Learning to truly love oneself could be viewed as self-seeking or selfish, but if you are putting into practice true love, you will have no room for selfishness. If you are self-seeking, you will not be patient or kind. You will become envious, boastful, and proud. When you only focus on yourself and making sure you have everything you want, it will make you become a person who is obsessed with being first.
We all know someone that always has to have it their way. They have to be right in every situation, we have to eat where they want to, we have to adjust our schedule to accommodate them…They control the entire way everything goes when we are around them. Do you like people like that? I sure don’t! They are selfish and self-seeking. They make sure that they are comfortable everywhere they go before anyone else.
True love, true Godly love, has no room for self-seeking behavior. One of the most well-known passages on love in the Bible comes from John 15:13, “Greater love has no one that this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” There is no room for self-seeking behavior in this passage. What if God had chosen to be selfish and not give us his son? “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Loving one another without seeking what is best for yourself does not mean that you do not love yourself. It is quite the opposite; by being someone that seeks to help others, you will be able to understand more and more how God loves us. All of us at some point in our lives have chosen to do something selfish. My grandfather likes to tell a story about when I was child. He would give me a candy bar to split between myself and my sister. I would unwrap the candy bar and break it in half. If the two halves where not perfectly even, I would make sure that they were divided equally. Now, one might think I would break the extra piece again to ensure evenness, but oh no, that is not what I would do. I would eat any extra piece to make sure each side was even and then give my sister the other half. Were they divided evenly at this point? Yes, they were. Did I selfishly eat the extra part? Yes, yes I did. I know that is a very basic example of self-seeking behavior, but we carry over that same way of thinking into our adult life. We make sure that we get ours off the top. We make sure to take ours first in order to get the best. Always trying to get the best, or be the first, will become exhausting.
Love will never be selfish. Even when you are learning to love yourself. Focusing on not trying to be first and always get the best will give you a peace and a calmness with yourself. You will be able to understand love much deeper than before.
This week’s recipe is a yummy southwestern dish with spaghetti squash and chicken. It is a winner! We love it in our house. As always, feel free to use whatever meat and veggies that your family loves to make this dish your own.
“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” 1 John 4:9-11.
April 19, 2024
