.
If God hated you, He wouldn’t bother providing such an escape, would He? Because He loves you, He wants you to follow Him into eternal happiness. You just need to accept that, in the meantime, life will undoubtedly involve pain and suffering despite God’s unfailing and profound love for you.
Scripture says God doesn’t hate you
Here are just a few examples of holy scriptures that declare that God loves you. As you practice your faith, bookmark these to come back to anytime you start wondering, “why does God hate me?” You’ll soon find peace.
Isaiah 54:10
Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
1 John 4:8
He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
Psalms 136:26
Give thanks to the God of heaven. His love endures forever.
Ephesians 2:4-5
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions-it is by grace you have been saved.
1 John 4:9-10
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Psalms 36:7
How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
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