What Jesus Said about Self Love

This is week five of our “What Jesus Said About Emotions” series. And emotions are a part of each one of us.  God created us as emotional beings, within the first three chapters of the story we watch the first couple as they experience loneliness, joy, love, envy, fear and shame. 

And we are all to some degree emotional people, some more so and others to a lesser degree but we all feel and experience emotions.  Or at least we are supposed to.  And so when I started the series the first of May there were probably weren’t any surprises.  And the first four messages were pretty easy to figure out.  Week one was “What Jesus said About Love”, week two was “What Jesus Said About Hate”, week three was “What Jesus Said About Fear” and then last week we looked at “What Jesus Said About Joy”.  And those were easy, you knew what was coming.  We should love, we should be happy and we ought to avoid hating people and feeling afraid.   No big surprises there.  Those of you who grab the note taking guides off the information table could have probably filled in the blanks yourself. 

Next week we are making a shift, we are going to start our Series on “What Jesus said About Himself”, and through the summer we are going to look at all the “I Am” statements that Jesus made, you know: “I am the vine”, “I am the Light of the World”, “I am the Bread of Life”  etc. etc.

But this is the last week of our series on emotions.  I thought about preaching on envy, worry or depression and any one of those would have been good topics, relevant subjects.  And to a certain degree we have touched on those a little bit in the first four messages.  When I spoke about anger I mentioned that we often became angry because of envy, we become angry because others have what we don’t have.  When I spoke about fear we touched on worry, and how that eventually produces fear and last week I spoke about Joy and to a certain degree the flip side of that is depression. 

So where are we going today?  Today I want to focus on “How you feel about yourself” and so this morning we are looking at “What Jesus said about Self Love.”  And that one isn’t so easy is it?  There are probably those of you who are thinking “Well we aren’t supposed to love ourselves, didn’t Denn pay attention to the scripture reading?  Love God and Love others.”    And for many that is the bottom line, it should never be about self, that’s why we are taught to be selfless not selfish.  It’s why within the church we find those who celebrate the Mother Theresas in life and scorn the Madonnas.  Theresa is celebrated for not thinking of herself while it is felt that Madonna only thinks about herself. 

But is that what Jesus really taught?  Did he teach his apostles to feel nothing but scorn for who they are and what they are?  There are certainly those out there who would suggest that.  Anyone who watched or read “The Da Vinci Code” remembers the villain of the piece was a monk named Silas, who was part of a Catholic organization called “Opus Dei” Probably the most disturbing images in the movie and the book revolved around Silas punishing himself, first with the cilice, a small chain with inward pointing spikes worn around the upper thigh for up to two hours a day and secondly through flagellation that is whipping himself with a whip called a discipline.  And while “The Da Vinci Code” was fiction and the portrayal of Opus Dei was somewhat less than accurate there have been Christian factions through the centuries who have promoted very similar philosophies.  And those practices were designed to remind people of how unworthy there were in the eyes of God and how unworthy they should consider themselves in their own eyes. 

And I would challenge that.  Let’s listen to Jesus words again.  Mark 12:29-31 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is the one and only LORD. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”   

A little background here, Jesus had begun the day teaching the crowds who had gathered and was interrupted first by the Pharisees and the Herodians who challenged him with questions about taxation trying to trap him.  And then it was the Sadducees who wanted to debate his views on the resurrection of the dead.  Now one of the teachers of religious law asks Jesus “Of all the commandments which is the most important?”  And Jesus reaches back into the Old Testament for his answer. The first part of his answer comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-5 “Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone.  And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.”  And then he adds to that  Leviticus 19:18 “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.”

And this is the first time we see these two commandments tied together.  And because they are the words of Jesus, and because he identifies them as being so important we work at it.  We really try and make an effort to Love God and  Love Others. 

And we focus on the part about “Love the Lord your God”  and “Love your neighbour” but the how we are to love is defined along with the who we should love.   You are to love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.  And you are to love your neighbour how?  “As yourself”.   It was Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort who said “If you must love your neighbor as yourself, it is at least as fair to love yourself as your neighbor.”

Some people spend so much love on God and others they have none left for themselves

And like math if one part of the formula is flawed the whole formula is flawed.  From my experience in life I have discovered that people who don’t love themselves have a hard time loving others, and that people who don’t love themselves don’t accomplish very much and people who don’t love themselves have a hard time with grace because they can’t understand how much God loves them. 

And frankly I think we do ourselves and our God a grave disservice when we can’t find it within ourselves to love His greatest creation.  Time after time the scriptures speak of God’s love for us.  He loved us so much that he was willing to sacrifice his son for us.  And then we have the audacity to challenge that love and negate that sacrifice by scorning ourselves and demeaning ourselves.   

In the story of creation, after God had created the world, after he had cast the milky way into the evening sky, after he separated the day from the night and set the eagle free and designed the giraffe, then he created man in his own image and said “This is Good”. 

Throughout the Gospels Jesus takes the time again and again to remind his apostle just how much God cares for them and loves them, and over and over he challenges people to love their neighbours, but not just love them in some undefined nebulous manner but to love their neighbours as they love themselves.  And those have to go hand in hand.  You can’t love yourself more then you love those around you but you shouldn’t love yourself less either.  I love what Whoopi Goldberg  said “I've learned to take time for myself and to treat myself with a great deal of love and respect `cause I like me.... I think I'm kind of cool.”

Through the years I have met literally thousands of people, we all have.  Think of the neighbours you have had through the years, the roommates, the friends, even family that have drifted in and out of your life.  The one constant is you, you will always have to live with yourself, and so it really is in your best interest to learn to love that person that you are going to spend the rest of your life with.  It was Kurt Vonnegut Jr. who said “There's only one me, and I'm stuck with him.”

So why do we find it so hard to love ourselves? 

1) We Listen to Others  Some people have spent their lives being minimized by others.  They have listened to other’s telling them they don’t measure up.  Perhaps it was their parents, who spoke those cutting words, “You’re slow” “You’re stupid”  “You’re fat”  “You won’t amount to anything”  “Why are you like that?”  “Why can’t you be like your brother, sister, friend.” 

Or maybe it was the other kids at school or maybe a spouse.  They have been run down and bullied by so many they believe the lies that have been told.  But you need to understand critical people are usually little people, I don’t mean little physically I mean little emotionally, and little spiritually and they are trying to cut you down to their level  because it is a lot easier to bring you down then to pull themselves up. 

And then we grow up and society bombards us with its definition of success and beauty.  And we don’t realize that so much of what society and the media presents is simply an illusion, but when we don’t measure up to their standards we find it hard to love ourselves.  I’m sure most of you have seen this clip that was presented as part of Dove Soap’s campaign about beauty.  (Dove video clip)

And then when we accept God’s grace and begin to follow Jesus the devil starts to whisper in our ear, “You’re no good”  “Remember yesterday”  “You’re not worthy”.  But the word of God tells us that the devil is a liar.

Nobody can steal your self-esteem without your permission. 

And as destructive as it can be to listen to the voices of others there is something even more destructive. 

2) We Listen to Ourselves  We all talk to ourselves.  Not in the crazy, conversational way, well maybe that way as well.  It was Franklin P. Jones  who wrote “One advantage of talking to yourself is that you know at least somebody's listening.”

You talk to yourself all the time; you just don’t want to admit it.  As you are listening to this message you are talking to yourself.  You are saying “Let’s see if I understand what Denn is saying.” Or you are saying “Is he serious?”  Or “We have company coming at 12, I hope Denn keeps it short.”  We talk to ourselves all the time, about what we see, and what we experience.   Sometimes it is simply reporting the facts but often it is editorial, we are telling ourselves how an experience makes us feel. 

And the words we speak to ourselves have an incredible potential to shape who we are.  There is very little in life that bothers me as much as hearing someone indulge in negative self-talk.  “I am so clumsy”, “ I am so stupid”, “I will never amount to anything.”  And these words become self-fulfilling prophecies.  You literally speak them into fulfilment.  

Denis Waitley, author of Seeds of Greatness wrote  “There is no opinion so vitally important to your well-being as the opinion you have of yourself.”  And too often we are guilty of telling ourselves things that we would never tell someone we love, we criticize and  we speak critical words, we cast blame and don’t accept any excuses.  And like hearing it from others it’s very difficult to rise about those criticisms. 

What is the Solution to Loving Ourselves?

1) We Listen to Others  If you have to listen to someone then listen to your fans.  Listen to those who speak goodness into your life.  And when someone compliments you for something accept it.  Don’t minimize it, don’t negate it.  “Oh really it was nothing” “Yeah but I’m not as good as so and so”  

Listen to the word of God, Psalm 139:17-18 “How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!” 

It was Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe who said “If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.”  And that was echoed by Minnie Smith  when she said “I am as my creator made me and since He is satisfied, so am I.”

Over and over again Jesus reminded his followers how much he loved them and how much God cared for them and that goes for you as well.  You are God’s greatest creation.  David writes in    Psalm 139:13 You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb.  You are a masterpiece of the almighty God.  You are not an accident, you are not a oops in the grand plan, you are an intentional creation of God.  He made you who you are and he made you what you are.

Think about it you are a walking talking miracle, only God could have made you what you are.  Engineers have never been able to come close to devising a machine equal to God's supreme achievement, you.  Is it any wonder that David wrote in Psalm 139:14 Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

You are not a mistake, or a goof or an accident, you are a divine creation, spoke into being by the same God who fashioned the great barrier reef who moulded the Rocky Mountains with his hands, scooped out the grand canyon with his fingers and cast the milky way into the night sky.

To question the creator or to belittle his creation is pretty close to blaspheme.  Maybe you are thinking “But preacher I’m not very tall, or very athletic, or very pretty, and I can't play Guitar like Jason or dance like Denn”.  Have you ever watched God doodle in the evening sky with a sunset.  And as you stood there and marvelled at the masters hand in nature, do you ever shout to the heavens.  Hey, you could use a little more purple in the back and the oranges aren't quite as bright as they could be. 

Every one of us is as unique as a sunset, and each one of us is precious to God because of our uniqueness, because he is the one who made us unique.

The second step to learning to love ourselves is to 2) We Listen to Ourselves Let’s go back to Denis Waitley again “Your mental picture of yourself is the key to your healthy development.  You are the writer, director, and star of either an Oscar wining epic or a Grade B movie.  Who you see in your imagination will always rule your world.”

If you make a mistake then tell yourself you will do better next time, when you do something well congratulate yourself on it.  Cast a vision for your future and remind yourself of that vision.   You should be your own greatest fan and you need to tell yourself how much you appreciate you, because if you don’t nobody else will. 

And again I believe this is a choice we make, when you catch yourself being negative stop and turn it around.  And maybe you are thinking, “I don’t think I can do that, I don’t think I can speak positively about myself.”  Well then take it one step at a time and remember what your mother taught you, if you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all.  But please, please, please, don’t minimize the power of self-talk.   It is not touch feely, it’s not psycho- babble, it’s not New Age gobblegook it is a reality.   You will be what you tell yourself you will be.    Nobody else has the right to talk down to you and neither do you.  We try to speak words of encouragement into the lives of those we love, and if we are supposed to love ourselves then we need to let our words demonstrate it.

And finally here is the crux of the message, if we are going to love ourselves then it will start to  happen when we 3) We Forgive Ourselves  Often the reason we don’t love ourselves is because of something in our past.  Something we have done, or think we have done and we need to forgive ourselves.  You cannot continue to define yourself and judge yourself through the lens of yesterday.   I don’t know what it is that makes you think you are a terrible person but if God has forgiven you then you need to forgive you.   And if you haven’t asked God to forgive you yet that is the first step.  We read in Acts 3:19 Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away.   Let’s read that together,  Acts 3:19 Now repent of your sins and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped away.  So what happens when you repent and turn to God?  That’s right your sins will be wiped out.  Listen to what King David wrote in Psalm 103:12 He has removed our sins as far from us as the east is from the west.  If God wipes out our sins, if God removes them as far as the east is the from the west then we have no business dredging them up. 

You can’t change the past and you shouldn’t be defined by your worst moment. 

If you can truly believe today that God, the creator and master of the entire universe is able to love you then please make the effort to love and respect yourself.

Mark 12:29-31 Jesus replied, “The most important commandment is this: ‘Listen, O Israel! The LORD our God is the one and only LORD. And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.”