Loving Ourselves

In her book, "Lies Women Believe...", Nancy Leigh De Moss addressed one of the lies that women today have been believing. She said that the world's prescription for those who are tortured by a sense of worthlessness is, "You need to love yourself." And that when Jesus tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves, the point is not that we need to love ourselves so that we can love others. Jesus is saying we need to give others the same attention and care we naturally give ourselves.

Is not this true? I know I don't need to love myself more than I already do, for if I do, I would surely become so engrossed with myself. Eventually, I would grow into some sort of a power puff girl thinking that I am the center of the universe and everything in it and that I have the power to control people and circumstances. "I need to love myself" is a common line that we hear from people who have lost their sense of pride due to giving so much of themselves in order to manipulate and control others.

I agree with Nancy when she said that if we get a toothache, we immediately look for a way to identify the problem and get rid of it. If we did not love ourselves, we would ignore the pain. But when someone else has a toothache, it is easy to be indifferent to his need- that's his problem. We naturally love ourselves; we do not naturally love others.