The sun is out in Oxford! Freya has a beer with a Macedonian theologian. If I am to love my neighbour as myself -
how am I to love myself? What does self-love mean? How is self-love possible without narcissism, or when it lies so close to what the Bible says is sin's essence?
After all, Augustine says 'the primal destruction of man was self-love'.
After all, Augustine says 'the primal destruction of man was self-love'.
9 comments:
Maximus the Confessor talks a lot about this too!! :)
Such as...?
[The photo is of my friend Kosta, now recovered from his bicycle accident by the grace of God - who is a student of Maximus the Confessor]
Michael, I thoroughly understand where you're coming from. My aunty recently gave me this piece titled "I am me" (I'm not sure where she got it from.) It starts out well by advocating a healthy sense of loving oneself and taking responsiblity for one's life and choices, but soon enough it descends into self-worship and declarations of "I own myself". That sense of self- ownership is sweet sounding but one can imagine how dangerous that can be if taken to its extreme. It's no wonder that so much evil takes place under the name of self-love and self-ownership. If you think like that there's never consequences for actions (and evil) because you're the final arbiter.
The western world's love of self can only get worse before it gets better. My theory on abortion is that its stems from people's love of self (i.e. my body is mine, I love myself, so if this baby is 'too difficult' or I don't want it, then aborting it is no problem. I decide what is good for me".)
Hey Kosta is the spitting image of my cousin Vassili who lives on Crete with his wife and kids, with the beard and all. When I saw his picture that is what I thought (although last time I saw my cousin (2004) he wasn't as slim looking as Kosta, although he may have lost the weight by now). But he definitely likes beer and likes riding a pretty smooth looking motorbike around Heraklion(My cousin that is).
Oh on "self love" he says pretty much the same as Augustine- sorry I was just being general.
Hmm, what is the relationship between self-love and martyrdom?
This is why it's so important that the dual command of love (God and neighbour) is not understood as "containging all other moral responsibilities" but as the commands we need to learn first in order for all other loves (of ourselves, of creation) to be rightly ordered. This is what Augustine said, and it's in, as I imagine you know, Resurrection and Moral Order, towards the back.
I feel that evangelicalism has not handled "self-love" (and the related concept of self-esteem) very well. The impression I've always had is that it is a bad thing, that we are to rid ourselves of in order to more seflessly love others.
But my own experience is that those people who dislike themselves and have low self-esteem are generally very poor at "loving their neighbour". In fact, they quite often hurt the people closest to them. People who hate themselves also seem to hate others.
By contrast, those with what I would consider a healthy self-regard and self-esteem seem to have a much greater capacity for loving other people, and giving generously of themselves.
Some speakers who have strongly condemned the self-esteem movement clearly have an abundance of the quality themselves (Michael Horton comes to mind). Without healthy self-esteem, they could never stand before thousands and tell them that self-esteem is a bad thing.
In sum, I think evangelicalism needs to develop a more intelligent approach to this subject.
AndrewE: actually this post was inspired by reading O'Donovan's earlier book 'The problem of self-love in Augustine'
Mmmm. Beer.
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