Materials

Gospel of John, #13


As You Love Yourself
John 22:34-39
by R. Todd Bouldin


Choosing one’s last couple of sermons is difficult after preaching Sunday after Sunday for several years, about 150 sermons to be exact. What else remains to be said? I suppose quite a lot, but I chose two topics for these two Sundays: one about the self, and one about Jesus. Today, I want to address what it means to love yourself. I suppose this is not among the most important things to be said, but it is a topic I’ve wanted to address for a while, perhaps out of my own discovery as anything else. But my work in ministry also has led me to believe that it is a message we need to hear.

We speak easily of loving God, of loving others, but it seems difficult to find the time to preach on loving yourself. We seem afraid of the extremes. Whitney Houston’s line from her song that “learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all” seems alien to a Gospel that is centered in sacrifice, self-denial and cross. Perhaps we fear that any talk of loving one’s self will just end up in positive self-help psychobabble more rooted in the American dream than in the biblical understanding of ourselves before God. Perhaps we fear that such talk is dangerous in a society that arguably already loves itself too much. But our refusal to mention this topic is leaving the church awash in a sea of anxieties, paranoia, shame and untruths. Jesus said that loving yourself is one of the pillars of a whole life that opens itself up to loving God and neighbor as well. So today, I want to take the risk of preaching a sermon that I believe may be one of the most urgent messages the church needs to hear. Knowing who you are is foundational to everything else.

Prayer

Perhaps you find it shocking that anyone thinks that they should have to encourage Southern Californians to love themselves. It’s true that we spend a lot of money and time on ourselves, more than most of the nation it seems, and we expose ourselves to many of life’s finer things. We pride ourselves on nice bodies, nice cars, and endless pleasure. But that, in itself, is not the same as loving ourselves; in fact, it might, in some instances at least, be quite the opposite.

I am not sure if you have noticed, but those who spend so much time on themselves often do not think so much of themselves, especially in comparison to those whose standard they feel they must meet. In my observation, people with a high degree of self confidence and self-satisfaction don’t need to spend like bandits or feed themselves with compulsions to prove that they are worth something to someone’s standard; they like their lives, they like themselves, and so, yes, they use their resources to live authentically, but they are not in a state of constant craving for the new, the better, the noticeable. In fact, people at home with themselves are most able to live authentically and sacrificially for others. Said another way, selfishness is not the result of self love but of self hate.

Let me illustrate. It is at the times that I feel down or depressed about myself or my circumstances that I am most tempted to indulge myself. I eat too much, spend too much, and look for ways to make myself feel better. At those times, I ignore healthy habits that are good for me. I suspect that many of you recognize that pattern. We overindulge on ourselves, not when we love ourselves too much, but when we love ourselves too little.

We in Southern California spend more per capita on cars and houses than almost anyone else in the country, but we also spend more on therapists, child psychologists, massage therapists, cosmetic surgery and personal trainers than anywhere else per capita. I watch children and young teens around us, and I too often see signs of fear, reluctance to interact with strangers, anxiety about school, about achievement, about schedules, about what I will become. I watch adults at work and in church struggling to be noticed, craving attention in meetings, reluctant to give others credit, protecting their turf, hurt when they have not been appropriately recognized or thanked, and sulking when the world does not orbit around their perspective. I watch people in churches have more drama and more turf battles for control than I witness in the “world” outside of the church, or just as much. I watch people building empires in their offices, hanging on to credentials, talking with pride of how many people “work under them”. This behavior does not result from proper self love, but from self loathing.

St. Francis de Sales describes what life is like for those who cannot genuinely love themselves: “You are afraid of being afraid, and then you are afraid of being afraid of being afraid. Some vexation vexes you, and then you are vexed by that vexation. In the same way I have seen people who, having lost their tempers, are afterwards angry at being angry”. I can relate. The words that flow from being out of love with ourselves are well known to us all: “Why was I so stupid? Why did I send that e-mail without thinking first? Why is her life so much better than mine? How come he got that job and I didn’t? Why do they like her better than me?” Paranoia (“Everyone is picking on me” or “No one likes me”), fear and anxiety often begin at this place where a gaping hole in the self constantly cries out for attention, recognition and affirmation.

We live in a society where many factors make it difficult, sometimes even impossible, for people to live in genuine love with themselves. When deep, appropriate self love is not present, pride takes over, and then it’s very hard for people to live in relationships of authentic love with others.

Generations of women in our society have been raised, and are still being raised, to believe that they are only worthwhile insofar as they are beautiful, wrinkle-free, and bring happiness to their men.

Generations of men have been raised to believe that their lives only have worth if they achieve, reach the top of some ill-defined ladder of success, have a plaque on the wall, carry a Blackberry, and have a secretary to make a lunch appointment.

Generations of kids are being raised, to this day, in communities like this one, to believe that if they can’t simultaneously play soccer, surf, play piano, be the President of the student body, and get into a great university that they are somehow just not quite up to standard. And most unfortunate, one child in ten in our society will experience profound sexual or physical abuse, the most residing result of which is a deeply shaken sense of their own image that comes from God.

The church has played its own roll in convincing people that they are not worthy of love or self-respect. Churches speak a lot about salvation, but often its own members find that they must resort to therapist to resolve personal and marital issues. At times, it seems like church folk have more drama and depression than those outside. Why is this? French psychologist Paul Tournier has written:

      I cannot keep count of the number of people in whom religion, the love of God and the desire to serve God, lead only to a life of sterility, sadness and anxiety. The fear of sinning has killed all of their spontaneity … all joy has been replaced by a sense of duty. They have come to the point of doing nothing that gives them any pleasure, as if God who loves us never requires any but disagreeable things from us. They make incredible efforts but win no victories. They are always comparing themselves to those whom they look upon as their betters”. The Person Reborn, p. 82

I suppose that the reasons that Christians often find themselves engaging in a form of self-hatred are legion. In an effort to emphasize holiness and purity, some brands of Christianity have often left us feeling more ashamed than forgiven. Guilt and shame can be healthy motivators in a context of grace, but they are tragic if left to themselves. Christ died to lead us out of shame and disgrace, not further into it. Further, the Christian church sometimes so emphasizes its version of the truth that it leads people to be false about themselves. God’s truth should never lead anyone to live a lie. Truth should always lead to more truth, not to falsehoods. The truth of Jesus operates in the light and not in the darkness. This does not mean that the darkness defines a person’s identity but that darkness must come into the light if it is to be redeemed. As Paul says in II Corinthians 4:2, “We have renounced the shameful things that one hides; we refuse to practice cunning or to falsify God’s Word; but by the open statement of the truth we commend ourselves to the conscience of everyone in the sight of God.”

I also think that the church often has confused self-denial with self hate. It is true that Jesus said that following Him requires one to “deny themselves, take up a cross and follow Me.” (Mark 8:34). Jesus goes on to say that those who try to exert control over their lives, who try to force life to happen, and who try to save their lives will lose their lives. This teaching is at the heart of Christian discipleship. Paul quotes the Christ hymn in Philippians 2 as he describes the lifestyle of one who lives in the way of Christ. This lifestyle, or “mind of Christ” is one characterized by humility, downward movement, and complete sacrifice (Philippians. 2:5-11).

But these same texts show that Jesus chose this way, not in denial of Himself, but in denial of His own will. There is a huge difference. There is a marked difference between choosing not to eat a cookie because you don’t need it to comfort you, and choosing not have the cookie because you desire to look like someone else. Both end in self denial, but one chooses the denial of the will out of an understanding of who one is as a self, and the other chooses denial of the will out of disrespect for one’s self.

The whole point of these texts was that Jesus gave Himself up out of the knowledge of who He was, not despite who He was. In Mark and in Luke, it is the very point of the text that being Messiah led to the cross. In the Philippians text, it was Christ who was “equal with God” who did not “consider this equality something to be grasped but gave it up.” In John 13, John says that Jesus “knowing who He was and where He was going” took up a towel and washed feet. He did not wash feet because He had something to prove, or needed a ministry to make Him important, but because He knew who He was. Self acceptance and knowledge of one’s identity is the place for ministry to originate. We do not engage in service to receive an identity but because of the identity we already have as children of God. That’s why the Gospels always tell us that the baptism of Jesus preceded the ministry of Jesus. That’s where He learned who He was as the Beloved of God. Everything else followed. Martin Luther King, Jr. said in one of his sermons to his audience seeking to understand themselves, “To love other selves adequately, you’ve got to love your own self properly.”

Jesus said it this way: you will love others as you love yourself. I do not think He commanded us to love ourselves because He assumed that we do. Some of us love others more than we love ourselves, not “as” we love ourselves. Would you treat others the way that you treat yourself? Are you struggling to love others in your life? Chances are that you are struggling to love yourself properly. Are you having a difficult time forgiving someone who has wronged you? My hunch is that you find it difficult to forgive yourself? Find yourself being critical of others? My guess is that you are terribly critical of yourself. You cannot properly love God or others as long as you are consumed with the hole in your own life. You cannot live with your arms open to “You” as long as your tightly closed arms cry out “Me, me, me.”

So how do we love ourselves without ending up in narcissism and selfishness? I believe daily prayer and Bible reflection are incredibly important in allowing God to define you and not others. Truthful and meaningful relationships with others are critical too. I even want to encourage you to seek psychological help and therapy just to get to know yourself and work through those places you’ve learned to disrespect yourself. But if I had one recommendation that I could make, and you may be surprised at the answer: Baptism. Baptism is where you receive your true authentic self again, your true child of God self. It’s the place where God tells you who you are, and who you are is the Beloved of God. You have to bathe your whole body in that story in baptism so that it’s clear that this identify defines every part of your being. Once you are clear on this, God can begin redeeming the part of you that is ashamed, untruthful and self-hating. Once you return to this moment over and over again: “I have been baptized” then you’ll start to find the freedom that comes from Christ who is restoring the image of God in you.

God resides at the deepest levels of our souls, to love God is to love ourselves, not in a selfish, prideful, consuming way, but in the deep and beautiful way of knowing who we are, and who God is. And so, regardless of the signals sent to you by society, or those you work with, or those you live with, perhaps even despite those signals, you know that you are baptized. God’s mark is on you, God’s Spirit is alive in your soul, and you are in the process of becoming the child and image of God in the world.

By God’s grace, you have to come to accept the life you have been given, and not the one you wish you had. Once you find your life and who you are, and you find this in who God claims that you are, then you can give it up. It’s at that point you are ready to love, both God and others. As John says at the beginning of his Gospel,

“To those who received Him, to those who call upon His Name, He gave them power to become their true selves, their child of God selves.” On this hangs all the law and the prophets, it’s the summary of everything I’ve preached here, and it’s the greatest love of all.



May 14, 2006

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