The self hate here is hatred of the evil self. It’s hatred that produces healthy shame and repentance. Repentance is turning away from the evil self. We find our true inner self “new self” by turning outward not inward. We despise the demon self and turn away from it towards God. This is repentance. We turn our focused attention off of self and on to God and others. When we lose our selves we find ourselves. Everything balances out. We love God above all else and our neighbor as our self. (true self). This is when we find a proper self esteem. Beholding the glory of Christ we are being transformed into His image from glory to glory. We find our inner self but this isn’t our focus. God is. We are transformed when we concentrate our focus and attention on Christ.
Up until the twentieth century, traditional cultures (and this is still true of most cultures in the world) always believed that too high a view of yourself was the root cause of all the evil in the world. What is the reason for most of the crime and violence in the world? Why are people abused? Why are people cruel? Why do people do the bad things they do? Traditionally the answer was hubris - the Greek word meaning pride or too high a view of yourself. Traditionally, that was the reason given for why people misbehave. But in our modern western culture, we have developed an utterly opposite cultural consensus. The basis of contemporary education, the way we treat incarcerated prisoners, the foundation of most modern legislation and the starting point for modern counselling is exactly the opposite of the traditional consensus. Our belief today - and it is deeply rooted in everything - is that people misbehave for lack of self-esteem and because they have too low a view of themselves. ~~ Timothy Keller in "The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness page10