When loving yourself isn't easy...

I want to post a few blogs relating to the Old and New Testament commandments regarding loving our neighbors and loving ourselves. I immediately start the process by asking some elementary questions about the words used in those simple sentences. What is love? What is a neighbor? How do I love myself properly? None of them are easily addressed, but I'd like to begin with a sampling of Mere Christianity where C.S. Lewis muses about loving himself.

Later we can look at what Jesus said about neighbors, who they are and how ought we to love them.
It's not as easy at it sounds. Here's a great start:

"How exactly do I love myself? Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently love your neighbor does not mean feel fond of him or find him attractive. I ought to have seen that before, because, of course, you cannot feel fond of the person by trying. Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. That is an enormous  relief. For a good many people imagine that forgiving your enemies means making out that they are really not such bad fellows after all, when it is quite plain that they are. Go a step further. In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. I can look at some of the things I have done with horror and loathing. So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate  some of the things my enemies do.

Now that I come to think of it, I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate the bad man's actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.  For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did but not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life–namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit agreed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I love myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things. Consequently, Christianity does not want us to reduce by one atom the hatred we feel for cruelty and treachery. We ought to hate them. Not one word of what we have said about them needs to be unsaid. But it does want us to hate them in the same way in which we hate things in ourselves: being sorry that the man should have done such things, and hoping, if it is any way possible, that somehow, sometime, somewhere he can be cured and made human again.”

I admit I have a hard time thinking in loving terms about some of the people in my past to have gone out of their way to hurt me with slander, innuendo, or outright lies. I also have a hard time thinking in loving terms about leaders who were unwilling to allow me to face my accusers. Granted, I have done enough wrong in my life to warrant discipline, but trying to love church leaders who opted out of the biblical tenants of discipline in favor of personal punishment, is still a challenge for me. As a wise counsellor once told me, sometimes the best we can do is hold our enemies in forgiveness until we can gather the grace to completely forgive them. The same holds true regarding how we think about ourselves.

Anyone who has ever disappointed themselves, and those they love, will experience a period of time when finding self-love is impossible. Self-love is often closely associated with how we perceive what others think about us so when we fail openly and spectacularly must begin anew by restructuring our lives by making amends, seeking forgiveness, and reestablishing valued friendships - or starting new ones. This is not easy work, and it takes a great deal of time before we can be sure that people we associate with either graciously look past our failures, or never learn about our past failures and treat us strictly at our face value.

Stephen Covey says the way to reestablish broken trust is by making and keeping small promises.  There's a tendency for broken people to want to make grand statements and reestablish trust by using promises that are difficult to keep. For example, when an alcoholic promises "I will never take another drink as long as I live”, they set themselves up for failure because they can't speak for the rest of their lives. But if they say "I will not drink today” their chances of success increase greatly.  Making and keeping small promises speaks to a pro-active and manageable commitment that is not found in grandiose promises.

 Simply put, self-love must grow out of a sense of self value, and that can only come out of the mind and heart that believes in and has experienced grace. Once we understand, and embrace the notion that despite our failures, we are still loved by both God and the special people in our lives, we can begin a new life–not sidestepping the consequences of our bad choices–with a sense of regeneration and hope.

Those who have experienced grace in times of their own failure are capable of giving grace to others in their times of brokenness. That supposed to be what Christians do: They love themselves because they know they are loved by God, and thereby are enabled to love others without strings attached,
just like God.