Scripture does not teach self love. It teaches against self love. If one trait characterizes apostasy (2 Tim 3:1-3), it is self love. When Jesus came to earth, He emptied His self (Philippians 2). At the root of the gospel is self-denial and yet self-love grows today rampant among even professing Christians. I thought perhaps new psychological studies on contemporary narcissism might flatten the curve for self-love into the foreseeable future, but it’s making a comeback like a second wave of Covid-19 with an acceleration of the number of cases.
To reveal my method, I googled “self-love” in the last month (3,170,000,000 results all time, that’s 3 billion, B not M). If you look for “wellness and self-love” those go together, when they should contradict. Self-love is not wellness, but that google search yielded 539,000 results. I didn’t cherry pick for bad quotes. The first comes from
Self-Love in the Time of Coronavirus:
Importantly, taking charge of our health and well being and proactively loving ourselves by engaging in self-care are radical actions for those of us with marginalized identities, especially in a nation whose leader’s bigotry is self-evident and who seems hell-bent on destroying us.
“Self-care can be described as the practice of taking an active role in taking care of and protecting your own well being and happiness during periods of stress,” Dr. Seely-Jefferson says. “This can involve saying no, prioritizing your own feelings, asking for help, spending time alone, putting yourself first, asking for what you need, setting boundaries, staying at home, forgiving yourself and taking a step back. These are different from the traditional ways we define self-care and are soul-affirming activities that can counter some of the negative insults we get on a daily basis.”
What Is Self-Love?
Self-love is the best love and the ultimate way to boost your self-esteem and become a fully healed and integrated human being. People often come to the idea backward. They look at attributes such as the way that a confident person walks or observe their traits.
But fundamentally, all radical change begins from within. You then start to really value yourself as a powerful creator of your own reality and deserving of love and respect from everybody. Self-love is the opposite of selfishness.
These are horrific lies told. God says the opposite. He says (Philippians 2:4-5)
Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.
You cannot love God and love self. These two are mutually exclusive. This is worshiping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. If anyone could or should love self, at least from our surmisal, it would be Jesus, because He’s got something to love, and yet Jesus looked not on His own things, but on the things of others.
It’s not even good for the psyche to do this naval gazing, promoted by false teachers. Millennials especially are fed this poison, a literal stupid pill, because self-love will make you stupid, take the opposite trajectory of wisdom, which comes from above (James 3:15-17). If you can’t explain stupid behavior, many times at the root of it today is self-love. Joyce Marter titles her article, Self-Love Must Come First. Her most fundamental counsel, given in a sub-title, reads:
Self-love is a journey. It takes dedication, devotion, and practice. Resolve to love yourself each and every day and watch your best self blossom and your greatest life unfold! Self-love is an exponential force.
The
Wikipedia article explains the revival of self-love in today’s culture in the very last line of the entry on self-love:
The emergence of social media has created a platform for self-love promotion and mental health awareness in order to end the stigma surrounding mental health and to address self-love positively rather than negatively.
Self-love is not good for mental health. Scripture teaches “take the focus off self and put it on God.” If someone believes God by listening to God, he will receive the correct view of self. Love of self results in a multiplicity of bad behavior. Maybe in certain cases, someone won’t commit physical suicide, but he instead replaces it with spiritual suicide.
I’ve noticed that some professing Christian millennials won’t say, “self-love,” but have replaced it with “self-care.” They feel stressed because of their own poor choices, so they act out of self-care to relieve that stress. Self-care is nothing more than a trojan horse of self-love. At
Psychology Today, Shainna Ali writes in
Is Self-Care Just a Trend?
Self-care is a holistic process that we all need in order to foster presence, engagement, wellness, and self-love. Self-care is not a singular skill. Instead, self-care includes a wide variety of tasks tailored to meet your diverse needs. Although there may be similarities between self-care strategies, self-care is subjective and tends to vary from person to person.
What they do then is love themselves and pamper themselves and feel justified because it’s a form of self-medication. They justify it by saying that they can’t be any good to someone else until they start by caring for themselves.
Scripture says, look to God. Scripture says (Psalm 128:1-2):
Blessed is every one that feareth the LORD; that walketh in his ways. For thou shalt eat the labour of thine hands: happy shalt thou be, and it shall be well with thee.
“It shall be well with thee.” Wellness proceeds from fearing God. That isn’t loving self. It’s the opposite. God also says, “it shall be well with thee,” when we obey our parents (Eph 6:3). When we look to God and His surrogates, godly parents, He supplies all our needs and then gives us an interminable supply of power, energy, knowledge, wisdom, and motivation to serve others. The self-love really is the most pervasive form of idolatry in the world today that also populates evangelical churches.
Scripture doesn’t teach or command self-love contrary to those who say Jesus taught it when he said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” That interpretation of that verse is a recent arrival in Christian history, never before seen. Why? It was introduced by psychologists, not Christians or the church or biblical thinkers. Actual Christian history has said the exact opposite. When scripture — God, Moses, Jesus, Paul — says “love they neighbor as thyself,” it assumes that people already love themselves, according to the grammar. The comparison after a command is quite common in scripture and in every single case it is commanding someone do something “like” or “as” something that’s already happening.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
The command here in Matthew 6:10 is “Be doing God’s will on earth.” That’s the command. What Jesus commands, He compares to what already is being done in heaven. All of these types of comparisons after commands are the same. Matthew 22:39 and all the other places with the identical teaching do not command someone to love himself. There are teachings in scripture, however, not to love yourself. Those are the ones that should be followed. For someone to come to Jesus, it is imperative that he “deny self,” not love self (Luke 9:27).
I know that calling it a “stupid pill” could be controversial, but the most stupid decisions arise from me-first. God-love results in God honoring decisions that are the best for others and yourself. They bring wisdom, not foolishness. Self-love brings a multiplicity of selfish decisions with mounting stupidity. It is a recipe for disaster for a person and institution.
When Christians teach self-love, they are flying in the face of scripture. They are contradicting God. They are harming everyone listening to their perversion of biblical doctrine and practice.
One more thing. Some professing Christians may not teach “self-love.” However, when others come on their social media, proclaiming self-love, they need to be repudiated. It is darkness. Have no fellowship with darkness, rather reprove it (Eph 5:11).
Dear Pastor Brandenburg, hope you are doing well and your family too, I agree with you on everything but let's throw this out for the sake of the argument someone will immediately refer to the verses (obviously taken out of the immediate contexts) where Jesus says that no man ever hated his own flesh, and or love your neighbor as your self? Just wondering how should we answer these people, to me it's obvious that the context determines the meaning? Sorry if this is a waste of time, it just came to me that some might try to use the incorrect interpretation such as the ones I mentioned? Thanks for the help have a blessed day and week May GOD bless you and your family with health love joy peace always in Jesus name amen