Self-Love: the middleman

This is our reminder not to join the grumpies’ club🚩!

It’s sad to hear some people condemning self-love when Jesus himself told us to love our neighbors the same way we do love ourselves. (By the way, if we could do just that! If we would treat others the way we’d want to be treated, loving them the way we love ourselves, not doing to them what we wouldn’t want to be done to ourselves, that would ease so much of the burden on the earth. But well…) Anyway, back to the grumpies’ club: I’d really like to ask those who condemn self-love: what then the Lord implied with “love your neighbor as you love yourself“. Because, if “as I love myself” isn’t the notion of “self-love”, well I don’t know what it is.

We should have self-love. It’s already expected of us.

Indeed, according to Jesus, our love for others should normally reflect and be based on our self-love. Kind of “see how you love yourself? Go now and love the next person that same way“. Now imagine people having no self-love and being convinced that it is wrong to love themselves, where can their “neighbors” even stand? Would you volunteer to be those people’s neighbors? Suit yourself… As for me, I’m not very fond of suffering for nothing. #👋.

Based on what Jesus said, I understand that self-love is essential to the equilibrium of our relationships with others. Self-love, to me means simply to love yourself, to consider your well-being in a healthy way. That is in a way that doesn’t harm others. The moment we cross that healthy line, we can no longer be talking about self-love, about love at all. If your way of “loving” yourself goes beyond that healthy boundary and harms others big time, you may call it any other types of self-ish💩-ness, but not self-love. For love does not delight in any kind of evil (1 Corinthians 13:6). 

In sum, if I’m not sure you love yourself, I have no ground to trust your proclaimed “love” for me. (Do you love you? Seriously.) 

Time to fill our love tank!

Just like self-love sustains the love for others, love from God sustains self-love. God’s love should constantly fuel and fill our love tank. God’s love teaches us about His nature first, and as we accept, trust and receive His love for us, we then start seeing ourselves more like He sees us, valuing and loving ourselves too. The Source (God, our heavenly Father) fills our love tank, and as we stay aligned under Him to be filled, our tank will eventually run over, and the overflow benefits others in our interactions with them.

Self-love is the middleman between our relationship with God and with others. 

We can know and care about how people would feel when treated a certain way, based on our own sensitivity to how we would feel. 

An objective sensitivity to ourselves (our self-awareness), regulated by the love of God for us, teaches us what is acceptable and right for us -as for our human dignity- and what is not.

(Sometimes it’s not even other people doing us wrong. It’s ourselves, lacking self-love. God’s love for us sheds light on those cases too, with truth deep in our heart. Beware that opening up to more of His love makes us grow inevitably in our self-identity and love… And to more growth, more responsibility towards ourselves. This might translate into hard and harder choices leading to better outcomes for our life and ourselves. Are we still together? 👀) 

All in all, self-love leads us sooner or later into holding ourselves accountable for how we’ve been treating ourselves (mostly through our choices), and will challenge our butt to be, do and become our best selves. That’s when we’ll need to partner with Christ on this, not only because without Him nothing can we, but also because He’s the One who knows us fully already, while we’re still discovering ourselves in our path, day by day. 

When you get acquainted with God’s relentless love for you as a human being, the next human being can be easily perceived as a type of brother or sister. Natural differences like skin color, height, weight, personalities, will be just traits and wonders of each other to enjoy and discover. It’s like, spiritually, each of us has access to God’s love as if pertaining to His huge family on Earth called Humanity. That’s my take on Jesus’ saying: “…but you are not to be called ‘Rabbi’ for you have one Teacher and you are all brothers. And do not call anyone on earth ‘father’, for you have one Father and He is in heaven…” (Matthew 23: 8-10). Jesus-Christ informs us that Humanity has one Father in Heaven. 

Now let’s wrap this up: so our Heavenly Father loves us and His love teaches us how to love ourselves, and loving ourselves teaches us how to love each other. Is the math mathing? 

So self-love is valid! Even more, self-love is necessary.

Love yourself! Cherish yourself.

I believe God loves, appreciates and enjoys Himself. We should do like our Father. And He loves us so much. Healthy consideration for ourselves stems from trusting God’s love for us. I am not tired yet of repeating it: you and I should cherish ourselves because of the (speechless-kinda-crazy) way God loves us. 

Now, this article could have ended there, but somehow, I feel more flow coming…

 Now, about that “Speechless-kind-of-Crazy” way…

Because at first glance, (let’s say you were Jesus for a moment) tell me what sense it makes that humans you created are rejecting you, mocking you, spitting on you, torturing you to death, literally nailing you on a cross, and you’re going through excruciating pain, suffering at all levels possible, yet there you are, petitioning for them to be forgiven: “They do not know what they’re doing, Father“.  Like… WHAT?!

(Please follow me, I’m going somewhere with this)

Even more, way before that, what sense does it make that God had just one Son and He sent Him, not to only irreversibly become human, forever restricted into human nature (from Godlike He was, Philippians 2:6-7), but also and most importantly, to die and go to hell for Humanity who still did him like we did him? Why would anyone ever do that? Is Love stupid? Of course not. Love is a visionary, aiming for the highest well-being of its beneficiaries, and Love can go so low because He’s so high. God is Love.

BECAUSE NOW, it finally makes all the sense, way after all has been done, when the Father recovers both His son and us, Humanity, with him. As it is, the Son of God was never meant to be stuck into our human nature by endorsing it, but rather to free and raise this nature He now bears into God’s own nature. 

When Jesus resurrected from death in this new glorified human body, humanity’s locks and limitations become forever broken, in Him! The son of God spouses Humanity, chose it, became one with it, to respond for it henceforth. And that was God’s plan! The plan of God for us was more clever than the spiritual enemies that deceived us and separated us from Him, suggesting evil to us, even until now.

Now what a great comeback God made for us in Jesus-Christ! We trust Jesus and we’re set on our way for an incredible and eternal relationship journey with Him, that starts here on Earth. So in all what concerns Jesus-Christ, we get to see to what extent God loves us. He planned His strategy and sent His best bet who took our form, embraced our experience, went way down to the lowest for us, so He could victoriously rise to the highest with us. All that just to make it possible for us to get back to Himself. God loves us beyond understanding and desires a personal relationship with each of us. However, receiving God’s love for our “self” and accepting His reconciliation hand is our personal choice to make, each of us.

How can we trust God…? What if God wasn’t really good?

Let’s face this smoothly; and I’ve been there. 

You can’t trust someone unless you’re sure that’s a good person. I’ve seen myself being the most tempted to doubt God’s intrinsic goodness, whenever I feel deeply disappointed of an outcome, or whenever I am going through some indefinite hurtful or waiting processes. Let’s also nuance that being tempted is not the same as actually falling into temptation. Being tempted remains at the level of suggesting thoughts, which we can either accept and nourish or reject. So even when sometimes I am strongly tempted to doubt it, I know God is good, and that knowledge is a sort of anchor through those times, that can redirect my perspective.

See, with God, everything is about trusting Him; trusting His ways, His timing, His word, etc. Trusting Him. Another name for that is “faith”. It is written that “without faith, it’s impossible to please God“ (Hebrews 11:6). Trusting God is most likely the only way we receive from Him (Father God is spirit. He won’t come at us with physical hands; the trick with us humans is that when we really trust, we open our heart and receive spiritually). So trusting in our heart that God loves us, that’s also how we receive His love for us. But again, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for us prudent people, to trust God, if we’re not certain that He means well, if we’re not sure that He is good. 

Quick story:

This weekend I was led to face an uncomfortable exchange within me, between me and God about his goodness and about my faith. A hard conversation took place where He confidently let me have the “upper hand” with my questions. It turned out to be a very uncomfortable moment, but our relationship needed it. God was more than ready to straight things up for me on His side, when I didn’t even know that I needed this conversation. I picture it now as if He gave me that opportunity to bring to the surface a box, or better yet a cage, full of some very specific thoughts, and that was so deeply buried and well hidden somewhere in me that I was not conscious of its presence. What dug it all the way up to the surface, was this movie “His only Son”, recently released on the Angel Studios app, but more specifically, the story behind that movie: Abraham and Isaac. 

I guess hard conversations are necessary in all kinds of relationships, after all…

Days before, when I first saw the poster of the movie on the app, it repelled me, but low-key. It was not a strong aversion but it made something in me cringe. I felt annoyed just by the sight of it, so I went for The Wingfeather Saga (❤️‍🔥) and the Tuttle Twins instead (😅). You can judge me only after you watch one episode of each of those, yourself😁.

So then every time I would come on the app or on their website and I would see the poster of “His only Son”, I would feel very uneasy. Usually, when I’m genuinely not interested in a movie (or anything), it just leaves me indifferent. So I had to realize that, in fact, there was something going on between me and that movie, and I just didn’t want to watch it. 

The fact was that, considering my own perspective for Isaac, this story was offensive to me. It was stirring some sad-angry-desappointed-distrustful thoughts in me, against God… Yep. So every time I would see the poster, I would be quick to redirect my attention and avoid this conflictual situation within me, so I could stay “in peace” with God. Because, to be honest, I wasn’t feeling like that with God in general, but just for what related to His request in that particular story.

As soon as I really became aware of my situation with the poster, I also knew that it was too late for me not to face it, because I also knew that keeping myself from CURRENTLY having those thoughts by avoiding the sight of the poster, wasn’t making God any less knowledgeable of them. The situation started to feel very awkward and funny to me. I felt puzzled, because I didn’t want to have those confrontative thoughts against God, but I actually already had them for real. I felt caught, because I just had become conscious and aware of those thoughts, but Him He knew for how long they have been lingering in my subconsciousness, and He also knew that I knew about them now- nowhere to hide. And I felt petty because I didn’t want to deal with that, I wanted to keep feeling comfortable with God and avoid any type of conflict. But since I knew the personal relationship we have developed, I also knew that the fact that I just became aware of those thoughts was actually His timing (and initiative) for us to go through it and clarify it all, right there and right then, if I was willing.

My discomfort wasn’t getting easier, so with all the feelings mentioned before, plus some intertwined other ones, it all just became funny to me (that’s how my mind processes some stressful situations when I feel safe enough to deal with them but not actually liking to go through the process). So I sat my bottom before the screen, grabbed a snack and started watching the movie.

Still in the context of my own relationship with God (this is subtly your reminder to start yours with Him too🫶), while watching the whole movie, scene after scene, I got to free those thoughts one by one, expressing them finally, releasing them to meet His light. And His light destroyed them one by one. I repented sincerely and really asked God for more of His fear, maybe I was becoming too familiar, because similar thoughts I never want them again in my mind.

God is so good.

If you’re dealing with similar thoughts regarding that story, have you ever considered a parallelism between God and Abraham? Between Jesus and Isaac, and both their willingness to give themselves aways. Nowhere we read about Abraham having to fight the young boy to tie him on that altar… Isaac had the strength to oppose his father, but he was willing to obey. How could that be a traumatic experience for him (as I had always thought). They trusted God that much. They knew God. 

Also, my heart ached to for Abraham as his waiting time must have felt already painful (25 years of wait before conceiving Isaac : no joke.) But there was a higher timing, a bigger plan related to the coming of Jesus-Christ and I had never realized that before. And also, if Abraham almost performed the act upon his son, God went through it completely with His. God spared Humanity, and gave Himself up for us, in th person of His own son. So I got humbled and felt so foolish, yet so thankful that He allowed me to go through those misleading thoughts about Him. I felt so thankful that my God would reassure my heart that He is inherently good, He is faithful, He is the same God I knew, and won’t change, because that’s the Father He chose to be. The same loving, mighty, wise, powerful, humble yet magnificent, deep and light, and so much more, and above all, sooo good God He is. Thank you, Lord.

But before I finish this article, I’ll leave you with this: God is not offended by the dark thoughts we may have about Him. His love is so secure and deep that He makes room for us to expose them to Him respectfully and with no need to be afraid. But when we keep our attention away from those thoughts, questions and feelings about Him, not only we’re not giving Him the opportunity to shed light on them and free our mind with His truth, but we’re also allowing these thoughts to breed and deepen more in our subconsciousness. Then we find ourselves with zero desire to draw closer to God, without being aware of the causes for it. 

God created humankind out of Himself, so it’s unnatural to stay far away from Him. It took us adopting another nature (a corrupted one by evil) to make that separation happen between us and God. Just turn on the news, if you’re not sure that our nature has been corrupted. Simply compare our many damages on the planet with Earth’s natural and original beauty. But the good news is, as soon as we address Jesus-Christ sincerely in our hearts, the gap is closed between us and God, and a journey specific to each of us begins in Him; and just because of that, Earth is pregnant with hope (Romans 8:19-21)! 

His love is all we need, for all we ever need.

Well, I have to stop for now, or I’ll be TOO late for a birthday party… (I know what I’ve confessed here lately, but.. it’s only a pool party y’all... Well, I’m done anyway.