We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.
One of the greatest challenges our modern society faces is our overwhelming focus on self.
Evidence of this predisposition to self is found in the language we use to define a meaningful life. We seek self-fulfillment and self-actualization; we are encouraged to engage in self-care, self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-motivation, and even self-transcendence, which though it suggests a rising above ourselves, it is really about seeking to experience self-directed benefits.
All this selfness can easily lead to self-centeredness, something the modern generation softens by referring to it as self-love.
Self-love sounds perfectly appropriate on the surface. Indeed, it is the central theme of much of our self-help literature. There is even a Valentine’s Day advertisement advocating the foregoing of love for another in favor of sending that special Valentine to ourselves.
All this focus on self often leads to mindsets and behaviors that can damage and even destroy our relationships with others. We can quickly become the center of our own universe, and the implications of our focusing inward can be frightening.
These concerns and their consequences were well understood and revealed in the wisdom of Scripture.
But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days. People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious. (2 Timothy 3:1-2)
This verse reads like the front page of every major newspaper and online news source.
Now to be clear, the modern generation did not invent the self-love, and we are not the first to fall into its vices. The above list of human faults has been with us since before the time of Christ. But we are unique in how much emphasis we place on pursuing contentment and fulfillment through love of self.
The ancient and proven wisdom of Scripture offers a dramatically different approach to enriching our lives and realizing the fulfillment of the human person.
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30)
We are all familiar with this verse, but just what does it mean to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
If we think about the way a child responds to a parent, the fullest expression of love is the child’s simple trust that their parent desires and knows what is best for them. God’s love for us works the same way. To love our Father is to accept His will for our lives. And it is to remain in His love and allow Him to love us in a way that is better than the way we might choose to love ourselves.
We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. (1 John 4:16)
The greatest risk to an overreliance on self-love is not just that we risk loving ourselves to the exclusion of others, though that is a possibility. The real harm is that in choosing self-love, we exclude our Heavenly Father’s opportunity to love us in the most perfect way we can be loved. And it is only by allowing the Father to love us that we will learn perfect love.
We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
The sole objective for human existence is to be perfected in love; this is our raison d'être.
Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)
We must allow God to love us, to remain in us, to make us perfect in love. It is only in that way we can come to love ourselves and others perfectly.
Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is brought to perfection in us. (1 John 4:12)
Copyright © 2025, Deacon Mark Danis
Image credit: "Christ showing his sacred heart," Jean Baptiste Bethune, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons