What is true self love?

[Cantankersaurus]

I think the definition of self love in modern psychology is lacking, because:

• Its goal is often portrayed as happiness; Christians have different goals.
• It’s considered to be incompatible with perfectionism or being perfect, whereas Christians understand that perfection is an intended destiny of each person. Not saying that perfectionism is necessarily a good thing—just that, if self love is real and good, it must ultimately be part of human perfection.

The dictionary.com definition links it to selfishness: the instinct by which one’s actions are directed to the promotion of one’s own welfare or well-being, especially an excessive regard for one’s own advantage.

I don’t know what the specific differences between these ideas and true self love are.

 

[Inbonum]

These articles can be helpful:
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12405a.htm
http://www.chastitysf.com/q_selflove.htm

How can I Identify my Root Sin?

All of them mention or speak about it.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

The psychological concept of “self love” means having a healthy sense of self so that you can go about your business, deal with life’s challenges, not need an authority figure like a parent or a doctor telling you what to do all the time and how to react to things, and not be influenced or pushed around or abused or taken advantage of by other people. Basically, it’s the sense of self you need to function daily.

By contrast, Christianity usually uses the word “self love” in a negative sense, to mean selfishness, or putting love for yourself ahead of love for others, except where Jesus said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself. " Obviously if you don’t have a healthy sense of self-love, then you’re not going to understand what Jesus is asking you to do. It’s important to understand the difference between a healthy sense of self-love, which is fine, probably all the Apostles had it in order to be able to do their jobs, and an unhealthy one which would mean someone was selfish or unkind.

As for perfectionism, Christianity wants us to strive to become perfect, but also recognizes that as humans we will always fall short of the mark and therefore we should be humble and rely on God to help us through our failings, while still trying to do better. Christianity does not embrace excessive perfectionism; it is more concerned with genuine love of God and neighbor, and our attitude when we fall. Scrupulosity is an example of perfectionistic Christianity; it’s also a mental disorder and the Church tries to help people not fall victim to it. The Pharisees also were concerned with being perfectionists - don’t even break a head of wheat off to eat on the Sabbath when you’re traveling, don’t even cure somebody on the Sabbath because that’s doing work. Jesus rejected that idea.

 

[fide]

There are two different things:
true self-love, and disordered self-love.
The difference involves the kind of love involved. True self-love requires the love with which God loves - holy charity. In true self-love, one loves oneself in the same way that God loves him. God desires only the true good for him.
Disordered self-love is godless, self-centered and self-concerned, seeking whatever gives one pleasure. Augustine saw two loves possible:

1. love for self to the contempt of God, OR
2. love for God to the contempt of self.

When one has (2), he has true self-love, entrusting himself completely in the hands and care of God - no matter what is the cost or apparent cost to self. To be true to God, because He deserves it, whatever the consequence, is true self-love.

 

[Cantankersaurus]

Thanks y’all.

To be honest, it’s hard for me to think of God’s love in relation to other ideas.

Say you needed an authority figure to tell you what to do/how to react. Or your conceptions of people close to you dislike you when in reality they like you. (I don’t have these problems—they’re genuinely hypothetical.) How do you change to love yourself as God loves you? I don’t know how you’d get from A to B.

 

[Inbonum]

How do you change to love yourself as God loves you? I don’t know how you’d get from A to B.

You accept yourself in light of God’s truth about you - that is healthy.
Accepting yourself in light of your truth about yourself opposed to true God’s love-unhealthy.

It takes time, prayer and work on yourself, day by day. Nothing happens over night. God can and will help you to change it, it is important to go day by day, to let yourself be imperfect. Be conscious that God loves you, remind yourself every day. Every day is new day, be sorrowful for your sinns and flaws but never forget that God loves you and that sinns never make any difference in that love.
Ask Him to lead you and help you to change. Ask Mary to help you and to teach you how to love with true love.
It is possible to change it!
Try to read from links I posted, I know it helps because I used it for simmilar problems!

 

[Tis_Bearself]

How do you change to love yourself as God loves you? I don’t know how you’d get from A to B.

In addition to what CathF said, if someone truly had these problems, they might consider some secular helps, such as doing some practical behavioral modification exercises to change their thought patterns, and/or seeing a mental health counselor, or in some cases if it’s related to addiction, then a support group can help.

About 25 years ago I had fallen into some very negative thinking patterns and I found a book at the used bookstore that had a lot of written exercises to help one change their thinking habits, same as you would change a bad eating habit or stop smoking. I did the exercises in writing daily for quite a few months and it really helped me and probably changed my life for the better. It was not anything new age, nor did it contain anything with religious overtones. It was simply an exercise book on positive thinking, similar to what Dale Carnegie and various success coaches teach.

 

[fhansen]

The Church teaches that all sin or evil has its root in something good, since everything God created is originally good, and remains inherently good, in fact. Free will of created rational beings makes this possible. So gluttony is the abuse of the good and normal appetite for food, lust for the normal appetite for sex. The root of pride is self-love, self-love being a good and healthy gift of God, while pride is called “inordinate self-love” by Aquinas, also an “inordinate desire for one’s own excellence”. It’s to desire to be something “more”, (“more” defined by one’s values or opinion on any given day), and therefore different in any case from who we really are, not appreciating who we are while not recognizing and admitting to our limitations at the same time. This was essentially the sin of Adam, and this sin sets us up for a Fall every time. Pride also sets us up for feelings of inferiority because it sets wrong and misguided standards which we may feel we live up to at some point in time, while failing at another. Either way, balanced and authentic self-love is the loser.

And the more we “obey” pride and pursue the demands or desires that it seeks, the farther we move away from ourselves-and from God. It’s interesting that the Church teaches that, at the Fall, man was in some manner divided or distanced from God, from the rest of creation, from his fellow man, and from and within his own self.

FWIW, in case any of these thoughts add to the conversation.

 

[Heavenward]

“Just as unity is the principle of union, the love with which a man loves himself is the form and the root of friendship.”— St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, 25, 4.

It is difficult to overemphasize the implications of this line of the Angelic Doctor. According to him, the virtue of charity, I. E. the virtue of love, is nothing else than friendship with God and others.

“It is written (John 15:15): “I will not now call you servants . . . but My friends.” Now this was said to them by reason of nothing else than charity. Therefore charity is friendship.”— St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, 23, 1.

Not being able to love oneself properly therefore means you cannot even love God as you ought to, never mind other people.

Now how should one love themselves he enumerates in II-II, 25, 7. In summary:

1. A good person desires himself to be, to exist.
2. A good person desires good things for himself, especially spiritual goods.
3. A good person does good deeds for himself
4. A good person takes pleasure in his own company, for he finds in his heart “good thoughts in the present, the memory of past good, and the hope of future good, all of which are sources of pleasure.”
5. A friend is of one mind with himself, his various powers in accord with his reason and his will.

 

[fide]

How do you change to love yourself as God loves you?

You’ve had several responses to this question - I suppose because it is a very widely experienced difficulty. The root of our problems as persons with a fallen human nature, is disordered self-love. And that deeply rooted problem will fight to the death to preserve itself - to hold on to the power it has over us. It is like an unjust king who fears and will not tolerate any - any - challenge to his throne and his power. In the center of our hearts there is a throne with room for only one king - and it was made for The King, for the Lord Jesus Christ - only He is the rightful King of the Kingdom we were made for, and for which we deeply long. Nevertheless, there is a disordered, fallen self in us who loves himself with a disordered and irrational love, above all else, and he is our ultimate enemy in our battle to overcome all sin, and to find the peace of the Kingdom of God.

So how do we change? I suggest we cannot change, we can only die to that old, fallen disordered nature and come to live fully in the new life we have received and have begun in Christ, at Baptism. We are victorious only by dying in Christ, so as to rise with Him, and live His Life, in Him. We are victorious when we finish what was begun in us at Baptism. We were born again, born anew in Baptism and we are inserted into Christ! Now we must enter Him anew every day, every moment - and we must remain in Him, in His new and holy and eternal Life. There is our final victory. There is our beatitude - to be in Him, and He in us, and HIs Life, our Life, His Love, our Love.

 

[Cantankersaurus]

Out of the below three hypothetical Christians, who is most correct?

1: “I wish to be myself.”

2: “I don’t wish to be myself.”

3: “I disregard what I wish or who I am.”

Or, should this be framed differently?

 

[Inbonum]

First would be closest to truth if we look that God created us good but at the same time due to our fallen nature we go away from good and fall into sins and don’t act as we want or should act. So we want be what God want us to be.

Second would be half truth in light of that we don’t like what we have become in some part of our life and cannot accept it but want to change it. But half truth because we should accept ourselves whatever we are and try to change what is not good. Third could be part of first.

I think that none of those three is final truth and that shouldn’t be final result in our life but first points of start for something better.
I hope it helps.

 

[EricPH]

How do you change to love yourself as God loves you?

Jesus died freely and willingly for you and me, he must love us as much as he loves himself.

I think we can only appreciate this by the way we freely pass this love onto others. We are to love one another as Jesus loves us.

 

[Heavenward]

Out of the below three hypothetical Christians, who is most correct?

In a way, the first two are are correct, while the third I cannot think of any positive. Strictly speaking,

1: “I wish to be myself.”

is the most correct, because a good person always wishes himself to be, to exist. However a person who understands how sinful they are can say

2: “I don’t wish to be myself.”

in that they want to love themselves as they ought to do. This is because as St. Thomas Aquinas said,

“the wicked have no wish to be preserved in the integrity of the inward man, nor do they desire spiritual goods for him, nor do they work for that end, nor do they take pleasure in their own company by entering into their own hearts, because whatever they find there, present, past and future, is evil and horrible; nor do they agree with themselves, on account of the gnawings of conscience.” — St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, 25, 7

Therefore, sinners hate themselves, and feeling the sadness and despair of this hate, they wish to become good people, I. E. they wish not to be as how they are right now.

Finally, the third one,

3: “I disregard what I wish or who I am.”

is a demonic lie. People who are sinful and are enticed to become good suppose mistakenly that to be good is to forego all the freedom and liberty they thought they had while sinning. In fact, it is the complete opposite: the wicked are fully enslaved by their out of control desires, and it is the good who have the true liberty to do the good they deeply wish to do, to be that they deeply wish to be.

 

[fide]

I would say, the one who says this (I’ll need more words that you gave me to choose from):

“I pray to become the person God made me to be. I’m not there yet - thanks be to God, I can see myself doing things I should not do - wanting things, treating others, in relationship with God, in my prayer life not the way I should - in many ways I am NOT the person God intended me to be! I’m not even sure, at this point, what God really wants from me and for me. I need to learn! That is my goal: to come to know Him as I need to know Him, and to know myself as I really AM at this time, and to know better how I need to use my days and years as I ought to, to grow into the man or woman I need to be.”

 

[Cantankersaurus]

Thanks very much fide.

 

[EndTimes]

I think the definition of self love in modern psychology is lacking, because:

• Its goal is often portrayed as happiness; Christians have different goals.
• It’s considered to be incompatible with perfectionism or being perfect, whereas Christians understand that perfection is an intended destiny of each person. Not saying that perfectionism is necessarily a good thing—just that, if self love is real and good, it must ultimately be part of human perfection.

The dictionary.com definition links it to selfishness: the instinct by which one’s actions are directed to the promotion of one’s own welfare or well-being, especially an excessive regard for one’s own advantage.

I don’t know what the specific differences between these ideas and true self love are.

First of all - Since Love is spiritual - let’s place modern psychology and dictionaries on the back burner

Self Love?

Since we’re called to Love One Another - we too shouldn’t ever view ourselves as total chopped liver

Yes … We can acknowledge our Sinfulness - and even we almost overwhelmed w/Sorrow at times.

But never to the point of Despair as in somehow Judging ourselves into e.g., Hell.

We too must reach out in Love - even to ourselves in the manner of Love which God is…

No form of Pride of the evil form either - should enter our assessments of ourselves.

 

[EricPH]

You will never look into the eyes of anyone who does not matter to God. Reflect on the thought that when you look in the mirror, the eyes you see matter to God, we are created in his image, likeness and nature.

When you look into the eyes of anyone else, they matter to God in the same way.
The more you can give this love away to others; the more it will help you understand how you are loved.

 

[TominAdelaide]

Fr Spirago provides this commentary on the love of self in “The Catechism Explained”:

IX. THE LOVE OF ONE’S SELF

Among all classes of men each one is his own nearest neighbor. Consequently every man ought to love himself.

We ought to love ourselves because God wills it; further more because we are made after God’s image, redeemed by the blood of Christ, and called to eternal felicity in heaven.

It is God’s will that we should love ourselves, for Our Lord says: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."In these words He declares the love of ourselves to be the rule and measure of our love of our neighbor. “Learn first to love God,” says St. Augustine, “then to love thyself; then thy neighbor as thyself.” God has not given us a special command to love ourselves, because every man does this in virtue of the natural law, and it is contained in the commandment to love one’s neighbor. We ought besides to love ourselves because we are made after God’s image. If we are to respect God s image in our neighbor, nay more, in our enemy, we must respect it in ourselves. Since, then, we love ourselves for the sake of God, it stands to reason that the right love of one’s self increases in the same proportion as we advance in the love of God. We must also remember that we are bought with a great price. “You were not redeemed with corruptible things as gold or silver, but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Pet. i. 18). We also have a high calling, we are destined for eternal felicity. St. Gregory the Great thus beautifully expresses it : “Recognize thy dignity, O Christian! Thou art made a participator in the divine nature, a member of Christ’s body! Remember that thou hast been wrested from the powers of darkness, and destined to share in the glory of the kingdom of heaven!” Consider also that the Son of God was made man for us and became our Brother, that thus we have been made the children of God (1 John iii. 1); that the Holy Ghost dwells in us (1 Cor. vi. 19); that the angels minister to us (Heb. i. 14). These are all motives impelling us to love ourselves. Wherefore as the love of one’s self is in reality only the love of one’s neighbor applied to one’s self personally, to love one’s self is equivalent to esteeming one’s self at one’s true value (a matter of reason) desiring one’s own good (a matter of the affections) not injuring, but doing good to one’s self (in will and in action). This is the right self-love, in contradistinction to the false love which manifests itself in arrogance, conceit, discourtesy, license, etc.

The true love of one’s self shows itself herein, that we strive to attain that which will procure our real happiness; first and foremost our eternal felicity, and then such earthly things as are conducive to the attainment of eternal felicity.

The true lover of himself acts according to Christ s admonition: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matt. vi. 33). He will provide for his health, his clothing, etc., but without undue solicitude.

continued….

 

[TominAdelaide]

He is wanting in love of himself who only strives after earthly possessions and heeds not his eternal happiness; likewise he who despises the things that are helpful to the attainment of eternal happiness.

A great number of mankind regard self, not God, as their final end; and earthly riches not as means towards attaining eternal happiness, but as means for the gratification of the senses. Therefore they take delight in earthly things: honors, riches, dignities, etc., and are not willing to give them up for God s sake. Such love of one’s self is a spurious love; it is selfishness, self-seeking. He who prefers what is temporal to what is eternal is his own enemy; for he will only enjoy a certain measure of happiness for a short period, then he will be unhappy forevermore. “They that commit sin and iniquity, are enemies to their own soul” (Tob. xii. 10). How many resemble the miser in the Gospel, who said to himself: “Thou hast much goods laid up for many years, take thy rest, eat, drink, make good cheer”; to whom God said: “Thou fool, this night do they require thy soul of thee, and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?” (Luke xii. 19, 20.) “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” (Matt. xvi. 26.) “Learn,” says St. Augustine, “to love thyself by not loving thyself.” On the other hand those do wrong who despise those earthly things which promote their spiritual good, for by so doing they show contempt for their eternal salvation. What must one think of a man who does not provide for his own maintenance, who rashly endangers his life or even puts an end to it by his own act?