A Cardiff University study has revealed an increase in the number of children and young people who are self-harming. Tragically some young people have even taken their own lives. The increase in self-harm is greatest among young girls. Some social media sites show examples of self-harming which encourage other young self-harmers to injure themselves even more seriously. One teenage girl told researchers that looking at the websites left her feeling that one small cut was “not nearly good enough.”

The desire to self-harm arises from a feeling of sadness and rejection. Many years ago, before social media, we knew a young girl who would sometimes injure herself causing her great pain. We couldn’t understand why she was doing it. A consultant psychiatrist told us that she was doing it to punish herself when people didn’t like her. Other girls in school were being very unkind to her, and were excluding her, so she didn’t like herself. She felt it was her fault that she was being treated in this way and so she inflicted pain on herself.

We all have a deep need to be loved and accepted but, in our increasingly aggressive society, we may experience rejection and even active hostility. In his ministry Jesus revealed a tender love and warm acceptance of those who had been rejected by the society of his day. He was accused of being a “friend of tax collectors and sinners.” In response he said, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor – sick people do. I have not come to call those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”

One day Jesus was invited to the house of a Pharisee called Simon. While he was there an immoral woman came into the house and knelt at Jesus’ feet weeping. As her tears fell on his feet, she wiped them with her hair and anointed his feet with expensive perfume. Simon was appalled that Jesus would allow such a woman to touch him. Jesus said to him, “Look at this woman kneeling here. I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet. You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet. Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven – as her great love has shown.”