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In a locked post, someone yesterday repeated a comment that they had seen on Yahoo: "Love your neighbor as yourself" only works when you love yourself."
I have seen this before. And it drives me completely nuts. It totally ignores the scriptural context in which the admonition "Love your neighbor as yourself" arises. Although it is far more benign than other ways in which people pick a single verse of Scripture to support some position or another, it is nonetheless a misuse of Scripture.
Don't get me wrong. I think people should love themselves. I think God weeps when we despise ourselves, when we refuse to allow the gift of his grace to transform our self-destructive visions of ourselves. We are all children of God, even if some of us erroneously believe ourselves to be otherwise.
Just for the record, when Jesus said "Love your neighbor as yourself," he was not engaging in a discussion of self-esteem. The question of "what does it mean to love myself?" never even came up. The context was a man who had come to Jesus to find out how to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked him what was written in the law, and the man replied "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus commends the man on his answer, at which point the man asks "who is my neighbor?" Jesus' response was the parable of the good Samaritan. (Luke 10:25-37.) This section of Luke was a discussion of how *everyone* -- including Gentiles, even (gasp!) Samaritans -- were our neighbors, and that we had a basic duty of care towards each other.
In fact, if you look at the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and Levite who passed by the man lying injured in the road were looking primarily to their own self-interest. (Although I have heard it explained that both the priest and Levite would have been afraid of potential contact with a dead body, which would have rendered them ritually unclean and therefore unable to perform their duties.) That was the whole problem. They were more interested in taking care of themselves -- in "loving" themselves -- than in taking care of a fellow traveller. Their self-interest was so strong that they would let a fellow Hebrew die by the side of the road. It was the Samaritan, of a people considered by the Hebrews to be on a level with dogs, who took care of the man.
While quoting small pieces of Scripture is not in and of itself objectionable, to turn "Love your neighbor as yourself" into some sort of wishy-washy self-esteem mantra does violence to its original meaning in context. And it's as annoying when one of "our side" (i.e., non-fundamentalists) does this as when the fundies do the same thing.
(And it is also simply wrong. I know many people -- myself included -- who struggle with seeing ourselves as being under God's grace, who are nonetheless able to see that grace in others, and feel compassion and love for them. To state that I can't love others until I love myself is to condescendingly dismiss my feelings as inauthentic.)
There is another danger for Christians. If we turn the sayings of Jesus into some sort of feel-good self-help program, we make Jesus into just another New Age guru spouting sound-bites. (A friend of mine in Texas refers to this vision of the Christ as "the weenie in the white nighty".) We lose the power of the message. Anyone who views Jesus as some laid back cool dude has never read the Gospels: at every turn he challenges the powers that be, whether it be declaiming "Woe to you, lawyers and pharisees!" or overturning the tables of moneychangers.
Jesus calls us to walk a difficult road. He calls us to go forth and love actively in the world, not to sit and navel-gaze or pat ourselves on the back for having become born-again. He calls us to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." And sometimes those comfortable people who need afflicting are ourselves. (I'll save for another time the rant about fundamentalists who whine they are oppressed because of their religion in America, the wealthiest nation on Earth and one in which Christian fundamentalists wield enormous power, when people in other parts of the world face imprisonment or terrorism because of theirs.) We need to remember that we have been blessed in our lives to go forth and shower blessings on others.
I don't think I do a good job of walking this road. (Hey, we can't all be Mother Teresa.) But it is well worth the effort, even if I cannot be perfect. God calls us to try honestly, even if we stumble. I'm still working on figuring it out.
He has told you, mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8
I have seen this before. And it drives me completely nuts. It totally ignores the scriptural context in which the admonition "Love your neighbor as yourself" arises. Although it is far more benign than other ways in which people pick a single verse of Scripture to support some position or another, it is nonetheless a misuse of Scripture.
Don't get me wrong. I think people should love themselves. I think God weeps when we despise ourselves, when we refuse to allow the gift of his grace to transform our self-destructive visions of ourselves. We are all children of God, even if some of us erroneously believe ourselves to be otherwise.
Just for the record, when Jesus said "Love your neighbor as yourself," he was not engaging in a discussion of self-esteem. The question of "what does it mean to love myself?" never even came up. The context was a man who had come to Jesus to find out how to inherit eternal life. Jesus asked him what was written in the law, and the man replied "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your strength, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." Jesus commends the man on his answer, at which point the man asks "who is my neighbor?" Jesus' response was the parable of the good Samaritan. (Luke 10:25-37.) This section of Luke was a discussion of how *everyone* -- including Gentiles, even (gasp!) Samaritans -- were our neighbors, and that we had a basic duty of care towards each other.
In fact, if you look at the parable of the Good Samaritan, the priest and Levite who passed by the man lying injured in the road were looking primarily to their own self-interest. (Although I have heard it explained that both the priest and Levite would have been afraid of potential contact with a dead body, which would have rendered them ritually unclean and therefore unable to perform their duties.) That was the whole problem. They were more interested in taking care of themselves -- in "loving" themselves -- than in taking care of a fellow traveller. Their self-interest was so strong that they would let a fellow Hebrew die by the side of the road. It was the Samaritan, of a people considered by the Hebrews to be on a level with dogs, who took care of the man.
While quoting small pieces of Scripture is not in and of itself objectionable, to turn "Love your neighbor as yourself" into some sort of wishy-washy self-esteem mantra does violence to its original meaning in context. And it's as annoying when one of "our side" (i.e., non-fundamentalists) does this as when the fundies do the same thing.
(And it is also simply wrong. I know many people -- myself included -- who struggle with seeing ourselves as being under God's grace, who are nonetheless able to see that grace in others, and feel compassion and love for them. To state that I can't love others until I love myself is to condescendingly dismiss my feelings as inauthentic.)
There is another danger for Christians. If we turn the sayings of Jesus into some sort of feel-good self-help program, we make Jesus into just another New Age guru spouting sound-bites. (A friend of mine in Texas refers to this vision of the Christ as "the weenie in the white nighty".) We lose the power of the message. Anyone who views Jesus as some laid back cool dude has never read the Gospels: at every turn he challenges the powers that be, whether it be declaiming "Woe to you, lawyers and pharisees!" or overturning the tables of moneychangers.
Jesus calls us to walk a difficult road. He calls us to go forth and love actively in the world, not to sit and navel-gaze or pat ourselves on the back for having become born-again. He calls us to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." And sometimes those comfortable people who need afflicting are ourselves. (I'll save for another time the rant about fundamentalists who whine they are oppressed because of their religion in America, the wealthiest nation on Earth and one in which Christian fundamentalists wield enormous power, when people in other parts of the world face imprisonment or terrorism because of theirs.) We need to remember that we have been blessed in our lives to go forth and shower blessings on others.
I don't think I do a good job of walking this road. (Hey, we can't all be Mother Teresa.) But it is well worth the effort, even if I cannot be perfect. God calls us to try honestly, even if we stumble. I'm still working on figuring it out.
He has told you, mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Micah 6:8
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My reasoning, in my more 'I am a Christian, /too/' moments, is that, as long as I am still /trying/ to walk the road, I'm not a failure.
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The lower the environmental stress level around me is, the better it is for me. Sometimes I have to prioritize my needs ahead of someone else's (think of the idea of triage in an ER), but sometimes I can put their needs ahead of my own in the queue. Often times, though, I've found that I can address both their needs and mine simultaneously.
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I also like what you said about making the effort of walking the road.
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Have I said lately that I like the way you think?
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If I found a religion, will you come in and be a guest lecturer?
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I'll set aside, here, my really major issues with there being any law, set out by any authority, that tells me whom to love or how much or in what way.
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I also think that, even if you take the statement at face value without looking at the whole story, it is erroneous. I know many people who treat others better than they treat themselves. Not that this is a *good* thing, but just is.