Learning about God's grace has made it possible for me to really love myself. Now before you judge me a narcisist and start preaching to me me that as a christian I need to focus on loving others instead of being so self centred, please hear me out.
My argument is you cannot genuinely love others if you have no idea how to love your own self. This argument is based on Mark 12:31 which says "Love your neighbour as you love yourself".Can you see how if your idea of loving yourself is messed up how messed up your love for others would be? Just to clarify, this idea of loving yourself is not about the selfish pursuits of pleasure for onself that bring temporary happiness but genuinely loving your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual self and is further explained in the next paragraph.
Loving my physical self to me means loving and respecting my body. It means consciously protecting this housing for my spiritual being from eating disorders, substance abuse, and physical abuse. It means fighting and protecting myself against emotional and mental abuse. Loving my spiritual self means tending to this self that is eternal. I can protect and nurture my spirit by fighting spiritually harmful things like greed, envy, lust, unforgiveness and bitterness. Loving myself also means being able to receive love and help from others around me .I know I can achieve all these with the help of the Holy Spirit, inspirational teachings from the Bible and my christian friends.
While I am learning to love myself properly, I am learning to extend this concept of love to others. This means caring for others physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being exactly like I care for my own. It means not becoming a stumbling block for others by purposefully inciting greed, envy, lust and bitterness in their hearts. It means encouraging and teaching others to value their physical and spiritual selves. This type of genuine love is full of compassion and fuels an unquenchable desire to share the gospel with others. To summarise, it is hard to love others properly if we do not really know how to genuinely love our own selves. And we cannot love ourselves if we cannot grasp the concept of God's unconditional love for us.
What do you think about loving your own self?
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