I wrote a post about Loving your Spouse, and then subsequently deleted it because I attempted to fit too many things into one post. If you were subject to reading it, I’m sorry. I’m writing on that subject again and breaking it into this one and a marriage one!
Here is something you need to know about me and this blog. I deeply value discipleship. I was taught to value discipleship in college, but I think we have missed out on a method and systematic approach to teaching others how to dig deeper into knowing God. I think we have watered down the message of the gospel such that discipleship hasn’t always done its job. My words here are an attempt to change that. But, while I am digging into discipleship, I also hope to inspire you to sit in awe of the beauty of God through words, mine or His. In the midst of this, I am re-figuring out my writing voice. I invite you to journey with me and converse with me on whether you agree, disagree, or fall in between.
Loving Yourself
In order to move from loving God to loving others, you need to know how to love yourself. Some teachers claim that loving yourself is natural, that we are all born knowing how to place ourselves first. I disagree. That is false self-love. How is it loving to harm yourself? If you are top dog, then God is not. When God is not first, self-harm will be inevitable. Self-harm and deception seem so much more natural than truly loving as defined by God.
To be sure, each of us values happiness. We are designed to do so. We are also designed with a certain bent toward what even does make us happy. But there is not a greater happiness than through God.
What we usually do is either devalue ourselves or make too much of ourselves. Both are a form of pride. I lean to the side of devaluing myself. Both are unjust and both make a type of a god of your self. Some false forms of Christianity have convinced us that it is wrong to value and love ourselves.
If Jesus died to save you, He, therefore, values you. If He, therefore, values you, then you should, therefore, value yourself. If you, therefore, don’t value yourself, you, therefore, don’t value what Christ has done for you. So because of Christ, you are meant to take some value and love of yourself.
Listen to C. S. Lewis’s quote on humility from Mere Christianity,
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realise that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.
However, if you love God and accept His ways, you will learn to truly love yourself in the way that God loves you. To know God is to know that He loves you. Why would God create you in His image and then ask you to throw away that same God-given value ascribed on your face? Yet we daily do, don’t we, unless we are grounded in Christ. John Calvin implies that “knowledge of God is always at its deepest level knowledge of self also.” A deep abiding with God allows for a deep abiding with myself. Knowing I am loved helps me grow in godly love of self.
I’ve greatly simplified Jonathan Edwards here, but Jonathan Edwards conveys neighborly love as expanding and making room for others in the love you have for God and self. Isn’t that fascinating? Loving others is as good as loving myself. To read the articles which spurred this statement, click here and here.
This concept of loving yourself could be its own series on identity. Perhaps I’ll do it next.
How do you separate love of self and selfishness from a godly love of yourself?
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