We Must Love Ourselves!

One day an expert in religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question: "Teacher, what must I do to receive eternal life?" Jesus replied, "What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?" The man answered, " `You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' And, `Love your neighbor as yourself.' " Right!" Jesus told him. "Do this and you will live!" (Luke 10:25-28)

In the church, we talk a lot about love. We teach it, we preach it, we sing about it, we try to live it. We SHOULD because love is the message of the church, the primary theme of the scriptures, and the

TEACHING OF JESUS!

‘Love’ is our religious faith summed up in one word. Jesus called us to love everyone… not just our friends and family, those we know and want to be around, but also those who are not nice to us, those we don’t even know, and even those who are our sworn enemies. Pretty tall order.

And I would hazard a guess that most of us here try very hard to follow this commandment.

But, how many of us concentrate, or even think about the rest of His commandment:

‘as thyself’? (Luke 10:27)

I would guess that most of us don’t give it a second thought.

Let me restate the scripture:

“`You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.' and love your neighbor as you love yourself.” (Luke 10:27)

There are three kinds of loves mentioned…

love for God…,

love for neighbor…,

and then the third kind of love… love for self.

We live in a society that thinks of love for self as selfishness, something that only people not concerned with the welfare of other possess. But didn’t we just hear that Jesus said

“as you love yourself”? (Luke 10:27)

The big question is: how do we love yourself without being selfish or arrogant or getting caught up in the epidemic of “Me, Me, Me”?

It is not only OK to love yourself, but that it is extremely important… to love yourself in the right way.

We know that proper self-love or positive self-esteem is essential to health and happiness and wholeness. Too often, our disappointments in life are not the real issue, but only symptoms of a bigger problems. Our real problem is we don’t like ourselves. And when we try to live looking through those dark, destructive glasses, everything we do is tainted.

Let me give you an example:

Most of the time I tell myself that I am overweight, dumpy and unattractive, an old lady kind of like Pig Pen in Charlie Brown, constantly followed by a dark cloud. When someone gives me a compliment, I discount it – telling myself they are just being ‘kind’ to some pitiful soul. So when I do something that I should feel good about, it is always accompanied by that black cloud of gloom and doom.

Even though I know that when you don’t like yourself, when you don’t feel good about yourself, it affects everything you do.

Dr. John Sutherland Bonnell, pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City said this:

“Whenever you find an individual who has become a constant source of bitterness… taunting and criticizing people… saying cruel things that wound the hearts of friends… you may be sure that he someone who hates himself, who loathes and despises himself… and the bitterness is but the projection of his own contempt for himself.”

• Think of the alcoholic who despises himself and what he is becoming, who loathes his inability to cope with his problem, who wrestles constantly with guilt and as a result is mean to his wife and children.

• Think of the college student who doesn’t study, flunks her exam and then disgusted with herself, lashes out at her roommate with hostile, critical words.

• Think of the business executive who misses out on the big deal, “blows it,” loses it… and then aggravated with himself comes home and berates his family with a temper tantrum and kicks the dog.

Let’s be honest now. Think about your own life for a moment. Isn’t it true that usually when we fuss at someone else, it’s because we are really upset with ourselves!

Isn’t that the way it works?

• When we are unhappy with ourselves we project that aggravation toward other people.

• On the other hand, when we feel good about ourselves, we are more loving, patient, kind and gracious toward everyone we see.

Many of our deep personal problems arise from a lack of proper self-love. Many of the sins we commit, wrongs we do, crutches we lean on, irritations we experience… come from not feeling good about ourselves. Self-hatred is destructive and dangerous. Low self-esteem is crippling.