The exhortation to love ourselves, one heard in many churches today, would have surprised early believers. For centuries Christians have assumed that self-love is an enemy of holiness: the opposite of generosity and humility. But western Christianity has been infected with a religious strain of the self-esteem virus rampant in our culture.
There is, of course, a simple logic to this cry for self-love. Pastors and Christian self-help writers have looked at the command to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:39) and argued that we can’t possibly do this if we don’t first love ourselves. The logic here is sound, but misses the point of the command. These verses are not, and should not be made into, an exhortation to love ourselves and improve our self-esteem. The command to love our neighbors as ourselves simply recognizes that we all, despite what we may say, do indeed love ourselves.
Immediately someone will bring up cases, sometimes their own, where a person hated themselves for being fat, ugly, and pimply. But if we think about it for a moment, we quickly realize that if we did not love ourselves, we wouldn’t care how we looked. After all, if we truly hated someone, we would probably be glad he or she is ugly. If anything good happened to a person we hate, we would grit our teeth in evil envy. But those claiming to hate themselves still welcome personal good fortune. In fact, too much self-love actually creates the feelings that get labeled as self-hatred. The more I focus on myself, the more unhappy I become with my looks, my achievements, and my status. The more I look around at what others have, the more “I hate” my own achievements and myself. What we often label as “self-hatred” is usually just another expression of self-love.
Living a life based on self-esteem is like driving a car with slow leak in one of the tires. We are always checking the tire; always pumping it up. It’s distracting and tiresome. We can never just hop in the car and go. A slow leak in our self-esteem means we spend way too much time gaging our status—scrambling after something to pump up our worth. As Christians we can’t just relax and enjoy the journey.
The biblical answer to low self-esteem is not self-love or positive affirmations. The biblical solution is self-forgetfulness. Jesus has called us to follow him with wild abandon, setting our hand to the plow and not looking back. He has called us to forget about ourselves, become a servant of all, and trust our lives into his care. Paul declared this freedom from self-absorbed living central to his Christian life:
I have become crucified with Christ; and it is no longer as I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Galatians 2:20 (NASB)
The arrogant egotist and the self-loathing reject equally need the glorious freedom offered by self-forgetfulness. When our heart is enlarged enough, when it becomes full enough of love to rejoice in the blessings, talents, and success of our neighbors as though our own, the trickle of joy becomes a flood. Because we have been made free to love, the blessings that fall into the lives of those we love flow into our hearts. A river with a small headwater but many tributaries becomes mighty by the time it reaches the sea. The paradox is that when we lose ourselves in loving others, we find ourselves. When we get small, our life gets big. Jesus calls us to follow him. Let’s grab a cross and go.
