The problem with loving your neighbor

Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash

We have a problem. Love your neighbor is a rallying cry for justice and kindness in community. But the rest of the command to love your neighbor is as yourself. And I’m concerned we are putting the cart before the horse – demanding people love others when they don’t even understand what it means to love themselves.

Oh, we’re very good at loving our opinions, our knowledge, and our self-right way of doing things. We’ve very good at loving our worldly identity as a Republican or Democrat, a particular vein of religion, or loving that we’re not (fill in the blank).

But what about truly loving ourselves:
Respecting the myriad of feelings we experience without condemning ourselves.
Caring for our bodies to assure their health.
Recognizing how important we are as participants in relationships.
Accepting how much we desire to be loved and included. 

What would it be like to look in the mirror and say, ‘you are loved’?
What would it be like to look beneath our self-protective armor shaped by our particular history and see our interdependence with all creation and honor our place in that?
What would it look like to love yourself with generosity of compassion, kindness, mercy, forgiveness…humility?

Perhaps if we start there, we will begin to understand what it means to love our neighbor.

In this together….