At a book club with a pastor when he said something that shook me to my core

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We are going through and discussing the rediscovering Catholicism book by Mathew Kelly and we stopped on chapter three. The pastor who runs this club reminded us several times for our (name removed by moderator)ut and discussion so it isn’t a sermon but he did have this to say about chapter three: of you don’t love yourself how can you love God or your neighbours?
I’ve been thinking about it a lot and it really has stuck with me more than anything I’ve heard on self love.
 
Great point! You cannot love God while hating yourself - made in His image and likeness!

Caveat: The love of self must be well ordered. If it is a disordered, inordinate love of self which separates us from both God and neighbor, ultimately making our life miserable.
 
Marco-polo22 said:
of you don’t love yourself how can you love God or your neighbours?
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This sounds like something you’d say to an addict or something, not necessarily to a general gathering of folks. Then again, addicts can be very nice people. It also sounds a little wishy washy to me, like it could be taken several ways, not all necessary good.

But if it’s working for you, then I guess that’s good.
 
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It’s good advice, and, because Christ said, it’s also a divine commandment.

Dr. Jordan Peterson put it another way in his book, 12 Rules for Life: “treat yourself as someone you are responsible for helping.”
 
This is often used as another way of shaming someone, so one should be careful before saying this to anyone.

Low self esteem doesn not preclude someone from loving God or others. Low self esteem can, however, preclude one from loving him or herself.

Again, I don’t think it is helpful to make the statement the pastor made. There are all kinds of ways love for self manifests itself. I prefer to say we need to get “right with ourself” before we can be right with God and the world.
 
1Lord1Faith said:
This sounds like something you’d say to an addict or something, not necessarily to a general gathering of folks.
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Why would you say that?
First of all, somebody shouldn’t have to go get addicted to something in order for a priest to say something encouraging to them. Indeed, there are people all over the place whose needs in this regard are being ignored because they haven’t developed some serious “symptom” like an addiction yet.

Second, plenty of us who aren’t addicts have struggled at some point in our lives with self-hatred or constant self-blame, including myself.
People need to be reminded that a healthy self-love is necessary for us to appreciate God’s gifts and to love God and others. If we’re supposed “love our neighbor as ourself” but we secretly think “ourself” is a piece of junk in the gutter, that doesn’t give us much to love others with.

I fortunately was able to get rid of most of my self-loathing years ago, as it wasn’t productive. And I really appreciated the anonymous visiting priest at the Christmas confession service who reminded me that “God doesn’t make junk” when I was really down on myself.

To this day I have some issues with reading Imitation of Christ where it goes on about being a worm or whatever. I don’t need to be encouraged to think that way when I already have to guard against slipping into it naturally.
 
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