Self-Love and Proper Self-love

One of you asked why we do not hear sermons about proper self-love. It is a good question. I am not sure I have heard many sermons about neighbor love either. At least, I do not recall many, and I certainly do not recall any that come close to what SK is saying (by the way, if you do not agree with SK about whatever, bring it up; while I think this book is excellent, I do not think it is God’s Holy Word). 

If the main points of Works of Love are fundamentally correct, then a good sermon on proper self-love should sound very similar to a good sermon on proper neighbor love. The command to love your neighbor as yourself is, according to SK, a command to love everyone in the same way. It is a command to love irrespective of differences in persons. It is a command to love in such a way that the real distinctions between us are not given any weight. The command to love does not depend on the one who is loved. It depends on the command. The command either makes us all equal or it is grounded in our fundamentality equality before God. And if I am commanded to love you in such a way that whatever real differences exist between us make no real difference to my love, then I must love myself in that way as well. Everything that is contained in the command to love my neighbor is also contained in the command to love myself properly. If the differences between us do not make a difference in my love for you, then they do not make a difference in my love for myself. I am to love you as I love myself, and I am to love myself as I am to love you. Such love is not based on differences but is rooted in the fact that we are all image-bearers of God. You are an image-bearer and so am I. So, you are my neighbor and so am I. I must love you regardless of your thoughts of me. I must love myself regardless of my thoughts of me. I must love you despite your betrayal. I must love myself despite my betrayal. I must love you even though you do not love me. I must love myself even though I do not love myself. Sound paradoxical? It is. But the paradox is not real. I might not love my hair or my nose or my weight or height or smell or stupidity or ugliness or unpopularity or whatever. But I am to love myself independent of those features, those changeable, unstable, superficial features. I can love myself, the image of God in me, that which makes me human, even if I do not love myself, those things that do not make me an image-bearer and do not make me human. 

When you look in the mirror what do you see? When you look around the classroom what do you see? We are, if we take the command seriously, to see the image of God in each person we encounter, whether in the mirror or in the DC. That’s what the command to love requires and that’s what fulfilling the command produces. 

If meditating on this command with SK is not revealing to you how awful you really are, I wonder if you are taking it seriously; or perhaps you are fulfilling the command. As I read through this book with you, I find myself able to talk about it fairly easily but having a hard time really doing it. My self is, in so many ways, bigger for me than God, which implies that my self is, in so many ways, bigger for me than you. To really love you as myself is to stop seeing myself in all the ways I desire. May God have mercy on me.

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