I want to be a kinder person. I want to be gentler and slower to anger. I want to be more tender and compassionate. I want to listen more than I talk, and I want to create a more peaceful and less violent world around me.
I want these things because I believe that the people around me deserve the best of me. They don’t deserve negativity, sarcasm, or ill-temperedness. Nor do they deserve to be talked down to, criticized, or harshly judged.
I want the people around me to feel safe and accepted. I want them to know that they are loved beyond measure and without conditions. I want them to belong.
I want these things for others. I pray for them and I ask God to guide me and give me the strength and wisdom to serve him and the people around me. I long to be an instrument of his peace and a vessel of his love that, through me, others may come to know him.
I want these things for others, but I forget to want them for myself as well. Toward myself, I am cruel and quick to anger. Toward myself, I am harsh and unforgiving.
In spite of what I want for others, of what I pray for and work for that they may benefit, I act as if I am somehow exempt from the same patience, love, and belonging that it is so clear to me that they deserve. I want the best for them, but settle for the worst from myself.
This is not what Jesus meant when he said, “The first will be last and the last will be first (Matthew 20:16, NIV).” He did not mean that we should exclude ourselves from tenderness, compassion, and understanding. He did not mean that we should judge, condemn, and punish ourselves in order to enter the Kingdom of God.
Jesus said that, if we want to be his disciples, we must deny ourselves and take up our cross (Matt 16:24), not destroy and crucify ourselves. He commands us to “Love our neighbors as ourselves (Matt 22:39),” but not instead of ourselves. In order to love others as ourselves, we must first love ourselves.
If we make enemies of ourselves and have no love for ourselves, have we not, by alienating ourselves, deeming ourselves unforgivable, and persecuting ourselves for our mistakes, errors, and shortcomings, ignored his command to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us”?
I have confused the perfection Jesus requires of us in Matthew 5:48 with perfectionism. The perfection he is asking us to strive for is the perfect love of God, of our Heavenly Father, and self-criticism, self-hatred, and self-condemnation are not perfect love.
It seems to me that Paul’s declaration in 1 Corinthians 4-7
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
applies to all love, not just outwardly directed love, but also love toward ourselves. For are we not all children of God, his beloveds, and his friends? These are not statuses reserved only for others. I, too, am his child and he is my Father and my friend, and I am his beloved in whom he is well pleased.
~Robert Van Valkenburgh
Leave a Reply