Archive for June 2012

Things the Bible Doesn’t Say: “You have to love yourself before you can love others.”

Friday, June 22, 2012

John Williams Waterhouse's "Echo and Narcissus" (cropped). Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection in the pool.

OK, everyone give yourself a big hug.  Now pat yourself on the back.  Now go to the “Applause” track on your IPod…soak it in…and take a bow.   Ahhh, isn’t it good to be loved…by yourself!  (…and Richard Simmons has left the building…)

Self-love is a popular idea in our culture–even in the church.  It wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to me if you had heard “You have to love yourself first” from a pulpit on Sunday morning.  You can hear it on Christian Radio for sure.  The idea of needing to love yourself first could actually be traced back (as far as I can tell) to 11th century France, and the famous monastic thinker Bernard of Clairvaux.  Yet, I’m not sure that any culture has loved this advice more than 21st century USA.   One place you cannot trace “Love yourself” to IS THE BIBLE.

Now, if you listen to people (Christians) who swear by this adage, they will probably take you to Leviticus 19:18 or Matthew 22:39: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Jesus puts this right up with “Love the LORD your God” in the greatest commandment category, and so it carries authority.  The logic then goes: I’m supposed to love my neighbor as myself, therefore I must love myself; the greater my self-love, the greater my neighbor-love.  The journey to love like Jesus, then, begins with a journey to love oneself.

And I want to suggest that this is an entirely wrong-headed way of approaching both this text and the Christian journey–especially in our culture.  Let me explain:

  1. Let’s begin with defining “love.”  When people in our culture hear “love yourself,” they tend to think Bruno Mars, Pink, Lady Gaga (3 super-catchy top hits, by the way), and an unconditional acceptance of everything “me.”  In other words, we think self-esteem: “I need to feel good about myself and accept that I’m all good just the way I am.”  Love in the Bible is less about feeling warm fuzzies, and more about “actively [seeking] the benefit of someone else.”*  The Bible absolutely never says, “You should feel better about yourself, because you’re really pretty good.”  So, at the very least, a Christian considering this advice will want to clarify the meaning of love.
  2. Let’s move on to “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Just looking at the phrase in English, Jesus is clearly emphasizing our love for other people (not ourselves).  He apparently feels no need to turn us inward on ourselves.  If this neighbor-love is based on anything else, it is based on the previous command: “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind.”  Looking at the phrase in Greek…nothing changes.  To put this with #1, Jesus is assuming that we already seek the benefit of ourselves, already focus on our own needs, and already spend a great deal of time/energy/thought on ourselves.
  3. But what about the person who is always giving, giving, giving (think the parent whose life seems to revolve around their kids or the person who is always caring for an addict) and getting burned out?  This is what psychology calls “co-dependence.”  Far from being “too much love for others,” the co-dependent is actually in it as much for themselves as for the other.  When we act in this way, we do so because we get a sense of fulfillment, purpose, self-righteousness, admiration, etc. from it, not because we love the other person so deeply.  Co-dependence is actually harmful to the person we are claiming to love.  In any case, the biblical solution is never to love self more.
  4. The problem, then, is this: If we feel like we need to love ourselves really well before we can love others, we are unlikely to actually get to the love others part. We will have built a model of life that is self-centered.  And this is the exact opposite of what Jesus or the Scriptures are interested in.
So, then, where do we start in the journey to love?  We begin with God.  Take a look at 1 John 4:7-11:
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
The key to our need for love is not to try to fulfill it ourselves, but to allow God to fulfill it.  It is far more important that we rest in the love God has for us than try to love ourselves.  For one, God is much better at loving than we are.  As I mentioned above, our efforts at loving ourselves are just as likely to be misdirected, inconsistent, and fleeting as others’ love for us.  We are all humans.  What we need is perfect, consistent, bottomless love, and that comes only from God through Jesus.  We need to be saved from ourselves as much as anything or anyone else.
I am constantly encouraging people to engage in solitude, silence, Scripture, prayer, etc.  And I suppose that these could be considered “self-love” if we are looking at the biblical definition of seeking the best for someone.  But the self-love is not really the intent at all.  First, we do these things because we need to soak in God’s love.  Second, we do these things because we love God (the greatest commandment).  Third, we do these things so that God will form us into people who reflect the love of Christ to others.  All of this is absolutely in our best interest, ultimately, but we are not seeking self; we are seeking Kingdom, and letting God take care of us.  Trying to love ourselves when we are feeling burned out from loving others is like trying to fill our car up with gas…using gas from our own tank.  Not only is it unbiblical, but it doesn’t even make sense.
The command to love ourselves first is not in the Bible because–in my opinion–we don’t need it.  I know that I don’t need any command to be self-centered, and nor does our culture if we look around.  We need not look inward, but upward and outward to really understand love.  I am aware that there is an epidemic of people in our society who think they are worthless and unlovable.  Please notice the irony of this epidemic in a culture where self-love is so widely preached.  Biblically, the solution is not to look at ourselves and conjure up some value.  The solution is to look at ourselves through God’s eyes, to see that we are valuable because we have been created in his image, and to understand that we are loved far beyond what we can imagine as evidenced in the Cross.  Again, what is the Bible’s solution to our need for love?  Point us to God’s love.
We need look no further than the classical myth of Narcissus to grasp that the people most intent on loving themselves are most useless in the call to love God and love others.  So I urge you, brothers and sisters, if you feel like you are in need of love, turn to Jesus, the love of God who walked among us.  And if you are talking to a friend who just needs to be loved, please don’t tell them to love themselves; point them to the God who loves them more deeply and perfectly than they could ever love themselves, and follow God’s call to embody the love of Jesus to them.

*Douglas Moo in his New International Commentary The Book of Romans

Posted in Cultural Trends, Things the Bible Doesn't Say | 6 Comments »