Self Love

On Tuesday I start a 4 part message series in the chapels for the Lee University Summer Music Camp.  I am going to talk about our lives as a holistic response to God.  Worship, in essence, is really more than our corporate gatherings on Sundays.  Worship is more about how our lives, once we are in Christ, is lived out with him.  

I am going to start in the most used passage of scripture to describe this holistic life response to God, but I am going to start with the second portion of this scripture first.  Matthew 22:33-40 talks about this whole life response.  In conversation with the religious leaders of his day, Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment?”  And, Jesus answered for us to love God with all our being, and to “love our neighbor as ourselves.”

I have come to realize lately, that a better understanding of self love could make us better worshippers.  How many of us really love ourselves?  Or maybe a better question is, “Do we only love the image of ourselves we have created for others to love us?”

In general people might be self centered, but I think there is a real lack of self love.  I will explore this from 2 points of view.

First, to understand self love, we have to consider that when God created us, he did so in his own image.  While we are not God, we are an image of him.  Harold Best says, “everything God is in infinity, we are a finite image.”  As we consider self love and the image of God, we must believe that God was completely satisfied in and of himself for all eternity before he choose to create.  He did not create us because he somehow needed us, he created out of love.  At the end of the creation process of humanity, God said, “it was good.”  

While we have marred the original goodness that God created in us, our original state was a state of goodness.  You and I have some kind of God’s DNA in us that is good.  

The second point, is that while we have marred our original goodness, God has created a way for us to retain that state in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.  Our lives have become dark and dirty since the fall of humanity.  However, in Christ we are redeemed and made clean ready to meet God when that day should come in our original state of his goodness.  

When we think on these things, it becomes more possible for us to think more highly of ourselves.  We might even begin to love ourselves enough to make a difference in someone else’s life.  Love your neighbor as yourself; until we come to grips with self love, I am not sure we are able to love the way Christ is calling all of us to love.

Just some thoughts.