I have heard it said, "You must learn to love yourself before you can love others." I have even heard this taught in Christian circles. I think it is one of the most illogical things I have ever heard. In my own experience, the more someone loves himself, the less they seem to care about others.
Where did this lie come from? I'll give you one guess. Where do all lies originate? They begin with the father of lies, Satan himself. The vehicles he used to establish this lie were the propagators of what we now know of as psychology, none other than Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Both men had a long history of fascination with occult things and Carl Jung even admitted to having a spirit guide named Philemon from whom he received many of his ideas. Should the church be borrowing ideas from sources such as these?
So, what do the scriptures have to say about self-love. Paul warned in II Timothy 3:1-5 that in the last days, difficult times would come for men would be "lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy..." and the list goes on and on. Notice that "lovers of self" is part of a long list of many other undesirable traits. Did Paul believe self-love was a good and necessary quality to have? Certainly, not.
What about Jesus, did He teach us to love ourselves? In Matthew 22:39 Jesus gave us the command, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Some try to twist the meaning of this to prove that Jesus taught us to love ourselves, but Jesus knew that we already love ourselves too much, so He was commanding us to love others as much as we already love ourselves. He also taught that we should deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Him. This is just the opposite of what we are being taught today in our society and even in some churches.
We hear all about self-fulfillment, self-esteem, self-respect, self-worth, self-love, self-confidence, etc. It is no wonder that we have turned into a selfish society, and we have never been further from the example given to us by Jesus when He left His throne in heaven to come to Earth and die on a cross for us. We would do well to listen to what Paul told the Philippian church.
"Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross." Philippians 2:3-8
