SHOULD YOU LOVE YOURSELF?

Well, that depends on what it means to “love yourself.” Does it mean that we should be feeding ourselves on messages about our goodness and worthiness? What did Jesus mean when He said, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 23:39)?

This is the one verse that suggests that we should love ourselves, or does it. Certainly, it doesn’t mean that we should be feeding our neighbors with a continuous diet of positive affirmations. If not, what does it mean? More likely, Jesus merely observed that we love ourselves by what we do. When we are cold, we dress ourselves warmly. When we are tired, we go to sleep. When we are hungry, we eat, and this is how we should love our neighbor – by being equally concerned about their needs.

This is an important distinction. My wife and I went to a talk tonight at the progressive Union Theological Seminary, where several professors urged that people of color need to find ways to love themselves, especially after having been degraded for so long. They weren’t talking about eating when hungry or sleeping when tired. Instead, they were talking about ways to boast self-esteem, either through positive affirmations or through the positive portrayals of Black people.

When I questioned this strategy, my wife was troubled and responded:

• I can’t understand why you questioned that. You are so familiar with self-loathing, and yet you dismiss their need for positive messages and to see positive role models.

Well, she is correct about my long struggle with self-contempt and all of the resulting depression. She therefore continued:

• We all need to know that we are precious and created in the very image of God. And you know that. Why are you denying it?

I wasn’t denying it. Actually, I was affirming what she said:

• When we remind ourselves that we are created in the image of God and that Christ loved us so much that He died for us, we are not affirming ourselves but are receiving the love that God is giving us. But when we tell ourselves, “I am intelligent; I am beautiful; I can be a success at anything I attempt,” we are building up ourselves with our own affirmations, which are often deluded and always counter-productive.

I had been a master at giving myself positive affirmations, and they became more exaggerated with the passage of time. At first, I convinced myself that the girls really loved me. In a short time, I had advanced to believing that I was God’s gift to women. However, even these grandiose beliefs failed me. I was still the loner I had always been, but now I had become very self-deluded and out-of-touch with both myself and with others.

I also had other strategies of self-aggrandizement. I would remind myself that I belonged to a people that had produced the Einsteins and 30% of the Nobel Prize winners. Although this gave me a minimal boost, it seemed that my depression of as thick as ever, perhaps even worse. These affirmations were no better than drugs, which never really touched the real problem. Could I kick the drug? Not a chance! Instead, I needed ever-increasing doses to barely make it through the day.

Even after Christ got ahold of me, I resorted to exalting myself with my positive affirmations. I convinced myself that I was deserving of God’s love, because I was more spiritual than others. It didn’t matter that there was absolutely no truth at all in my affirmations. I just had to believe them, and, to some extent, I did.

I required years for my Savior to break me of this horrid addiction. I suffered the most excruciating trials. I hadn’t imagined, even after decades of serious depression, that such suffering was possible.

Now, I can look back and say, “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” (Psalm 119:71). And I did learn them. I had to! I was sinking, and there was nothing else on which to cling.

What did I learn? That those who exalt themselves with their self-affirmations will be humbled, as Jesus had repeatedly taught:

• “For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 14:11)

I had been exalting myself, and didn’t understand it until many years after having received Christ. Meanwhile, He was in the process of humbling me so that He’d be able to exalt me:

• “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)

• “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’” (Luke 17:10)

In contrast to these teachings, I had been telling myself for years how much more worthy I was than others, as a dug my own psychological grave.

I explained to my wife, that I couldn’t be silent and watch my Black brethren pursuing destruction’s course. Yes, some might think that I was questioning this “logic” of self-love because I wanted to keep my brethren in a “degraded,” self-loathing condition. Although this possibility was troubling to me, I decided to risk it, knowing that I had to honor God’s Words.

I have sworn myself off all forms of this kind of self-love. Yes, I’d love to be exalted, but that is entirely in God’s hands. Instead, I will satisfy myself on His daily bread – the love and approval He has given me – and the challenge at hand.

Self-Forgiveness: Is it Possible and should it be?

“I don’t need a god to forgive me. I can forgive myself,” she proudly declared.

Could she, really? It never worked for me. Maybe it did, but just marginally and for a short time. It was like giving myself positive-affirmations. They proved to be drugs, and I always needed a higher dose. Afterwards, they stopped working, but not after they had addicted me to my inflated affirmations and blinded me to the truth about myself – that I wasn’t the wonderful person I had coaxed myself into believing in. This addiction left me with a sense that I really didn’t know myself – who I was and how I should live life authentically.

Self-forgiveness partakes in these same costs. For one thing, it has a short shelf-life. It quits working! It’s also an exercise in self-delusion, which alienates us not only from ourselves but also from others. (Only when two people share the same fantasy can they find common ground for relationship.) It deludes us into thinking that we are not that guilty and prevents us from taking a complete and accurate inventory of ourselves. Instead, we make excuses: “everyone gossips and lies!” This will place a lid on growth and meaningful relationships.

Well, what is the difference between sociopathy and self-forgiveness? In both cases, the ultimate goal is to walk away from our misdeeds without any sense of guilt or shame. But is this a good thing? Should we forgive ourselves and what are the costs if we succeed?

What if I cheat on my wife? Can I simply tell her, “I feel fine since I have forgiven myself?” This response is not only ridiculous; it will not bring healing to the relationship.

The alternative is to find someone else to forgive us. My wife’s forgiveness is crucial, but it doesn’t cover all the bases. We seek other forms of affirmation. The psychologist is paid to do this. In response to my free-floating shame and self-loathing, they reassured me, “You are really a decent person. You care. I know many who don’t care.” After a while, these predictable “professional” responses also lost their impact.

Nevertheless, we are designed for relationship. (It’s the difference between masturbation [self-forgiveness] and sexual intercourse.) Therefore, the words of a friend or a group will penetrate deeper and more convincingly than self-talk. Nevertheless, these kinds of reassurances, although more gratifying than self-talk, never penetrated to the place of pain and self-loathing. They never healed.

Nevertheless, they too proved to be addictive. I required regular reassurance that I was okay – codependency! When I didn’t get my fix, I became resentful or jealous of the one who did receive it. The approval of others was just too important.

Consequently, because of the need for this approval, groups of teens or even adults commit crimes that they ordinarily would not do by themselves. When we depend upon others for our okay-ness, we sell off part of ourselves and become slaves. We are no longer able to live according to our own internal dictates.

Instead, what if we violate an objective, unchanging moral law when we do wrong? What if our wrongdoing is more than just a matter of violating a social or personal norm or standard? When we violate a physical law, there are very real consequences. Just think of what happens when you defy gravity by jumping off a building. You will break bones.

The moral law is equally tangible. When we murder someone, it feels like we have violated something far more substantial than a mere social taboo. If murder is merely a social taboo, why then would we continue to feel guilty about it? Even if we encircle ourselves by an entirely different culture - the society of thieves and murderers – we are still unable to escape our guilt and shame. Yes, such company might mitigate these feelings, but they could not eradicate them.

Besides, if these feelings are merely a matter of our former conditioning, we should be able to re-condition ourselves or at least swallow a pill to make everything okay. However, human history has shown that these feelings are integral to the human condition. To separate ourselves from them – if that were possible - is to become less than human. Perhaps, instead, we need to accept these feelings as reflections of reality. After all, we regard our seeing and thinking in this way. When we drive our car, we take what we see as reality and base our driving decisions upon this sensory feedback.

And so, what if violating morality is akin to violating gravity – both entailing some very real costs? If this is so, forgiveness requires more than self-affirmations or professional- or peer-affirmations. It would seem that absolution requires stronger, more tangible stuff.

The philosopher and writer C.S. Lewis argued that we have personal evidence of an objective moral law:

• Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promises to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining, “It’s not fair."

He automatically assumes that we all partake of the same, inescapable law:

• If we do not believe in decent behavior, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having behaved decently? The truth is we believe in decency so much—we feel the Rule of Law pressing on us so—that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. (Mere Christianity)

And so, if our feelings of guilt and shame are more than just mere feelings but a reflection of an unchanging moral law, then we have to listen to them as we would a fire-alarm. In the same way that a fire-alarm points to an external reality apart from the disturbing noise of the alarm, our disturbing feelings point to a moral reality that exists beyond our feelings.

It would be foolish to turn off the alarm and go back to sleep. Instead, we’d have to confront reality – the fire! If this is so, then we have to understand the message of our feelings, and shouldn’t dismiss them with a set of affirmations, like “there is no fire; there is no fire.” Instead, perhaps our feelings are pointing to a real moral problem that must also be addressed.

King David learned how to address this problem after years of burying it:

• Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight. (Psalm 51:1-4)

Instead of self-forgiving, David took full responsibility for his sins and found relief. Elsewhere, he confessed:

• Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered… For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer… I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. (Psalm 32:1-5)

Perhaps our emotional struggles are God’s way of reeling us in, revealing to us a deep-seated problem that requires examination. David was brought to his knees before God. He only found relief and forgiveness after he acknowledged that he had sinned against the Lord Himself.

Forgiveness, to have any meaning at all, must be understood as relational. So often, my confession to my wife and her forgiveness of me have been healing and restorative. If this is what forgiveness is meant to be – relational and healing – how much more does this principle pertain when we offend our Creator with our sins!

This doesn’t mean that there is absolutely no place for self-forgiveness. However, it is more correct to put it this way – receiving the forgiveness coming from the Other.  Our Savior wants us to know that when He has forgiven us, we are forgiven completely! To continue to punish ourselves for our moral failures denies the very thing that He has guaranteed – that He has paid the price in full.

If we refuse to accept this provision of grace, we condemn ourselves to an endless drudgery – our attempt to establish our own righteousness to compensate for our moral failures. As we attempt to lift ourselves up, we put others down, determined to prove that we are more deserving than they.

Rejection and Positive Affirmations

Rejection is hard to take. We are social creatures, and define ourselves socially, by the acclaim or dis-acclaim of others. Consequently, when others like, accept, respect and value us, we feel valued. When we don’t receive these tokens, we generally hurt, some more than others. One blog, Psychology in Everyday Life, defines feelings of rejection in terms of pathology:

• Sensitivity to rejection isn’t just a passing fancy of the self-help movement. It’s a serious symptom of the mood and personality disorders that results in an inability to regulate emotions, exert self-control, and the tendency to give too much personal meaning to life happenings that it undermines the ability to cope with frustrating experiences.

Instead, the pervasiveness of our “sensitivity to rejection” seems to suggest that it is a human phenomenon that requires general how-to-live-life answers. This blog suggests:

• You will be able to handle rejection, when you start to describe it in ways that don’t destroy your self-esteem. Turn a statement like, “I am destroyed and can’t go on living” into “I’m hurting, but not broken or down”. Your whole demeanor changes just by the meaning you give to the experience.

• The next time you are denied, chant the beauty of your good… even if you have to fake it at the start.

Instead of allowing society/others to define and determine who we are and level of our worth, we need to find a never-ending fountain from which we can drink an unchanging positive self-concept. However, this blog and secular psychology assert that we can provide this balm for ourselves.

Can we? My experience tells me that I cannot! I had had five highly recommended psychologists/psychiatrists who affirmed that I should “chant the beauty of [my] good.” However, their chant failed to penetrate. My pervasive feelings of un-worth cried far louder than any of their collective chants about my positive worth.

While it is true that we can’t base our self-concept on the passing whims of others or even on our own passing accomplishments, we also cannot base our psychological well-being on self-affirmations – a form of masturbation. Instead, we were made for relationship – one that would provide for us the necessary psychological foundation to weather life’s challenges and changes.

Scripture informs us that we have this relationship through a Divine Savior:

• Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. (Psalm 27:10)

People will reject us. None of us have immunity from this reality. Even our closest relationships will fail us, if not be rejection, then by death. I continue to experience threatening feelings due to rejection and the threat of such. However, I know that the Lord will never reject me, and that what He thinks about me is what counts.

Others might disapprove of me, and sometimes, this deeply hurts. Sometimes, their disapproval is justified. I do have many failings. However, I can now bear the rejection (and be transparent about it), knowing that my Lord esteems me everlastingly.

Positive Affirmations: Costs and Benefits

A page entitled Affirmation for Stress suggests that we affirm ourselves in this manner:

•  I love myself deeply and unconditionally… I am confident about solving life’s problems successfully… I transcend stress of any kind. I live in peace… I am social and I like meeting people… All is well in my world and I am safe.

Psychotherapy depends upon the same materials. The Calm Clinic adds:

• While it may sound like bologna at times, positive thinking really does play a significant role in dealing with anxiety, and challenging your negative thoughts has the potential to provide your mind with some relief over its anxiety symptoms. That's why many people use affirmations. Affirmations are type of "new age" positivity technique that is designed to counter negative thinking by repeating positive phrases to yourself, and many people use these affirmations to help them control their anxiety.

While in the short run, affirmations can provide a lift, but what are the implications of living on a diet of artificial, distorted thoughts? Randy Paterson, PhD writes about their down-side:

• Positive thinking can get us into as much trouble as negative thinking. Both depart from reality, and reacting based on an incorrect fantasy about reality can lead to all kinds of problems. Indebtedness, lack of preparation, bankruptcy, academic failure, war (“We’ll invade their country and they’ll welcome us with open arms…”), you name it. 

I know a lot about this down-side but also the up-side. I had suffered from truck-loads of social anxiety and self-contempt. Positive affirmations therefore were tailor-made for me, and I quickly discovered their benefits. As a 14 year-old, I would adore my muscled frame in the mirror while telling myself, “You are a hunk; the girls secretly adore you.”

It worked! I went to school with a confidence that broke through the discomfort. However, once I got there, I quickly found that reality didn’t agree with the narrative I had created. I found that the girls preferred the class-clown, the athlete, and even the bad-boy.

The taller you are, the harder you fall. But no matter! I’d build myself up again. However, in order to reach the original “high,” I’d have to now saturate myself with even more grandiose affirmations: “I am the greatest catch a woman can have. I am superior to all the others!” This got me out of bed, but the fall that followed was even more painful.

Gradually, I was living in two different realities – one that I manufactured and the real world. I call my affirmations “reality” because, we have to believe that they are the truth in order for them to work. This is no game that we can just turn on and off. This is a battle of self-definition. Although I might win a momentary victory, I was gradually removing myself from reality and relationship. Relationship requires real sharing. However, I was no longer in a place to share the common reality from which I had removed myself.

I needed my positive-affirmation-drug to remain marginally functional. However, I also needed others to affirm the distorted reality that I had created for myself, and there were no takers. It’s hard to find people who will affirm that you are Albert Einstein or one of the super-heroes.

What then is the answer? Self-acceptance! But how can we accept ourselves when we cannot even face ourselves and are addicted to a diet of lies? Only a powerful replacement drug can suffice. All of my psychotherapists merely attempted to validate my dysfunctional self-validations, reinforcing my woes.

I needed a new and real self-definition – one that would allow me to get out of bed in the morning and face myself in view of all of my warts. This only came through my Savior Jesus. I am now convinced that He loves and accepts me despite my failures and unworthiness. Therefore, I can begin to accept myself and even accept others!