Loving yourself

 

Brusher Mills was the last and most celebrated of New Forest snake catchers. He died in 1905. A picture survives of him clutching a haul of adders in each hand. Brusher was something of an eccentric. He had a particular way of winning favour with young ladies furtively dropping an adder near a group of them retreating until they screamed. Then he appeared to rescue them from peril! Christianity can be viewed like that, scaring folk with demands to make them feel inadequate and presenting them the Saviour. Like Brusher’s tactics for winning ladies there are forms of evangelisation which do damage to truth, especially the truth about ourselves. To some Christianity looks good in principle as an altruistic movement but harsh in galvanising individuals to a cause built seemingly on self-hatred. The founder of Christianity warned, after all, that ‘those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it’ (Matthew 16:25).

How can Christianity be squared with self-love? Is it not a threat to the positive self-image essential to healthy relationships? Confirmation training in churches I have served encouraged individual confession of sins to prepare for laying on of hands by the Bishop inviting the Holy Spirit. I remember the father of one candidate coming round to see me. ‘I’m concerned about what you’re doing to David’, he said. ‘His mum and I are trying to build in him a positive self-image but you are telling him he is a sinner and there is a lot wrong with his life’. This exchange years ago alerted me both to the danger of spiritual abuse in ministry and to the culture clash we have about the nature of sin. It made me determined to do my best to always present Christianity as the validating good news of love it is, affirming people and not putting them down. David’s dad did me good service in alerting me to the rightness of self-respect. Just as parents harm their children by doing them down, ‘spiritual parents’ run the same risk. As children sadly condemn themselves in agreement with judgemental parents so Christianity can be made into the opposite of what it is about - a guilt trip into self-hatred! Guilt is the deep down feeling you have done wrong.  This is natural for human beings made with a sense of right and wrong and living with guilty awareness of failing to do right on many occasions. The genius of Christianity is in its guilt-ridding. Jesus Christ came and comes into lives precisely because there is sin there that needs dealing with. The Founder of Christianity died and rose to bring us the forgiveness of sins which is the antidote to guilt. He comes to turn self-hatred into self-love and ultimately self-forgetfulness.

What then did Christ mean saying ‘those who lose their life for my sake will find it’? Where is self-respect in that saying? The verse is part of a section of Matthew’s Gospel encouraging wholehearted following of God whilst being blunt that the cost of this may be no less for disciples than for their Master. The previous verse mentions crucifixion even as a risk to his followers. ‘Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’ (Matthew 16:24).  Stories of Christian martyrs from the book of Acts onward present absorption with the love of God in Jesus Christ that willingly leaves self behind. The first recorded martyr is Stephen whose excitement at his stoning to death links less to self-hatred than to his focus totally away from self.  ‘They became enraged and ground their teeth at Stephen. But filled with the Holy Spirit, he gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. "Look," he said, "I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!" But they covered their ears, and with a loud shout all rushed together against him… Then they dragged him out of the city and… while they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them." When he had said this, he died’ (Acts 7:54-58a, 59-60). How could such love towards your murderers exclude anyone, least of all yourself? This description of his death shows Stephen’s valuing of himself in his final words of entrustment to the One he loved. Earlier in the Acts account we read how heavenly love enfolded him when ‘all who sat in the council looked intently at him, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel’ (Acts 6:15). Stephen knew himself, possessed himself and so was able to face the challenge to give himself. If his attention had been more self-indulgent that gift would not have been possible but something had happened in his life to take his attention away from self making ‘Stephen, full of grace and power’ (Acts 6:8)

‘Know yourself, love yourself, forget yourself’ are three headings used in traditional Christian retreats placing self-love central. That love is distinct from the hatred for sin self-knowledge invites and the self-forgetfulness attained as attention is drawn away from self to God. This repetitive process is described in the purgative, illuminative and unitive stages identified by St John of the Cross in which seeking the Holy Spirit is the clue to losing sin, seeing more of God and, being attracted to him, seeing more sin for purging. Those who believe Christianity to be an enemy of self-love miss how self-love gets bound to desire for holiness once God comes on the scene bringing his invitation to self knowledge and self forgetfulness. That is why Christians see knowledge of God and knowledge of self as in parallel with neither fully attainable in this life. That they can be put in parallel affirms the sameness of our being and God’s, for example, that we can be in a loving personal relationship. Holiness by contrast is a quality more linked to God’s difference from us and sin, from the human end, a reminder of our difference from God. God is also no being just like us but the ground of our being. As we become aware of his love and holiness enfolding us this affirms self-love - we are so valued - and challenges it through the impact of holiness upon us. 

Christ’s challenge to take up his cross is linked to the forward movement of following him as a disciple ‘laying aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely’ (Hebrews 12:1) as we run the race of the faith. Of course it is a very serious matter, facing up to your sins, and altogether humiliating. Guilt-ridding can only occur at a cost to our pride. We have to admit our sins and to ask for forgiveness before we can get rid of them. People do not like it since Christian opposition to immoral behaviour is often resented. Some will always want to indulge themselves irrespective of consequences to themselves and to society. If the church is said to have a guilt problem the world has a lack of guilt problem! C S Lewis described his own guilty feelings as being like c§toothache and how he delayed dealing with them just like delaying attending to a bad tooth out of fear of the dentist. People refuse to face up to their sins and do something about them maybe because, unlike Lewis, they do not have a dentist, so to speak. They do not know there is a provision in Jesus for overcoming the power of sin. People who will not face their sins can end up marking time on their spiritual journey. They complain about Christianity because it offers them a grace they have come to live without.  It ‘rattles their cage’ maybe!

Christianity is a holiness movement that will not rest with being held back by sin. It is always going to challenge where we are at, whether we have yet to start the journey of faith or are actually on that journey. Jesus came to save the world and not to judge it but people have to give him the chance to save them by opening up their hearts for him to cleanse. God always treats us as better than we are when we will allow him access to our lives. God’s love once recognised builds self-love setting it in a grander scheme of the community of believers and the transforming impact of self-forgetfulness upon the world. In the bible based vision of the Trinity each person within God loses themselves in the affirmation of the other, the Father for the Son, the Son for the Father with the go-between Holy Spirit. Self-love was there before the world was made within Godself and it will be expanded in self-forgetfulness, when the universe has run its course within the communion of saints.