Spectrums and the Self Dilemma

As the western world increasingly sees more people with depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, self-harm [eg. cutting, eating disorders] and suicide - particularly in High School aged students and young adults - there has been an increase in talk and energy directed at the idea of self-worth. Many of you would have noticed that we throw the word “self-esteem” around quite regularly. In schools, well at the least the one I work with, staff are keen to make sure students get the opportunity to attend seminars or groups that will boost their self-esteem - including self-image. Certainly there is a dilemma regarding the concept of ‘self’, what value we should place on ourselves and how we measure that value. So I’m going to just call it the Self Dilemma for now. Many people are asking the question how come we have this dilemma and what is the answer? We have plenty of people in our society who are trained counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrics, researchers, chaplains, youth workers, teachers and concerned people thinking about it, voicing their thoughts and even coming up with programs to prevent and solve this dilemma. Now there are definitely some physiological causes of some of these struggles in peoples lives. Things such as Chemical in-balances that can only be boosted with medications. Then there are the societal, worldview, perceptional, emotional and spiritual aspects that cause such struggles as mentioned above. It's these aspects I am hoping to explore. In some ways the answers to those questions are simple to me, yet wrapped up in complexity.

Perhaps the Self Dilemma has arisen with force because we mostly define love by what it isn’t. We know the 2 opposing extremes that are not love, but we don’t know where inbetween those extremes to find the position of love. So we slip and slide from one to the other hoping we’ll somehow ‘fall into’ the hole marked ‘perfect love’ - like the little silver ball in those boredom-buster maze toys . 

It’s like being on a see-saw where we can sit on one end, so if we don’t have anyone/thing on the other end we don’t balance out. It’s a spectrum thing. A spectrum between Self-loathing and Narcissism. We know that it’s not loving others to love ourself [and society looks down on ‘those self-lovers who only care about themselves], but it’s not loving of ourselves to love others too much more than ourself, or is it? And when we’re afraid we’ve completely got it wrong we’ll try to fix it by running to the other extreme like some game they might put on “Wipeout” where you have to keep some moving object in balance the whole time by placing yourself in the right spot. Added to that haze of self-love is this concept of self-worth. This comes with it’s own conundrum because we can’t seem to pin down a tangible measurement of this either - which leaves us using ‘human comparisons’ as a measurement! Can you see how it’s a dilemma? I could go on, but I think we all understand this at least to some extent because we’ve all experienced it at some point.

I find it really interesting that there are 2 commandments from God that include the notion of loving our-self [“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself" Matthew 22v37-39]. Yet, we usually overlook the 'as yourself' and focus on the rest of the commandments. I wonder if it’s because we just don’t understand how we can love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, as well as love our ‘neighbour’ while loving our-self. We have somehow told ourselves that loving something else requires sacrificing some of the love we have for our-self. Perhaps there is a level of truth in this, but what if we have not really understood it?

What if the truth is that we love ourselves more by loving God and other people, and we love God and other people more fully when we love our-self rightly? What if loving our-self rightly can only happen when we know the One who defines perfect love because He IS LOVE and the giver of perfect love?

This is something I am really keen to explore more. Perhaps you’ll explore it with me:)