Learning to Love

It was Whitney Houston who assured us that "the greatest love of all" is "learning to love yourself". But it wasn't just Whitney's idea. The song was written by Michael Masser and Linda Creed. Oh, and it was George Benson who originally recorded it. But that's all peripheral. The notion is prevalent everywhere. And by "love yourself" it is generally intended that you mean "feel good about yourself". It means that you ignore your faults and accept yourself for who you are. It means you find what makes you happy and you do it. It is positive self-esteem (which, by the way, is a meaningless phrase, since "esteem" means "respect and admiration" which are, by definition, positive).

As a result of all this "love yourself" message floating around both in society and in the Bible, we are told as Christians that we need to learn to love ourselves, to have self-esteem, to accept ourselves for who we are. If we are going to obey Christ, we are going to have to first learn to feel good about ourselves before we can learn to love others as we love ourselves. Only makes sense.

Except it's all wrong. You see, we've taken a word -- "love" -- and imported a meaning into it -- "feel warmly about" -- and then imported that meaning into Scripture, a meaning that was never intended to be there. How do I know? Well, let's examine what Scripture has to say about loving yourself.

Jesus said that the second greatest commandment was to love others as you love yourself (Mark 12:31). That makes it important. But there is another passage in Scripture that addresses self-love.

Husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself; for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ also does the church, because we are members of His body (Eph 5:28-30).

There's that same idea. Husbands are to love their wives as they love themselves. But Paul here does not suggest that a husband, then, would first have to learn to love himself. Indeed, Paul states the opposite: "No one ever hated his own flesh." What can we infer from this, then? When Jesus said that we are to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, He meant that we already love ourselves. This isn't the first step. It's the next step. To put it in the correct terms, we would understand that He meant, "You are to love your neighbor as you already love yourself. Oh, and you do already love yourself."

Now, we do know that a large number of people suffer from a poor self-image (which isn't the same thing as "negative self-esteem", is it?). So how does that work? I think we can infer from these texts exactly what the Bible means by "love" here. It isn't "feel good about". It's isn't a warm feeling or affection. Paul said that a man loves himself as evidenced by the fact that he "nourishes and cherishes" himself. And that is the intent of the term. Nourish. Cherish. Interestingly, the Greek words mean "to train up to maturity" and "to foster", respectively. Thus, using "nourish" and "cherish" as a definition of biblical love, our aim is to do for those around us the things that produce maturity and foster their best interests. We do that for ourselves. Now do it for others.

The Bible agrees with Whitney and the rest that love is important. The Bible disagrees that it's something you need to learn to do. That's because the biblical definition of love in this sense is simply doing that which is in the best interest for those around us just as we naturally do what is in our own best interest. That's not complicated. Nor is it limited to warm feelings or affection. And it's something we can choose to do at any given time. Indeed, we are commanded to choose to do it regularly. Besides, isn't "ignore your faults and accept who you are" somewhat contradictory to the aim of Christ in our lives? How about it?