Love Thy Self?
The idea of loving yourself can be divisive in some circles. “Jesus doesn’t tell us to love ourselves! He tells us to deny ourselves!” the argument goes. Self-denial is of course the cruciform love all Christians are called to. Too often, though, I’ve seen self-hatred masquerading as self-denial. Or worse—hatred of self spilling out into hatred of others. When God commands us to love our neighbors, he relates it back to the way we treat ourselves. Could it be that self-love and self-denial are not as mutually exclusive as we think?
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself”
Here is the great author Frederick Buechner’s take on that relationship between self-love and neighbor-love:
“LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR as yourself is part of the great commandment. The other way to say it is, 'Love yourself as your neighbor.' Love yourself not in some egocentric, self-serving sense but love yourself the way you would love your friend in the sense of taking care of yourself, nourishing yourself, trying to understand, comfort, strengthen yourself.”
“We are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves, and I believe that to love ourselves means to extend to those various selves that we have been along the way the same degree of compassion and concern that we would extend to anyone else."
"To love our neighbors as we love ourselves means also to love ourselves as we love our neighbors. It means to treat ourselves with as much kindness and understanding as we would the person next door who is in trouble."
Many of us spend our lives caring for others, but never extend that care to ourselves. At some point we realize that we can’t give away what we don’t have, or as Dr. Dan Allender often says, “We can’t take others further than we’ve gone ourselves.” Perhaps through tending to our own wounds, we are actually able to give more of ourselves away in sacrificial service to our neighbors, our children, our spouses, and all whom we are called to love. Perhaps through caring for ourselves, we can actually have a self to deny for years to come.
Have you spent a lifetime hating yourself in the name of self-denial? Have you spent a lifetime neglecting to care for your deepest wounds?
Reach out to Good Shepherd Soul Care or a Christian counselor to help guide you on a journey of biblical self-love rooted in God’s great delight in you.
