This morning I want to talk about the hope and healing available for your “soul.” For practical purposes, your soul is the sum of all your parts. It’s the umbrella that encapsulates everything that is “you.” Though we subdivide the soul into nice, clean categories (i.e. the heart, mind, body, and spirit). The truth is that only the Spirit of God can really divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow of body, the thoughts of the mind and the intentions of the heart.
The most ancient instruction given about the care and cultivation of our soul is Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. Deuteronomy 6:5 says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Leviticus 19:18 says, “Do not take revenge or bear a grudge against members of your community, but love your neighbor as yourself; I am the Lord.” These commands were reiterated by Christ himself. In Matthew 22 Jesus taught (1) that the “first” and “most important” command is Deuteronomy 6:5; (2) the “second” and “next important” is Leviticus 19:18; (3) All the Law and the Prophets can be synthesized under these two commands.
More recently, a “Hybrid” commandment has emerged, that has all the appearances of wisdom. When Bible says, “love your neighbor as yourself”—some suppose that to be a third commandment. So everywhere you turn you hear, “Love yourself… love yourself.” If you use this language, or dispense this advice, you ought to be really careful to think through just exactly what you mean.
In 2 Timothy 3:1-5 Bible says, “But know this: Hard times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, demeaning, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, with no love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to the form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people…”
Could Paul have piled up a more terrifying list of vices? These verses are a picture of what happens when the soul is fundamentally reoriented around itself. The person whose soul that turns inward succumbs to a kind of hell and hardship of highest disorder. Loving yourself doesn’t bring out the best you… it actually brings out the worst in you, for others, for God. It sounds like wisdom to say, “Love yourself.” It’s even passed off as a form of godliness. So much of the spirituality literature that expounds wisdom of “loving yourself” reads more like spiritual navel-gazing. It sounds like wisdom, it seems like a deeper form of godliness. But there is no power, joy, happiness found in “loving yourself.” The soul is not self-sustaining. To try to abide in yourself for love, meaning, purpose, significance, and truth is tantamount to severing your own branch from the vine, withering away and dying a soul death.
The fundamental confusion seems to come down to the word LOVE. I think of that song by Haddaway, “What is love? Oh, Baby don’t hurt me… don’t hurt me no more.” Everyone has their own definition of love, perhaps. But a very basic concept of love is “I-Thou.” In English you have a subject and object. The essence of love in the Bible is you have a subject (an “I”) and an object (a “Thou”). By definition, love doesn’t implode into a vacuum of “I, me, mine, myself.”
Maybe there is an even deeper sort of confusion related to our knowledge of God. In Scripture how is God portrayed? The deepest essence of God is a self-giving, triune love. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father. The Father, Son, Spirit abide eternally in one another’s love. The Trinitarian pattern of love is “I” become less and “Thou” becomes more. The “I” dies to self, empties itself of glory, becomes the servant or slave, denies itself, sacrifices self, takes up a cross, suffers even unto death… and WHY?… for the sake of “Thou.”
Now if you are dead set on loving yourself… I would say this: You will never do whatever “loving yourself” is, in a healthy way, if you don’t first know the love of God, and the love of others. And by love I’m talking about reciprocal love. God loves thou, and thou loves God. People love thou, and thou loves people. If you invert this design and start with a love of self… you’ll never get around to loving God and loving people. You self-feeding, self-nourishing, self-sustaining, self-pre-occupied, self-loving soul will wither away.
What does the Bible say? It’s not good for man to be alone. Alone without God, alone with our one another. Self-absorption, self-love, a preoccupation with self will suffocate your soul. We were made to love God, and love others.
Philippians 3:1-5 is instructive and antithetical to 2 Timothy 3:1-5: “If, then, there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, 2 make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. 4 Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others. Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, 6 who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. 7 Instead he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, 8 he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death—even to death on a cross.”
What sounds most like a well-cared for, cultivated soul? Is it Phil 3, or 2 Tim 3? Only the devil himself could so brilliantly distort the very nature of God, and the perfect commandments of God, and weaponize them against us. Did God really say first and foremost love God with all your heart, mind, body and soul? Did God really say second or next love your neighbor? How can you do any of that if you don’t first become a love of yourself? Satan deceived Adam and Eve into a love of self… and the demise of humanity can be traced to that instant their love turned inward.
The most profound wisdom Jesus ever spoke was, “Abide in Me.” John 15:4-5, “Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains in the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me." John 15:9: "As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love." This is the first, most vital aspect for care and cultivation of soul. Abide in God! Who or what do you abide in for life?
Miley Cyrus sings a song called Flowers. The first stanza of her song is a lament. “We were good, we were gold, the kinda dream that can’t be sold. We were right, ‘til we weren’t. Built a home and watched it burned.” Love has failed. Does she cry? Does she leave? Does she live a lie? ….. But then she remembers! “I can buy myself flowers, write my name in the sand, talk to myself for hours, say things you don’t understand, I can take myself dancing, and I can hold my own hand, Yeah, I can love me better than you can! Paint my nails cherry red. Match the roses you left. No remorse. No regret… I forgive every word you said.” It sounds like wisdom. I can abide in myself for life! I can be my own source, my own sustainer, my own vine! But it’s a lie from the forked tongue of the devil himself.
Now I know Miley’s song is “tongue in cheek.” It’s creative hyperbole. But it’s nonetheless treacherous. To retreat into yourself. To seek hope from within… to seek love from within… meaning, purpose, significance from within… Ugh!
I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this before… not even Lara. When I was a teenager, I’d stare in my dresser mirror, and I’d try to make me love myself. But no matter what words I said to myself, I didn’t believe them. The more I looked at that boy in the mirror, the more I started to question and hate that person in the mirror. I hated myself as a teenager to such a degree I regularly considered self-harm, and entertained self-destructive thoughts. I entertained thoughts of hatred and violence toward those heaping misery and abuse on me. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t bring myself to love myself. The more I stared in that mirror, the more I started to hate God. The degree of despair, anxiety, and defeat was suffocating. I’d throw on my music, but the music no more lifted my soul than that dresser mirror.
By the grace of God, when I could stand my self-torment no longer, I picked up my Bible, turned to book of Matthew. It was the first time in my life I looked as sincerely and deeply into the mirror of the Word of God as my own dresser mirror. The Bible was first mirror I ever peered into that could bring healing. It was in that mirror that, for the first time in my life, I understood just how truly loved I was. That in God’s eyes I had immeasurable worth and value— And unlike my own hollow words, I found the words of Christ completely trustworthy, and I began to believe, and I slowly began to abide in Jesus’ words. Not overnight. In time, the words of Jesus began to drown out my self-hatred. And in time those words brought me to a deeper love of God and eventually a love of people. Abiding in Christ’s words saved my self-loving soul as much from myself, as from the deadly snare of Satan. . . and I believe abiding in Christ’s commandments… Christ’s words… will first save, then sustain, then heal, and cause your soul to flourish. So here is my plea:
Explore Hope. Will you let us walk with you out of the darkness of failed self-love into the light of gospel of Jesus Christ? The Words you abide in or trust are matter of life and death. [Eph. 1]
Get Rooted. Will you take step and abide in loving, encouraging relationships? Paul says in 1 Tim 3 to avoid self-lovers. Some people will take you down with them. Why not get rooted with people that elevate you out of the pit, holding out mirror of God’s Word to you?
Discover Purpose. Explore partnership. Be an active part, help us bring hope… how many kids, teenagers are despairing of hope. You can show them to a different mirror.