Love others as yourself 3 comments
In Matthew 22:39 we are commanded by Christ to “love your neighbor as yourself.” In other words, love others equally as you would love yourself. However, what if you really don’t love yourself very much? Interesting dilemma!
It’s really okay to feel good about yourself…really! You were created in the image of a loving God that cares for you more than words can say. He wants you to embrace that love and unleash it onto others around you.
Believing in yourself and liking who you are is not pride and it’s not a sin. It’s encouraged by God as he wants you to celebrate life and your relationship with him! Through you others can come to know God’s love for them and realize they are important. If you don’t appreciate yourself and your ability to contribute then how can God show his love through you? Therefore don’t be ashamed or afraid to give yourself hug and tell yourself how great you are and that God has an awesome plan for your life and it will affect a lot of other people in your lifetime. He has things planned for you that no one else will have the ability to do. God created you with a unique purpose and he needs you to see that purpose fulfilled. You matter to God and you matter to us!
Remember, it all starts with you. Let God show you how much you really mean to him and how important you are. Let him put a smile on your face and joy in your heart. Just ask him to share this with you. He’s waiting on you.
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Dave,
You are probably not going to like my comments on this one.
I think the idea you have presented is one of the most destructive going around the church today. I think it is totally out of context. I know a lot of good people trying to do the right thing that use this idea.
It concerns me.
It turns the intention of Jesus teaching totally on their ear. Jesus is working from the idea that we don’t have to learn to love ourselves, we always do. We are that way from our first cry.
This is a never ending cycle because we can never love ourselves enough. We will always feel like we don’t and need a little more. The irony is that in Luke’s record we find the added story of the Good Samaritan. No discussion of learning to love yourself so you can help the wounded traveler. Maybe this is why we don’t do much for our neighbor in the church today, we are consumed with loving our self first.
Jesus said if you want to gain your life you must lose it, for me a far cry from you must learn to love yourself better.
From reading your blog and your feedback on mine I have no doubt that you love the Lord and want to impact the world, I just had to share my concerns. I hope I have done so in a respectful manner. God bless.
[Reply]
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Hi Darin, thanks for your comments! I truly appreciate your perspective and am glad to engage in some dialog and or criticism from you. However, I sense our disagreement on this topic is mainly due to a misunderstanding. Let me explain:
1) “I know a lot of good people trying to do the right thing that use this idea.”
I’m not trying to argue what is right or what is wrong. I am not trying to judge the goodness of people’s hearts or their actions. What I was trying to state is that there are people that try to compare themselves to others and feel they are in some lower class in God’s eyes. There are people out there that don’t look to their relationship with God and instead choose to live completely in the world and feel sorry for themselves. I meet lots of people that aren’t that talkative, yet when the discussion goes to something like youth, they immediately open up and talk about how great things were when they were young and how they were invincible, yet today they feel burdened. How can a person that thinks their lives used to be so great, but now it’s not-so-great go out and share the love of Christ? How can they make a difference in the world of atheists and the unchurched? Their attitude may actually repel others. They have to feel good about who they are because it is who God made them to be. They must know that they can love others only because God loved them first (1 john 4:19). It is his love that they are sharing.
2) “This is a never ending cycle because we can never love ourselves enough.”
The issue really isn’t how much can we love ourselves. The issue is that we must know that God loves us first. When we are secure in that, we can share his love for others without reservations. Will we ever share God’s love to others in the way he intended it to be shared? Probably not, as we are human and living in this world and we (most-likely) will succumb to fear, envy, hate, etc. at some time and we cannot truly love as God loves when we are experiencing those emotions.
God called each of us for a specific purpose at a specific time. We should understand that it is not about us, but at the same time we can’t fulfill this purpose unless the love of the father is in us (Romans 5:5).
3) “The irony is that in Luke’s record we find the added story of the Good Samaritan. No discussion of learning to love yourself so you can help the wounded traveler. Maybe this is why we don’t do much for our neighbor in the church today, we are consumed with loving our self first.”
The assumption here is that even someone that seems apart from Christ will do good works. However, even some that want to honor God and keep his commands may not do good works. If the love of Christ is in us, then how could we pass by the beaten man and not have compassion and want to help? However, things like this happen all the happen with Christians. It’s an argument that atheists and unchurched people use all the time! We can be so consumed with the affairs of the church and be blinded to the plight in our communities.
My point was not to love ourselves so much that we overlook others. That is why I stated that “believing in yourself and liking who you are is not pride and it’s not a sin.” because we should appreciate that we were created in the likeness and image of God. However, if we love ourselves so much that we are above the world and those whom we perceive live in it, therefore we are too good to help them out, that is pride and arrogance and idolatry (of themselves) and that is sinful. As it is written in Matthew 25:40, “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’”
I’m not abdicating that we love ourselves and focus on that so much that others in the world are not as important as us. Actually, I am trying to show the opposite. We may not want to love ourselves because we feel sorry that we are fat, when we used to be skinny or that we are poor when we used to have money or whatever the excuse for self-pity. However, we are commanded to love ourselves as Christ loves us, so that we may love others as Christ does. In 1 John 3:1 it states: “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” We are children of God and God lavishes his love upon us. Why not claim that love and live in the hope and glory of the risen Christ? How else can the world come to know Christ if the Father’s love is not present in us? If we live in the world and the emotions and temptations to doubt, how can those in the world come to know the Lord? 1 John 3:16-17 reads: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” So let us be firm in the love God has for us, so that we can love ourselves as children of God and thus by doing so, as it is written in John 13:35: “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
[Reply]
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I get what you are saying. I just see something different in saying “love yourself” and the other which is understand that God loves you and what that love means.
So the focus is not on how I love myself but how I see God’s love for me. For me that is very different.
I would say you support my position but just may not see any inconsistance in the statement that you should love yourself.
Thanks for the feedback and I hope you know that my comments are related with the deepest respect. I respect who you are and what you are doing following God’s call.
[Reply]
Darin
21 Oct 08 at 7:27 am