You're Being Lied To!

About ten years ago, I was sitting in a session with a therapist who told me, “You cannot really love someone until you first learn to love yourself.” At the time, it all sounded so reasonable, so compassionate, so... right. I wanted that statement to make sense in my own head, but as I weigh this statement, I realize that it is not true, not even close. 

We are living in the age of the “Self-Love Gospel,” and to be certain, it is a false one. 

Everywhere we turn today, we're bombarded with messages about self-love. We have countless self-help books, social media influencers begging us to love ourselves, therapists, and even some pastors preaching the gospel of loving yourself first. "You can't pour from an empty cup," they say. "Put yourself first." "Practice self-care." "Love yourself before you can love others."

𝐈𝐭. 𝐈𝐬. 𝐀𝐥𝐥. 𝐀. 𝐋𝐈𝐄

The Truth

One of the most misquoted and misinterpreted passages used to support self-love is found in the book of Matthew when Jesus commands us to "love your neighbor as yourself". Proponents of self-love argue that this means we must first love ourselves before we can love others. 

How could it be wrong if Jesus himself said it?!

But that's not what Jesus is saying at all. Jesus isn't commanding self-love here; He's assuming it already exists. He's acknowledging the reality that because of our sin, we are naturally selfish, naturally look after our own interests first, care about our own needs, and prioritize our own comfort.  We don't have to be taught to love ourselves; it's our default setting.

Think about it. When you're hungry, you feed yourself. When you're tired, you rest. When you're cold, you put on a jacket. You don't need a seminar or a book or a therapist to teach you self-preservation; it comes naturally.

What Jesus is saying is to "Take that same natural concern you have for yourself and extend it to others."

When Self-Love is Mentioned

If loving ourselves is so critical, you'd think the Bible would be full of commands to do so. But there's only one place in Scripture where being "lovers of self" is explicitly mentioned, and it's not good news.

In Paul’s second letter to Timothy, Paul describes the characteristics of people in the last days with these words,

“People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,  without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.”

Notice that "lovers of themselves" is first on the list. It's not a virtue to aspire to; it's a warning! It’s a warning about a corrupted, self-centered generation.

Self-love isn't the solution; it's part of the problem!

The Better Way

If self-love isn't the answer, what is?

We know from the passage in Matthew that first and foremost it is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

 Secondly, Paul gives us more of the answer in his letter to the Philippian church when he writes, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others."

Read that again. Value others above yourselves. Don't look to your own interests, but to the interests of others. This means that I am second and is the exact opposite of the self-love mantra that is being preached by so many.

The good news is we have the perfect example of how to value others more than myself, and that is Jesus. Paul continues in the same passage telling us, “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross!”

This kind of throws a wrench in all of the self-love teaching, doesn’t it? 

Jesus didn't come to earth on a self-love crusade. He came to serve, to give, to die for others, to love, not Himself, but those that He came to save. 

And He calls us to follow His example.

The Freedom of Letting Go of Me

Here's the beautiful irony; when I stop focusing on loving myself and start focusing on loving God and others, I actually find the fulfillment that so many are looking for each and every day. And, this fulfillment will never be found in loving myself more.

When I honor others above myself, I experience the joy of giving rather than the emptiness of constant self-focus. When I serve instead of demanding to be served, I discover a purpose that no amount of self-love can provide. When I lose my life for Christ's sake, I find it!

Don't Believe the Lie

The next time you hear that you need to love yourself more, that you can't give what you don't have, that self-love is the foundation of all other love, know that you're being lied to.

True life and fulfillment begin when I choose to make Christ the focus of my love, because then I can follow His example and value others more highly than myself in true humility.

That's the truth. And the truth will set you free.

Running the race with you,

Carlos

This edition was first published in The Life Design Newsletter on LinkedIn.