Love Thy Neighbour - Yeah Right

I’ve been struggling a bit lately with the notion of loving one’s neighbour as oneself. 

Now, you’ll find very few people will disagree that this was one of Jesus’ (and by extension, God’s) most resonant and compelling commandments. Even people who don’t believe in Jesus as the son of God are generally happy to accept he was “some good guy with some good ideas”, and can’t really argue with this notion. This is why you’ll often hear people say “I’m not a Christian, but I am a good person and I like to think I follow those principles” – who can argue with the ideal of loving thy neighbour? (For the purposes of this talk, I’m not going to take psychopaths and sociopaths into consideration. I’m talking about us – Joe Everyman.)

I’ve been thinking about this principle on several levels. It wasn’t immediately clear to me whether it’s saying “love your neighbour to the degree that you love yourself” or “love your neighbour as you would wish them to love you” but even if we accept it means both – and both make a lot of sense and are quite realistic – it occurred to me that this throws up some real complications in practice.

I don’t love myself 

When you’re having a bad day – how easy it is to see the world in an angry, jaundiced view and feel as though you hate the world. We all know how this is. Everyone’s an idiot! And suddenly everybody has ugly hair, and wears awful clothes and talks with a slovenly accent and is really selfish (how many times I find myself screaming silently “Say ‘thank you’ when I hold the door for you, you moron!”). Which kind of cancels out the grace in my original gesture. Sometimes I can pick my own mood based on how I interact with fellow drivers in the city on any given day…

It makes sense that this is purely a reflection of how we feel about ourselves at that time. Everyone has bad days from time to time, we can’t see the good in everyone (or in ourselves) all of the time. It’s just notable that when we do feel good – whether loved by ourselves or by others or buoyed up by something positive that’s just happened to us – it’s much easier to feel warmly towards others. You smile patiently at the slow people getting on the bus ahead of you, faffing about with their change and asking the driver charmingly naive questions about which route he’s going to take. You give people your parking space and your still valid Pay & Display ticket as you’re driving off. You simply blank out the person chomping popcorn in your ear at the cinema, rather than turning to glare at them every few minutes.

(Actually – no you don’t. No amount of feeling good about oneself exonerates the popcorn chomper, I’m sorry to say.)

But similarly when you don’t love yourself, your disgruntlement with fellow man is a reflection of how you see yourself. So, often in your low times, you don’t have the expectation that others will or even should love you. We see examples of people with low self-worth all over our society, putting themselves (or allowing themselves to stay) in negative situations that seem to say “I’m not worth more anyway, so this is fine – this is just how it is” – or even worse, if they’ve been conditioned by experience to feel “I deserve this”. In turn, their situation, be it an abusive domestic relationship or the potentially dangerous or demeaning job of working on the streets, often exacerbates their feelings of low worth. “This is all I’m good for, I don’t deserve more so I shan’t demand better.”

What I’m talking about here is not the essence of someone’s choice of job or relationship – but their motivation for doing or being in it. If something is harmful or negative, we need to have pretty strong notions of “being worth more than this” in order to move away from that situation into something better.

SO – the big problem here is: if you don’t love yourself, why should anyone else be expected to love you? I’m not so much talking about the unconditional love that a parent may have for a child, but more the consensual, informed love that we crave from our friends, family and partner. “He knows all my foibles and loves me anyway”. “My friend and I had a massive row but we’ve sorted it out and it’s all good now because we go way back, and have been close forever”. Although, having said that, perhaps I am talking about the unconditional love you hope a parent will have for a child: I got a tattoo a few months ago, and haven’t yet told my fathe—he’s old school, not keen on tattoos full-stop but certainly can’t stand them on women, and I know he’ll be disappointed and it might upset him. I’ve tried, in a semi-joking way, testing the waters – “Dad, if a daughter of yours did something you weren’t happy about but it was important to them, would you love them anyway?” and he replied, equally semi-joking (I think!) “um? No, I don’t think so…” so I still haven’t got much further with my little revelation! But if I think about it, in moments when I feel strong in myself and full of resolve and self-worth, I think – for goodness sake, it’s ridiculous to think he would be anything more than a little disappointed for a while – but it certainly wouldn’t impact on his love for me, or our relationship.

(Although - if any fathers of tattooed daughters need to advise me otherwise, please see me afterwards…)

ANYWAY. Point being: if I don’t love myself, how on earth can I expect or hope that you will love me? And more to the point of this sermon: if I don’t love myself, how am I to love my inconsiderate neighbour, thoughtless friends, critical family, distant partner, difficult colleague, rude Auckland driver, annoying man on the bus – whether in the manner that I love myself, or in the manner I would wish them to love me?

At times in my life, I’ve generally been really good at loving people – those in my life, as well as the strangers I encounter day to day. I have thrown myself into friendships and romantic relationships and given the person everything: my energy, my time, my passion, my care. I listen for hours, give advice (sometimes misconstrued as “instruction”), I try to solve problems, make things better, give and love. This may be largely true, but in any event this is certainly “my story”, as we say in therapy terms, so this is how I see it. And then comes the crushing disappointment when a relationship ends or a friendship lets me down, and I might think “but I gave them all that?”

I’ve had quite a tough few months lately; in fact the last year has probably been the most difficult emotionally of my life thus far. When I first thought about talking on this topic, a while ago, I was still in such a state that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to talk to you without getting quite emotional. And I know that most of us here have either been through difficult times in our lives, maybe in our recent past, or are going through something right now, that really challenges us: our faith, our sense of self, our love and care for ourselves, and our ability to see the world and our fellow humans in a warm glow.

It was as a result of feeling really, really low for quite some time, and sometimes not being able to find those moments of openness and love for those in my life, that I was suddenly struck by the seeming unfairness of this most significant of God’s commandments to us. Love your neighbour as yourself. Well, that’s all very well – but what if I don’t love myself? How on earth am I supposed to get there? What about all the people in my life who don’t love themselves fully eithe—why would God set us this task, which makes so much sense on paper, if He also knew that our lives would be broken and troubled and often full of strife, that we would be wounded and hurt and frequently languishing – unable to truly love ourselves, and therefore (surely) letting down His commandment?

I was riffing on this dilemma to someone recently, with some indignation – what’s the deal with this Bible verse?? How can I love others if I can’t love myself right now? Didn’t God think of that??

And my friend said to me – um - what’s the beginning of that verse, Sarah?

And I was like “oh, it’s something like Love the Lord thy God, and love thy neighbour as thyself”. Well, in fact, the verse (Matthew 22:37 – 40) goes like this:

37Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[b] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[c] 40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Ohhh! Of course then. If you love God, His love of you will enable you to love yourself, and in turn love others, as He commands. It’s that simple. Case closed. Thank you very much. (Pretends to leave podium)

(Returns to podium)

The thing is: sometimes the difficult times can also challenge our ability to love God. Depending on your perspective in times of trial, God may either be to blame for everything that befalls you and is therefore letting you down by not protecting you or answering your prayers. Or, it’s absolutely not His fault as you’re the one to blame for everything, you brought this upon yourself, you don’t deserve better anyway, and frankly you’re just glad He even wants a bar of you when you’re like this. Not that you’re sure He does, because you can’t really feel His presence, but if He doesn’t then that’s OK too, because who can blame Him…

I don’t know about you, but even at my lowest ebb, and when I’m feeling so distant from God that I have no meaningful connection with Him, no tangible notion of His presence, I don’t pray, I’m completely at sea in my own troubled waters – by some miracle I still believe in Him, and I know, somehow, that He is loving me regardless. Somehow I just know in my heart that He hasn’t abandoned me for being absent or distant, and like a patient father, He is saddened by my sadness and ready to welcome me with open arms the moment I ask. And for me personally, this knowledge gives me a confidence and a strength to reapproach God when things look really bleak and hopeless. It’s hard – sometimes we may have no real feeling or assurance that He’s heard us or that He’s there. But I guess this is where faith comes in to it (and perhaps, dare I call it, blind faith) – just knowing it to be true, even in times when it can’t be felt. And then one day you find yourself washed along into shallower, more peaceful waters, the storm has passed (even if momentarily) and you can feel assured that God is there with you, and has been there with you throughout the tumult.

It’s a pretty profound thing to be loved despite everything, unconditionally, regardless of what you do or think or say, or whether you got a tattoo. (Incidentally – only after I’d got The Lord bless thee and keep thee engraved on my arm, did the little old Christian man with the ukulele and the headscarfed wife on Queen Street give me stern words one Friday night and advise me to pray about it – my not being well-versed in Old Testament rules about the body being one’s temple etc. – although honestly, I was like “it’s a tattoo. What can I do about it now??”)

But I know that even if God is going “oh Sarah…” as my earthly father probably will when I tell him, He loves me regardless. And sometimes that feels pretty profound. God’s love of me in turn shows me that I am lovable, that there is something special and precious about me regardless of what I may feel or what I am doing in my life. I am therefore lovable by myself and others, and that knowledge and reassurance in turn enables me to spread that love outwards to my neighbours.

Suddenly it all makes sense.