Love of Self

Yesterday I heard a comment about how humans tend to love themselves conditionally.  It made me stop to consider whether I agreed with the statement or not.  First, when I think about self-love it tends to be a derogatory term because it usually refers to one who is proud and puts themselves first. The form of love being spoken of in the statement was a different type of self-love. 

I had to ask myself – do I love myself? I felt resistance.  I like myself, but would I go so far as to say I loved myself?  Hmm.  When I asked myself why this question was so hard to answer, I realized I had to agree with the original statement. My love of self is, to some degree, conditional.  

What does it mean to conditionally love oneself? It means when I am behaving how I should behave and do what I am supposed to do then I can love myself.  I didn’t even realize I was doing that.  It was all rooted in my subconscious.  

As I continued to ponder this, I remembered hearing that God’s love is unconditional. God loves me no matter what I do or how I behave.  He wants more for me, but he loves me no matter what.  Scripture tells us that God created us good.  We know that we can never lose that original goodness.  It’s why baptism can wash our sins away. My created self is like pure gold, not a gold bar riddled with impurities. Sin is like mud and muck sticking to every part of the exterior shell of the bar. The mud and muck can be washed away.  

From here I can posit that my conditional self-love means I view myself as the muck, not the gold.  The less muck the more self-love.  God sees behind the muck and loves the essence of the created being.  God wants us to stop covering our natural essence in muck.  He wants us to see the beauty and amazing attributes of the person he created each of us to be.  He wants us to see past the muck when looking at others and love them for the precious person he created in them, too.

How about you – are you conditionally loving the muck or unconditionally loving the amazing creature that lies beneath? Taking this further and ask – how do you think God views you?  You may say that you know God loves you, but does the conditional love idea creep into your subconscious? Do you project that onto the God who created you and wants you to live the life you were always meant to live?  Do you live a life believing you have to behave a certain way to ensure that God loves you at all times? If so, stop and remember that no matter what you do God will always love you and that he gives you permission to love yourself unconditionally, too.

In Christ,

dw