EVIL CONDEMNS ITSELF

Many have told me, “You first have to love yourself before you can love others.” This “wisdom” has become so broadly accepted that it is no longer examined, but I think that it does require some examination.

What must we do to love ourselves? What is required of us?

If this “wisdom” merely requires us to take care of ourselves by washing, eating, drinking, and sleeping, these are things that we do naturally, almost automatically.

However, the admonition to love ourselves usually entails much more than these. We are told that we need to believe in ourselves and to esteem ourselves highly, even above the evidence that informs us who we really are.

Self-help books teach us how to do this through a variety of techniques - visualizations, imaginations, positive affirmations, and meditations.

In the short run, they can give us the high and self-confidence that we are seeking. If it feels good, we conclude that it is good, and we go no further to ask about the costs. However, these costs be might astronomical. For one thing, we might be raising a society of amoral narcissists, as much ancient wisdom warns:

• Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in his heart; there is no fear of God before his eyes. For he flatters himself in his own eyes that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated. The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit; he has ceased to act wisely and do good. He plots trouble while on his bed; he sets himself in a way that is not good; he does not reject evil. ‭‭(Psalms‬ ‭36:1-4‬)

Self-affirmations are self-flattery. They represent a refusal to judge ourselves accurately. Self-flattery and an inordinate self-esteem requires us to deny and suppress those uncomfortable things about ourselves and to accentuate the good.

To do so is to delude ourselves and to refuse to take responsibility for the wrong we have done and to rationalize away any feelings of guilt or shame.

As we harden our conscience in this manner, we free ourselves to perform even worse evils. We then flatter ourselves into thinking that we are more free than others. Self-love then becomes self-indulgence and contempt for those who believe otherwise.

Self-flattery is a drug that requires increasingly greater dosages. It rejects critical feedback and will crash because it refuses to see. It leaves destruction in its path. It destroys families, friendships, and neighborhoods before it destroys its host.

In this way, evil condemns itself.