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Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself (Mark 12:31b; Matthew 22:39b)
I used to look at this passage and think, “I have to love him?” Or maybe “Do I have to like her as well as love her?” Then I heard a sermon that turned it around a bit. “Love thy neighbour as thyself”. Well, that changed things, because it meant I first had to love myself. Ah, so what does that mean? Loving oneself doesn’t mean being narcissistic. It doesn’t mean being in love with oneself. It doesn’t mean constantly looking in the mirror to see how wonderful I am. It certainly doesn’t mean thinking so highly of myself that I feel I am too good for others. In my mind, loving myself means being content with who and what I am. Surely I must keep striving for perfection, as the Gospel of Matthew compels: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). [Actually, that whole chapter, Matthew 5, is wonderful to read, but I digress]. Strive for perfection, but don’t put myself down for my imperfection. If I can do that, I am one step closer to loving myself. I’ve noticed that there are people who don’t seem to love themselves, and they show it in different ways. For example, a person who complains about everything probably doesn’t love himself. If he can find something wrong with all things, he can probably find something wrong with everything in his life. A person who loves himself, though, is more likely to focus on all the good things in his life. Whether he’s rich or poor, short or tall, fair-skinned or dark, whether he has accumulated a great deal of wealth or merely has enough to get by, such a person is going to be satisfied with what he has because he is satisfied with what he is. At least, that’s how I imagine he would be. I might be wrong, but it seems to make sense to me. And it also seems to me that a person who loves himself is a person who is loved by others. It’s a natural reaction, isn’t it? I find myself drawn to people who are happy with life, regardless of their station in life. What else does it mean to love myself? I guess it means looking at myself in the mirror and understanding that this is how God made me. If my nose is not the cutest nose in the world, so be it. It’s the nose God gave me. If I’m not as tall as I’d like to be, that’s just wonderful because I am as tall as God wants me to be. And there seems to me to be a correlation between loving myself and loving God. If I love God, I am more likely to love myself. And if I love God, then loving my neighbour is just going to come naturally. Published: April 30th, 2006 My Sunday Examiner Articles
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