Can we take some time to talk about the latest cultural lie in seeking fulfillment? I see post after post about it on social media. I encounter many who are desperately pursuing it when we meet for counseling sessions. The enemy has pulled another scheme out of his pocket and we are lining up in droves to “get it”. And by “get it”, I am implying that imaginary switch flips, the lightbulb comes on and we have transitioned to fulfillment, in every possible way we have been seeking our whole lives.
Let’s just toss it out there…self love, love yourself. Every time I see a slither of this notion, I have righteous anger. Justified, righteous anger that the enemy has deceived yet another. I have at least a million thoughts of this whole “self” concept being the solution to any of our unresolved issues, downloaded from God Himself.
I believe the enemy has twisted scripture to entice us to latch on to this unfulfilling whim. The only place loving yourself is mentioned in God’s word is the scripture that speaks of loving your neighbor as yourself. It’s the final piece of the greatest commandment spoken right from our Savior’s lips. If we study and dissect this scripture, we will find that loving our neighbor as ourselves has a very different meaning than this worldly concept of loving yourself being the end all be all to the security, acceptance, love, etc. we have been desperately seeking.
I just want to share a couple things I have learned about this “loving as ourselves” piece of scripture. Our fleshly, sin nature is extraordinarily excellent at making everything about us. We are trying to justify loving ourselves (in a deeper, resolute manner as an answer to our longings) from this verse that is actually telling us to love and care for others. This instruction is to lavish the concern and interest we have for ourselves upon others, in the same manner as we do ourselves. If we are honest, we fail miserably at this, even with the best of intentions. I encourage each of us to take inventory of the ways we “love” ourselves each and every day for the benefit of making us aware of how much we already love ourselves and also to prompt a mindfulness of extending that same level of attention to our neighbors.
The other gem I have gleaned from studying this verse is we are to love ourselves in a way that we value ourselves as God does in being His creation. I believe in order to do this, we need to know in a thorough manner who Jesus is, His teachings, His behaviors, His promises; having a deep realization of Who God is including His power, majesty and sovereignty. To realize the depth of our value the best we are able, we have to have an understanding of Who we belong to, of Who Created us, of Who willingly gave His life for us.
After we begin to grasp Who He is, we are then better able to appreciate and accept what He says about us. We can seek and search the truth of how Our Mighty Father and King designates us . He created us so He has the absolute, undisputed privilege of defining us. He decided who we are, our worth and value before we ever took our first breath. Nothing we do can negate His definition of who we are. It is assigned due to no merit of our own but is established solely because we belong to Him. This is our identity, our true identity. And this–is what we have been desperate for our entire lives; to have significance, to know without a doubt we are unconditionally loved beyond measure, to know nothing we can do can nullify one smidge of His love for us. A quote from James Baldwin says, “Your crown has been bought and paid for…all you have to do is put it on your head.”
Believing the love He has for us will transform our lives. It’s not an issue of His love for us being true, the obstacle lies in us believing Him. It’s already true whether we are walking in the residual freedom of believing it (or not) is left to our discretion.
Unless or until we choose to accept the truth of His love, we are stifled. We cannot give what we don’t believe we have. It’s futile for us to function in our own strength, buying into this lie of self love, thinking we are benefitting anyone-not our neighbor and absolutely not ourselves. It keeps us trapped in self absorption. We aren’t seeking God first, we are seeking our own ideology of security in self satisfaction.
So, this concept of loving ourselves will land us right where every other “self” solution has. We have chased self confidence. We have tried to secure self esteem. We have wrestled with self help. We have constructed walls for self protection. We have climbed ladders and stacked up dollars for self exalting. We have decorated our outside for self enhancing. We have been striving and trying harder and endlessly seeking the next “thing” to be the solution to our void.
If any of this truly worked, wouldn’t we have landed in that place of secure contentment by now?
We are flawed, fallible humans with a sin nature and a default of self absorption (something of which Jesus had not). We have a brief time on this earth and a smidge of perspective with regard to eternity. There is zero chance of us finding the solution for fulfillment in and of ourselves. Scripture tells us in Colossians 2:10, we are complete in Him–not ourselves.
Let’s commit to recognizing the enemy’s schemes. Let’s commit to taking thoughts captive (2 Corinthians 10:5) before we obliviously align forces with him in our own demise. In humility, let’s acknowledge, there is nothing good in us except Him (Romans 7:18). Let’s commit to taking our focus off self and keeping our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, the only One who makes us complete.
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Marla Geiger 