“…I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions, but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner.
“For a long time I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did but not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life—namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went right on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it,” (Mere Christianity).
CS Lewis had a way of getting right to the heart of an issue, stripping away all our trite objections and leaving the truth of it bare before us, undeniably simple and strong. Such is the case with the above paragraphs taken from a chapter about forgiveness. Lewis’ point? I find it perfectly reasonable to dislike, even hate, my own actions, but that does not lead me to hating myself. Why shouldn’t I be capable of the same for others?
Now, someone will want to get all psychological at this point and argue that there is a regarding in which we do hate ourselves and that one of the great struggles of today’s self-help movement is to teach us to love ourselves again.
Got it. The problem with this objection lies here: do you still seek to better your circumstances, even while “hating yourself”? Do you still care for yourself? Still put up with yourself? Then you should do the same for others.
I like Lewis’ point because he’s right. (That’s a good reason to agree, don’t you think?) Forgiveness is considerably easier when I remember the degree to which I need it, myself. And I need it a lot.
Lewis’ point on forgiveness can be summed up in a great commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” It seems Jesus knew that self-love would never be the problem that love for others would be. There also seems to be an implicit reminder here that loving ourselves is the wrong focus.
I wonder, just for the sake of wondering, how much need we would have for self-help books and feel-good workshops if we made loving others our goal and our aim. Our sense of self is important–after all, God created us in his image–but a mirror is a tragic place to spend all of one’s life.
left by Trey on 11.21.2006 at 9:10 am