SELF is a monster so awful and mean,

To be hated, it needs only to be seen.

But too often seen, and familiar of face,
We first endure, then envy, then embrace.

RIGHTEOUSNESS seen does easily impress;

Inspiring imitation, which leads to distress,
´til the faker considers the righteous a fraud,
Turns cynic and rejects the goodness of God.

From innocent beginnings in the Garden in Eden

To universal violence in the time of Noah
To our modern hedonistic society,
Mandkind has been addicted to self love.
It infects even those who claim to deny self,
Take up their cross daily and follow Jesus.
Subtly it interprets Jesus’ second command
To love your neighbor as (you need to love) yourself.
The pop idea is, you can’t love another until you first love yourself.
I don’t argue against self-esteem as God’s highest creation
With whom He seeks personal relationship.
We are persons of highest value, precious to God
Enough for Him to give His life for us. We are loveable.
The danger is that our society entices us to the other extreme
Conclusion that we are not ready to love another
until we are good at loving ourselves first.
The problem here is that the Greek Word for love
In this passage is AGAPE. Many recognize it
As the self-sacrificial, altruistic caring for another
Even at the cost of one’s own life.
Now let’s try to insert that meaning into the popular
“self-love” priority. It would sound like this:
“Unreservedly give your life away to others
as you unselfishly give your life away to YOURSELF”?!?
Sorry, but that’s not even remotely possible.
Even the narcisist CANNOT AGAPE HIMSELF.
To apply AGAPE to a self-centered care
Denies the very nature of this unselfish love.
Do you think Jesus was loving himself
by never defending himself, and dying on the cross?
Pop psychology counters, but you can’t know how
to love until you learn to love yourself. They
are appealing to give yourself to hedonic pleasure
In order to know how to give to another’s need.
It is a subtle deception that counters the verse:
1Jn 4:10-12 “Herein is love, not that we loved God,
but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the
propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us,
we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen
God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth
in us, and his love is perfected in us.”
We are perfected in God’s love, not our own.
Only by self-denying, self-sacrificial giving to others
Will we ever come to know how to love like God.
Self-pleasuring doesn’t produce sensitivity to others.
How can we deny self, take up our cross daily and
Follow Jesus’ example of sacrificial love
If we say can’t love others until we love ourselves?
Self love is a universal human characteristic.
You can argue that self-preservation is essential to
Loving others, because everybody’s endorsing it, but
You can’t defend that posture with the Bible. True,
everone does love themselves (self-nurture)
As Paul wrote in Efe 5:25-33 for husbands to
love their wives as Christ also loved the church,
and gave himself for it. This passage makes it
painfully clear that.Jesus set the example of loving self
– by denying self love and painfully dyng in our place!
So husbands must love their own flesh (their wife)
By dying to selfish, fleshly “love” My wife feels most loved
when I restrain my own desires in order to meet her need.
The source verses in Lev.19:18 and 19:34 echo Jesus’
words in his Golden Rule (Luke 6:31): love others as
you would like someone to love you. (NOT self-love)
Finally, some related words spring from “loving self”:
Ego, envy, Jealousy, greed, selfishness, stubbornness,
gluttony, hedonism, snobbery, gossip, nymfomania,
perversion, hard-heartedness, apathy, intolerance,
distain, hatred. theft, graft, fraud, lying, fornication,
rebellion, egotism, pride, haughtiness, prejudice,
Do you get the drift?