For a long time I used to think that the phrase, "you need to love yourself" was stupid. Because...that's selfish, right? And really, I'd have to hate myself in order to be sacrificial for others, yadda yadda.
What I didn't realize at the time was that it wouldn't have even qualified as "sacrifice" if there wasn't love for oneself involved somehow. (Looky there, tangent already in the first paragraph...)
Pertaining to this topic, I used to take issue with a line in one of my favorite songs by the band Lifehouse. In the song "Whatever It Takes" there is a line that says, "Like it or not, it's the way it has to be. You have to love yourself if you could even love me." Then goes "..I'll do whatever it takes to turn this around..." You have probably heard the song before. "Like it or not," huh? Well, I didn't like it.
In the song, it's a girl telling the guy she loves that he has to love himself before he could ever really love her. For the longest time I took a stance of "sure whatever." After all, what girl in her right mind would want a guy who loved himself? Isn't that a little self-absorbed and cocky sounding? Humility is a grand personality trait for a significant other, and loving of the self doesn't seem to match up with that. Frankly, if you can't tell already, the idea that someone had to love himself before loving someone else made me a little mad, and I wrestled with it for...years. Pretty much since the song came out in '07 (yeah that's right, in high school). Looking back now, it probably angered me because I was SO sure that I was perfectly capable of loving another person without having a particular attachment or affection for myself. However, that just showed me that I had a skewed perspective of what love really is.
I'm not even saying that I know what love is even today. I do know, though, that my perspective has changed and that there is a good chance that it is at least a little more similar to God's perspective now than it was before. I don't understand all of it, but I have experienced what I will go on to say to be true.
So back to it...
I was sure that having to love yourself before you could love someone else was silly. It didn't make sense to me because it sounded so selfish. And! As it turns out, my idea that I was capable of loving others without loving myself was completely wrong. So wrong. Not only wrong, but sinful and self-righteous. Now, loving yourself and self-righteousness are too totally different things. Opposites really. Self-righteousness is loving yourself because of your LACK of flaws, while loving yourself is loving DESPITE your flaws. (See what I did there? ;)
Finally, I started ("started" meaning, I'm still in the process) to learn what loving oneself means and why it is vital.
Vital, she says? Why vital? (Or better question...why third person? o.O)
It's vital because of WHERE love comes from. Love comes from...surprise! God. And if I call myself a Christian, I am called to love what God loves. So...well, God loves me, so I need to love me, too. It's not even like I have somehow hidden the rotten parts of me from him and he blindly thinks I'm put together and lovable. He isn't fooled. Though I may not know the full extent of my brokenness and my sinfulness, I am not fooled either. I know I'm messed up. But he still loves me. I'm not only supposed to love WHAT he does, but also LIKE he does.
He loves me unconditionally.
Dang, right? I have to love myself unconditionally.
The other important part about it is this: you can't give what ya ain't got.
Meaning, if you don't have love, if you don't have a habit of accepting God's love for you, then you won't be able to sustain a habit of being able to give love to others. If a well is dry, everyone goes thirsty. I"ll say it again: You cannot provide what you do not already have to give. Fortunately love is supplied for us from God's unending love.
(Tangent alert! This idea doesn't just apply to love. You can't give what ya don't have of anything. Not just the obvious material things, but the deeper and more meaningful things as well. Things like Peace, Comfort, Courage, etc. But God supplied those, as well.)
Sometimes I think the problem is that we don't believe God when he tells us he loves us in the first place. If we are choosing not to believe what God says, why should he tell us and demonstrate something for us if we simply refuse to believe it? It isn't like he has even hidden the demonstration of his love from us. I mean, really. He kind of literally DIED to show you. Which brings me full circle to that sacrifice thing at the beginning which might not actually have been a bunny trail.
Jesus is in love with his people. FYI, WE are his people. To repair broken relationship with us, he SACRIFICED his life for us. He was so full of love from the Father that he was CAPABLE of unconditionally (without any conditions and with no real guarantee that his love would be reciprocated back to him) loving the people who rejected him to the point (and beyond) of dying. His relationship with the Father has always been the most important thing to Jesus since they are one. His relationship and love in the Father is important, that he doesn't even need a list of priorities. It is because of that intense love for...himself that he sacrificed...himself for what he also loves and wants to be one with. Us. (This is my understanding at this point. Maybe someday I will learn how to articulate it better.) It's because of his love, the very source of real love, that true sacrifice is possible.
Loving yourself isn't self love in a selfish way when the love comes from God. It is loving with the love he loves us with. Like that Lifehouse song says, "You gotta love yourself of you can ever love me." Can we really love anything if we can't love who God has made us to be? If Love is a Person (aka, God) then we must have love for what he loves. In loving ourselves, it is not that we are done being perfected or that we don't have things in us that still need to be transformed, tweaked or removed . But he loves us 100% anyway. He loves us completely and totally right now. He has made it so that we can learn to love ourselves. He loves you. Ask him. But be willing to believe him when he answers.
So I say, God, help us love what you love so we are able to love others with the love you give.
