Can You Love Yourself?

2 Jun

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him,
“Which is the first of all the commandments?”
Jesus replied, “The first is this:
Hear, O Israel! 
The Lord our God is Lord alone!
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind, 
and with all your strength.
The second is this:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no other commandment greater than these.”  (Mk 12:28-31)

There are three parts to the greatest commandments enumerated by Jesus:

  1. Love God
  2. Love Neighbor
  3. Love Yourself

For most people, the first two are a cinch.

Oh, sure, there may be bumps along the way, however, loving God and loving our neighbor are relatively easy.

What is so difficult, however, is loving ourselves.

We are bombarded with images on a regular basis on television and in the newspapers and magazines we read telling us that we are “wrong”.  We have the wrong weight, the wrong body parts, the wrong body shape, the wrong disposition, the wrong, the wrong, the wrong…

Children and early teens listen to all of this and internalize it.

From that moment, many of us look down on ourselves.

If that is the case, how can we love ourselves?  We have already decided that we are unlovable, unlikable, and any other “un-” you can imagine.

How about taking a look at ourselves the way God sees us — as a spitting image of Himself.

If we see ourselves through God’s eyes rather than through the media’s, we will see an entirely different reality.

We are lovable.  We are worth it.  We are the Lord’s own people.

Celebrate that!

FAITH ACTION:  Do something good for yourself today.