Bringing Balance to the Self-Love Movement (Pt. 2)
Where the Self-love movement gets it wrong is putting self above all others (meaning self is god). Where the church sometimes gets it wrong is putting others always above self (making others god). Both practices are idolatry.
Where you fall on the spectrum between the two extreme mindsets of “self is everything” or “self is nothing” determines how you live out every day. So where’s the balance? I think it takes a whole perspective shift to find.
Mark 12:28-31 One of the scribes came and … asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
Matthew states that all the other commands in scripture hinge on and stem from these two commands (see Matt. 22:36-40).
Note there is a command that is “foremost” or more important than ALL other commands; it should be top priority: Love GOD with everything in you.
“Self is everything” or “self is nothing” wrongly state there’s an inequality between self and others and makes humans the focus. According to Jesus, loving others and loving self are equal to each other, but neither should become god. Loving humans is LESS important than the foremost command of having an all consuming love for God above anyone else (myself included).
Is self-love wrong? Absolutely not! It is part of the second command. Is being self-sacrificial and putting others first wrong? Again absolutely not!
But the second command is LESSER: Love your neighbor as (or equal to) yourself. I am commanded to love God immeasurably more than I love myself and others. This is offensive to the world and the Self-love movement because it takes all humans off the pedestal and puts God on the throne as supremely above us. AND it makes all humans equal in their worthiness of love.
Another way the Self-love movement fails is by putting the focus on God’s love toward me and stresses the idea that I am loved by God just as I am. (Translation: I don’t have to change or get rid of sin in my life because He loves me no matter what.) This is another distortion. It IS true that we are loved by God (and thus should love ourselves), but the greatest command according to Jesus is not that we’re loved by God (that’s not a command, it’s just a reality) but that we are to love God.
Sin is ultimately a failure to love God. It’s loving what I want more than what He defines as good and holy. Holiness is an expression of love toward God. If we truly loved God with our ALL at all times we would never sin. Read that again. We obviously fail at this which exposes our human inability to love God perfectly. But we can definitely improve on this with the Holy Spirit’s help.
The current trend is a lie and idolatry.
The balance to the Self-love movement is: don’t allow loving self or others to replace or outweigh loving God or compromise holiness or moral truth.
Loving GOD is the goal. Making that the priority naturally affects our behaviors toward self and others because we better imitate God’s love when we’re loving Him rightly. When we truly love God we naturally begin to love the things (and people) He loves well, which includes ourselves.