“But my sin was this, that I looked for pleasure, beauty, and truth not in Him but in myself and his other creatures, and the search led me instead to pain, confusion, and error.” – St. Augustine. Augustine hated himself, or rather his past self for having indulged in mortal pleasures instead of setting his mind on God.
This somewhat reminds me of what Nietzsche said about the priestly classes corrupting the original morality: [PARAPHRASED]
What was good was good but what was bad wasn’t evil. There’s no disgust that’s to be felt towards the bad, only disdain. You aren’t supposed to to feel. The good distances itself from the bad when it encounters it, it doesn’t shudder at it’s existence. The change in the morality from good v/s bad to good v/s evil is primarily brought upon by the 4 Ps, one of them being the Priestly class.
The priestly class found itself not being able to keep up with the strong (who define the good), so they made weakness into an ideal. To be strong, now, was to be an ascetic. The strength lied not in doing more, but in doing less. Eat less, drink less, sleep less, earn less, lift less, abstain from sex, have no kids, etc. God favoured not those who collected wealth or power, but those who collected virtue. The human drive became pitiable at best and disgusting at worst, for rising above it became virtuous.
Reading Augustine’s line, I can see it clearly now. Religion (here, Christianity) teaches you to hate yourself. That it does this, if I’m being particularly considerate to religion, in an attempt to make you better is a possibility. But what cannot be ignored, that in doing so, it does make people second doubt themselves. It feeds into them a feeling of being impure which I’m not sure is the right thing to make people feel about themselves.
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