To ‘Love Your Neighbor,’ Love Yourself First

People of nearly all faiths are mandated, in one way or another, to love both their God and their neighbors in the same proportion as they love for themselves. Seems a simple enough commitment: most congregants would agree that humanity could use a little more love spread around more often. 

Dig deeper into the commandment, however, and the Biblical directive — love your neighbor and your God as yourself — becomes increasingly complex. 

With work deadlines, responsibilities at home, children, or aging parents (or both) to care for, and the unpredictability of life in general, even carving out time for oneself to take a breath can be a challenge. Throw in self-love through self-care — exercise, say, or eating nutritious food, or meditation, or prayer — and the commandment can feel both indulgent and next to impossible.

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What little we know about Jesus’ self care is that he showed up for dinners and weddings and, sometimes, cancelled funerals. He also often isolated himself while hanging out with his father. 

Celebrating Yourself

If loving God is achievable but self-love is so difficult, can loving someone who may be a stranger, or an immigrant, or who worships differently, or speaks a different language, or supports a different political party, even happen? What does that kind of love look like? How does one even begin?

Rev. Dr. Gerald “Jay” Williams, lead pastor of Union Church in Boston, called the “journey to self-love” haunting and the ongoing result of “un-learning.”

In his definition, self-love “is delighting in yourself and celebrating yourself with a happiness that is pure contentment, rooted in the truth that you are loved. Whether you are Black or white or brown or Asian, Latinx or indigenous, whether your skin is dark or light, your nose narrow or broad, your lips full or thick: you are black and beautiful.”

Nevertheless, self love is often misunderstood, sometimes regarded as a degree of selfishness on the way to narcissism. , which it couldn’t be if so mandated to lay onto others. But if we don’t take time to care for ourselves, what will we have to offer others?

According to the Phoenix Affirmations, developed by clergy and laity in Phoenix Arizona, loving our neighbor includes, “Engaging people authentically, as Jesus did, treating all as creations made in God’s very image, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental ability, nationality or economic class.”

It goes on to say that Christian self love includes “basing our lives on the faith that in Christ all things are made new and that we, and all people, are loved beyond our wildest imaginations, for eternity.”

One sign of self love is taking time to get to know ourselves — our likes and dislikes — rather than spending so much of ourselves taking care of others, according to journalist Talibah Chikwendu, author of “It’s Been a Journey.”

Chikwendu offers two other lessons: learning to graciously accept help from others, which can be a real difficulty for people who are always helping others; and having the willingness to take risks for ourselves and our own happiness.

When it comes to realizing our dreams, ”Do it scared, but get it done,” she says. ”We’ve got to stop putting our dreams on the shelf.”

“Small Part in a Great Work”

In the era of Trump 2.0, however — when the White House sends planeloads of migrants to third countries; when it fires tens of thousands of federal workers; when it declares diversity and acceptance are no longer American values — it’s hard to find visible acts of loving others in the way we love ourselves. 

Writing in Sojourners, the eponymous online magazine of the Christian social justice organization, Jeannie Rose Barksdale said that “being a faithful follower of Christ is, in fact, less about giving a virtuoso solo performance and more often playing a small part in a great work we cannot fully comprehend.”

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That can mean anything, Barksdale said, from contributing to a fundraiser for a neighbor who lost her home to fire to feeling or showing compassion for a shoplifter caught at a Target store. It could even mean taking a small act to protest Trump’s actions.  

“We do not love our neighbors in isolation, but as members of a great collective, sharing in each other’s small acts of love,” Barksdale wrote. “Our individual acts are connected to the body of the church and the power of God at work in us. When I love my neighbor in Target, in some mysterious way, it is woven into the symphony that is God acting in the world.”

“The renewing love of God acting in this world,” she wrote, “is made manifest in my own small acts, but it is not limited to them.”