Loving Yourself
Seven times in the New Testament, we are confronted by the idea of loving our neighbours as we love ourselves. There is a line of logic that has developed that virtually inverts the sense of God’s intention for us to love others as we love ourselves. It goes like this: “If we are to love others well, we must love ourselves well first. Only as we love ourselves first and best will we be able to love others. The more I love myself, the more I’ll be able to love others.”
This way of looking at the issue is celebrated in books, music, websites, and practiced by virtually every one. We all have a strong narcissistic streak, though most of us fall short of Narcissus, himself, in his auto-infatuation. What I take issue with in the current culture is the assumption that we don’t love ourselves enough. This requires us to learn to love ourselves better through intentional actions from smiling at ourselves in the mirror and telling ourselves how great we are to treating ourselves whenever we feel a bit down.
Let me insert at this point that there are some people, a few, a tiny minority of us, who really do have a psychological disturbance which provokes self-loathing. I’m not talking about them or to them, just now. It is entirely unfair to them to read ourselves into their affliction and pretend that we’re all in the same boat. We’re not. The problem most of us have is not insufficient self-love, but a lack of love for others.
Love, by it’s nature, is about laying down our lives for others. This can mean literally putting ourselves in harm’s way and risking our lives for others. It can also mean simply putting the needs and interests of others ahead of our own. Here are a few examples:
I’m a teenager, I love myself, but I want to love my sister the way I love myself. So I offer to do her cleaning up chores so she can have a nap, which is what I’d like to do.
I’m a parent, I love myself, but I want to love my kids the way I love myself. So I offer to take them to the rink at 6:00 in the morning so they can skate which is what they want to do, instead of getting an extra couple of hours in bed, which is what I want to do.
I’m a worker, I love myself, but I want to love my workmates the way I love myself. So I offer to work some extra hours so they can leave early for the long weekend, even though, I’d really like to be the one leaving early.
We don’t have to look too hard to find evidence that we love ourselves. A couple of words in Ephesians 5 bring it all home. In writing specifically about husbands loving their wives as they do themselves, Paul said: “No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it.” It is love for ourselves which prompts us to feed ourselves when we’re hungry, find a drink when we’re thirsty, seek the most comfortable chair to sit in, buy a new mattress when the old one gets saggy, medicate ourselves when we’re feeling poorly, and so on.
What Jesus was pressing here was that, given the way we treat ourselves, we already know how to love. Instead of spending all of our energy behaving in a loving way towards ourselves, we should use some of that energy to express love for others - all others.
If life seems to be closing in on you and you are finding yourself continually thwarted and frustrated, it could be that your world has become too small. Once you become focussed on yourself, constantly monitoring your level of comfort, pleasure, happiness and good feelings, you will inevitably find more and more misery. More and more circumstances will appear to be less than optimal. More and more people will seem to be against you. More and more opportunities will elude you.
Face it. You already love yourself. Look at the way you live! The evidence is in. You are fully equipped to start loving others. Share the love you have for yourself with more and more of the people in your life.
If you ever do feel that you’re running out of love, the answer isn’t to love yourself more. Love God more. Love God with all you’ve got and your neighbour as yourself. That’s the order that Jesus puts things in. That’s the way life is designed to work.
