There is a pernicious reworking of the Biblical command, which has pervaded Western Christianity over the past 40 years or so. It turns it round to be a command to love ourselves.
There are three seemingly watertight reasons for turning it round like this. (1) Logic: If we are to love our neighbours as ourselves, we must love ourselves as our neighbours. This is the simple logic of: If X = Y, then Y = X. (2) Does not the command presuppose love for ourselves? If we hate ourselves, how can we love our neighbours properly? (3) From a psychological point of view, how can we love our neighbours if we are full of self-doubt and inferiority complexes, depression, anxiety, identity crises?
YET, (1) Is that kind of logic really what the Scripture intended? (2) What does it mean to love our neighbours and to love ourselves? (3) Is contemporary psychological and psychiatric theory really a truth to accept?
However, what does this "love yourself" mean? In those verses, NT and OT, does it really mean what we have taken it to mean? In these days of identity crises, in which individualism reigns supreme, "love yourself" seems to imply "treat yourself as important", "ensure your own needs are fully supplied", and even "pamper yourself" and "ensure you are happy and self-satisfied". In the non-individualistic days of the people of Israel wandering in the desert, which is when the Levitical Law was given, I very much doubt that it meant these things. To me, it seems more likely that it was just taken for granted that every person (and especially every man) would love themselves in some rather basic way, for example of protecting themselves against attack and seeking to preserve their lives against marauding animals and perhaps their reputation against calumnies. It is unlikely that the command presupposed that one must first pamper oneself.
Think of others?
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About This Page
This page, URL= 'http://www.abxn.org/s/love.youself.html',
is on-going work in developing a 'New View' in theology that is appropriate to the days that are coming upon us. Comments, queries welcome.
Compiled by Andrew Basden. Written on the Amiga with Protext in the style of Classic HTML.
Created: 11 October 2020, completed 13 September 2021. Last updated: