Self-love is self-defeating. Now, that may seem contradictory. But before we can explain what makes self-love self-defeating, we must first define what we mean by self-love. According to Dr. Jeffrey Bornstein, “Self-love is a state of appreciation for oneself . . . Self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well-being to please others. Self-love means not settling for anything less than you deserve.” Some examples that he offers of practicing self-love are, “Talking to and about yourself with love, prioritizing yourself, and trusting yourself.”
In an article titled, “11 Women on What Self-Love Is,” one woman said, “You look in the mirror and remind yourself of how amazing and lovable you are.” Another said, “We need to first love ourselves to truly give love to others, too.” A third woman said, “Self-love means freedom . . . and reminds me that, ‘Girl, you need to take a little more for yourself!’” Yet another woman said, “No one can perform self-love for you, so it’s important to be your own best friend.” Based on these definitions and descriptions, we can see that an essential part of practicing self-love is . . . you guessed it . . . looking within yourself for the answers, confidence, and care that you need. Within the framework of our Christian worldview, we can see four reasons that this version of self-love is ultimately self-defeating.
Foundationally, the reason self-love is self-defeating is that it centers self rather than God. While self-hatred and self-harm are certainly unhealthy spiritually and physically, self-love does not direct us away from the root of the problem. The thing that both self-hatred and self-love have in common is . . . you guessed it again . . . self. Self-love promises that your life would be so much better if you just tapped into the power that your self possesses. According to a well-known New Age teacher (and 2020 presidential candidate), Marianne Williamson, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?” In other words, the power we need is within ourselves. We just need the courage to accept that, look within, and unleash that power. However, the source of the problem (self) cannot also be the solution to the problem. If I’m struggling with low self-esteem, self-pity, anxiety, or depression, I need something outside of myself to pull me out of that hole! That something outside of myself is actually Someone. And that Someone is the God who created me in His own image and bought me back with the price of His own blood. If anyone could know the depths of my heart and the longings of my soul, it would be my Creator and Savior. It only makes sense that I would center my life on Him rather than the generator of all my problems—myself.
Another reason self-love is self-defeating is that inverts the Greatest Commandment. In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus said, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” In other words, all the other laws—the laws against lying, stealing, or adultery—depend on the command to love God and love others. If we don’t get these first two great commandments right, we will not get the others right either. The problem is that self-love turns these commandments into “Love yourself first so you can love others.” The idea that I must learn to love myself before I can love others sounds logical, but it is actually self-defeating. The way we can test to see if a philosophy is Biblical or not is by comparing it to the whole of Scripture. In this case, we can scour the Bible cover to cover, but we will never find a verse that commands us to love ourselves first or put ourselves first before we can love others. In fact, we find passages that teach just the opposite. For example, Philippians 2:3-4 says, “Let nothing be done through strife and vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.” This is not a command to hate ourselves and love others. This is a command to put others before ourselves, just as Christ did for us.
If I wait to love others until I have learned to love myself, I may be waiting forever. Focusing on making myself feel better about myself will only drive me further into that hole of self-deprecation and self-defeat. You see, God created us to operate a certain way. Just like the law of gravity keeps us grounded on this globe, the law of sowing and reaping keeps us grounded spiritually. God promises that what we give out we will get in return. So, if we need love, we must give love! The truth is that we are already loved. Regardless of how we feel about ourselves, God loves us, and nothing will change that. Romans 8:38 says, “For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” When I am secure in God’s love for me, I am free to love others as Christ loved me. I don’t need to worry about loving myself when I’ve accepted that God already loves me with a perfect love. God commands us to love Him with every fiber of our being and to love others the way that we want to be loved. Why? Because He created us so that when we pour love into others, we ourselves are filled with love.
In addition to inverting the Greatest Commandment, self-love actually makes us less merciful. When we are so focused on making sure we feel good about ourselves, we are walking on eggshells and so is everyone else around us. In an effort to love myself, there is no room to give others the benefit of the doubt if they offend me. If someone wrongs me in any way, from a perceived microaggression to malicious action, I have the right to take justice into my own hands. At that moment, I become the arbiter of justice. Not only do I get to judge the other person’s actions and motives, but I also get to punish them as I see fit. Our modern culture tells us that we should be all about love, while at the same time insisting that we show no mercy to those who do not love us the way we think they should. For the sake of our well-being, we are permitted to cut people out of our lives because they’ve offended us in some way. Now, obviously, we should distance ourselves from truly toxic relationships, but shunning people for simply offending us or hurting our feelings is unmerciful and unbiblical.
The second part of the Great Commandment is to love others as ourselves. The fact that we want a respite from self-loathing thoughts and feelings demonstrates that, deep down, we want to show mercy to ourselves. So, if that’s what we want for ourselves, that is what we should be giving to others! When we fail to show mercy to others, we end up destroying each other with bitterness. Nobody wins! Galatians 5:14-15 says it this way, “For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” Rather than berating others for failing to love me the way I want them to, I should focus on loving others the way I want to be loved. If I am focused on loving others rather than loving myself, then I will extend the mercy to them that I would want to be extended to me.
Finally, self-love is self-defeating because it elevates my words over God’s Word. Self-love capitalizes on the words we tell ourselves. As one woman said, “You look in the mirror and remind yourself of how amazing and lovable you are.” If my words are the final word on my worth, if my perception of myself is the truth, then why should I believe the positive things I tell myself any more than I believe the negative things I tell myself? How do I know which version of myself that I project is accurate? How do I know which words I tell myself are true and which words are not true? Is it based on how I feel that day? There must be a word that is more consistent and authoritative than my own. And that word is God’s settled Word. So, what has God already said about you and me? Well, God says that we are sinful yet forgiven (I John 1:8-9) and that we are known fully yet loved completely (Psalm 139). He says that we are poor and needy and yet He thinks of and care for us (Psalm 40:17). Ephesians 1 says that, as Christians, we are chosen, adopted, accepted, coheirs with Christ, and sealed by the Spirit. The truth is, we cannot look in the mirror and “remind ourselves how amazing or lovable we are.” God never said we were amazing, but His grace is amazing! God never said that we were lovable, but He did say we are loved! God never said that we are worthy, but He says that our lives are of inestimable worth to Him (Matthew 10:31). God says that our lives have significance and purpose (Jeremiah 29:11, Ephesians 2:10). What God’s Word says about us drives us to our knees in humility before an infinitely greater God and raises our hands up in praise to the same. What I say about myself is not necessarily what is true about myself. God’s Word is the final Word on that.
After our study of self-love and Biblical love, we see that we do not need self-love anyway. We have God’s love! Certainly, God doesn’t want us to hate ourselves because that would be self-focused as well. God calls us to be self-forgetful because He knows that the self is the seat of all our problems. The Lord calls us to lose ourselves in Him. God commands us to self-forgetfulness and God-esteem because He loves us, because He knows what will satisfy our hearts. Rest in your Father’s love and be empowered to give that out to others.