Important Cautions: Learning To Love Our Neighbors as Ourselves, part 11
Our aim in this series of reflections is to learn how to love ourselves, within our love for God, with God, and for His sake, so that we may love our neighbor in that same manner.
We have talked so far about what we love when we love God: we love God-Himself, and His Words, World, Works, and Ways. He is, indeed, Worthy.
And we have talked about how we ourselves are included within those things—to love God must include a willingness to appreciate ourselves as His and our lives within His purposes.
What is more, God loves us, as the Bible says so often, and so it is right and good to love what God loves with Him. To love God and what He loves must include a willingness to be grateful for what we are and for our lives.
We can now begin to understand what Jesus is referring to when He tells us to love others “as you love yourself.”
But let’s slow down and make sure we’re clear about what this means. We must be careful not to speak of “loving myself” apart from our love for God.
This is not about “self-love” as a form of “self-healing” or “self-actualization.” That sort of therapeutic language is so common today as to be practically an assumption. But for all it’s good intentions—and in many circumstances it results in a less harmful situation than the current level of harm a person is experiencing—yet it is missing something critical. It’s missing, of course, an active faith-attachment to God. And by missing God, it not only fails to truly bring healing, actualization, and love into our lives, but it ends up stunting our growth, maintaining wounds, and preventing us from love.*
So it’s important to understand that when we talk about loving ourselves, it is always connected to, grows from, and grows toward, our love for God.
Anything in our lives that doesn’t do that is idolatry! When we love something without reference to God, it is an idol.
But everything, when it is loved because it is from God, and it is loved with God as He loves it, and if it is loved for His glory, then it is good.**
And what we love as being from God, with Him, and for Him, we actually love better. We love it truly, for itself, and we love it properly, in its place and role.
When we idolize things it can look like we love it Just So Much. But in fact, we are only loving what we think it does for us or says about us. We do not love that person, idea, thing, truly, for itself. We love ourselves, and the idol—even when it comes to enslave us—began its role in our hearts as merely a tool. It is not the gift, the blessing, the grace, God means us to see it for.
But when we love what we are and our lives because they are gifts from God, because His Word says that He loves us, and because all we are is for His glory, we love ourselves properly, truly, and—imagine it—most fully and best!
Only Christians can truly “love ourselves”! Because we see that what we are loving, when we love ourselves in this way, is God. We love what God has made. We love His purposes in our lives. We love His Word. We love what He loves with Him.
We love knowing that He is at work, in us and through, both the will and work for His good pleasure and His glory. (Phil 2:13)
We love knowing that His Spirit has made us gifts to His body, the church. (1Cor 12:7)
We love knowing that even in our “weaknesses” (and even in our “strengths”), “His power is made perfect” and He is glorified. (2Cor 12:10)
We rejoice with Him over what He knit together while we were in our mother’s wombs and over the story of our lives, where even there His hand has led us and His right hand has held us. (Psa 139:13, 10)
Jesus does not tell us to learn to love ourselves and then direct us to Freud, Skinner, Dr. Phil, or any of the Robbins. Jesus directs us to Himself.
He says, I will restore your soul, I will walk with you through the dark places, I will hold you fast, I will heal and equip and bless—I am the good shepherd and you are Mine.
In other words, it’s not really self-love we’re after, is it? No, but we want to hear only this: “You are My beloved.” And so what we’re really talking about isn’t self-love per se, but faith. Will we believe what the Bible says, that we are so beloved? Will we allow ourselves to agree with Him whose we are? Will we accept His Word over us?
PRAYER
Father God, protect my heart from the temptations of idolatry—to take undue pride in appearances or characteristics or personality or accomplishments, or to be discouraged by lack of conformity to societal norms in those areas. Those are not what I am. I am Yours. That is who I am: You have loved me and have given Yourself for me. Help me to rejoice in this and to learn from it. Guide me as I walk by faith, even as I consider my own self and life. And show me by Your redeeming grace and merciful gifts how I may glorify You with even all that I am and my life.
You will do far more than all we ask or think, according to Your power working in us. So help us trust this, even for ourselves. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
*Bonus Thought #1: This is why many people who’ve been deeply invested in “loving themselves” as a therapeutic goal continue to struggle with being unhappy and unkind.
This is quest defined by squishy goals such as “how I feel about myself,” and also by practices of self-indulgence. And this quest requires that “the villains” be “out there,” since, after all, I’m The One Who Needs The Love.
Therefore, I’ll never get those good feelings that define “self-love” because, first, I can’t maintain these levels of self-fixation and failures without sliding off into different struggles. And, second, because everyone who’s close to me has to accept this story of The Bad Guys and The Victim. So those who might truly offer me satisfying love—who know me and still love me—are not welcome because that would require honesty and vulnerability that my narrative cannot endure.
So the “self-love” crowd swirls about, untethered and adrift, from one novel therapy and “self-care” app and group of “people who get me” to another. We cannot love ourselves by our selves, nor can there be any kind of real, loving community where every person is focused on the love they’re getting, or not getting.
**Bonus Thought #2: This is how to defeat idols in our lives—thank God for it, reflect on His design for it, and ask Him how it may be for His glory.
For example, take something obviously sinful that many of us struggle with, like Greed. We want more money, or stuff, or security. Greed is when that desire becomes a controlling feature of our lives, when it alters the paths of our lives.
How do we defeat this idol?
First, give thanks to God for what you have—from your daily bread to your 401(k), recognize that God has given you these things and give Him thanks.
Second, ask yourself, What did God give me this for? That is, What does God love about this? Well, God loves bread for its own sake—“He gives seed to the sower and bread for food.” “It is good,” God said, when He saw the first harvest of wheat sprouting. It’s beautiful and wise and good. He also loves it for the way it sustains the lives of His beloved—you. See this and worship Him.
Third, ask God to show you how to use this gift for His glory. This may result in various next steps—but they should always involve acts of love, generosity, and service.
By treating our idols to this theological work-up, we remove them from The Throne of our hearts, we receive them as the gifts they were intended to be, and we employ them in glorifying our True God.
Photo by Jay Openiano on Unsplash