The concept of self-love, propagated as though it were something we must all learn (it was a remarkably easy lesson for Adam and Eve) is a lethal virus infecting Christians’ minds. The message of the cross is self-donation, abandonment for the love of God. The word of Mark 12:30 is “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (NN, emphasis added). The second commandment is ”Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mk 12:31, NIV). The love to which Jesus refers is, I think, simply the normal attention we pay to our own needs. We look after ourselves, feed, clothe (and often pamper) ourselves, protect what we think of as our rights, and usually give ourselves as many “breaks” as we can. That comes naturally. What doesn’t come naturally is to give our neighbor (who might be a sweet lady or a shrew) at least the breaks we allow ourselves.
“Please give up wanting to be loved,” wrote J. Heinrich Arnold. “It is the opposite of Christianity. The prayer of St. Francis says, ‘Grant that I may not so much seek to be loved as to love.’ As long as you seek to be loved, you will never find peace. You will always find reasons for envy. But its real root is self-love.” (From a little booklet, Discipleship, sent to me by the Hutterian Brethren of Farmington, Pennsylvania).
There is a strong warning in 2 Timothy 3:1-2 which ought to give us pause: “Mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves” (NIV).
One evening as I was cooking supper, glancing now and then at the small TV that sits on the kitchen counter, my attention was arrested by a close-up of a very earnest young man who was saying, “I forgive them,” a statement seldom heard on a national talk show, especially one whose host is a notorious cynic. A woman leaped to her feet in the audience shouting, “That’s sick! If you forgive them you’re just condoning what they did!” Camera switches back to that calm and earnest face. No reply. The host then, in his most sardonic tone, countered, “But isn’t that what Jesus told His followers to do? Aren’t we supposed to forgive our enemies?”
“Yes,” said the earnest young man. His next words gave testimony to being a follower of Christ. That was his reason for forgiveness. I became aware that I was looking at Reginald Denny, the trucker who was dragged from his cab in the Los Angeles riots and beaten. Next on screen was a woman who wanted the audience to know that she understood Mr. Denny’s reason, for she, too, was a Christian. She was the of one of those who had beaten him.
“What my son did was wrong, and he deserves punishment,” she said, “But in the courtroom Mr. Denny came toward me with hand outstretched. In two seconds we were in each other’s arms.”
A shocker for the mass media-a live picture of amazing grace. Self-preservation is the strongest instinct, yet the grace of forgiveness is stronger. Not merely an instinct but evidence of the power of Christ in a man’s life, the power of Him who when He hung on the cross asked His Father’s forgiveness for those who had put him there.
That same Savior and Lord speaks to us: “If a man will let himself be lost for My sake he will find his true self” (Mt 16:25, NEB).
**Excerpt originally from The Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter May/June 1995