The Fallacy of Self-Love
I’m an avid lover of action thriller movies especially those with kick-ass female leads. So, when the movie “The Old Guard” came out starring Charlize Theron as lead, I was all pumped up and excited.
Now if you’ve watched this movie on Netflix, without having had a preview of the trailer, I’m pretty sure the scene where you realised these warriors were immortal (they were ambushed and shot to death and got up after healing instantly🙀) had you “shook”. What struck me most about these group of immortal warriors was not just the state of immortality, but how through the centuries they had learnt all the arts of war and knew every thing about every part of the world.
There’s this striking scene where Charlize who is called Andromache of Scythia (The oldest in the team and over 6000 years old) single-handedly took down a team of armed SWAT guys. Now, when I was watching that scene, it was amazing how they came at her with guns, but she used hand combat, a sword, a gun, I mean any available weapon to singlehandedly take them down with such ease that left me in awe. In that moment, the Holy Spirit whispered to me “It’s because she has lived for over 6000 years, she’s perfected this craft even in modern centuries and so has the devil”.
I immediately sat up in my seat because it just hit me how much time the devil has had on earth to perfect his craft of deception which he began in the garden of Eden.
Now the devil approached Eve and made an offer to her, that if she ate of the fruit of the tree of life she will become wise like God. He did same to Jesus by offering Him wealth and power. It makes me wonder where the Devil had the idea of tempting us with self-gratification from.
Let’s look at what the Bible says about why the devil was thrown out from the presence of God in the first place; Ezekiel 28:17 NKJV
““Your heart was lifted up because of your beauty; You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor; I cast you to the ground, I laid you before kings, That they might gaze at you.”
The reason why the devil lost his place with God in the first place is because of self-gratification which in our modern era we colloquially term as “self-love”. Self-love has been defined as having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing your well being to please others and not settling for less than you deserve.
Basically focus on making yourself happy – cut off anyone who doesn’t contribute to that happiness.
The Bible says the devil got so enamored with his own beauty which puffed up his pride and this caused him to corrupt his wisdom for the sake of splendor. The devil started to seek his own happiness when he began to get enamored by his own beauty and splendor. This caused pride to well up in his heart and that was the problem.
His heart got lifted up because he started to focus on himself instead of God and that’s why iniquity was found in his heart. And ever since he lost his place with God, the devil has not stopped his mission of getting us to focus on self instead of God. Because he knows that is how to separate us from God by puffing up pride in our hearts.
Now here’s the point. The premise of self should never be the premise of love for the believer. Anything that’s starts from the prefix of self is contrary to the Christian. It is a deception from the pit of hell to re-invent the wheel of turning our hearts to seek gratifying ourselves before others. The devil is seeking to get us to focus only on ourselves and justify it with the tag of self-love. As believers, the essence of Christianity is death to self and a declaration of God’s Lordship over our lives. If Jesus wanted to practice self-love, trust me then He wouldn’t have died for us. But that’s the point, He showed us what true love is by dying to self and that’s exactly what God expects of us - death to self.
The premise for which you should love yourself is through the eyes of God and not your own self. If you love from the fountain of “self” you will run out because that’s a conditional love. You need to love from the fountain of God’s love because that’s what has been proven to be unconditional. While we were yet sinners Christ loved us and died for us.
Self-love is still conditional love because it makes you want to feel accepted and “safe”. If loving yourself was enough, then why need Jesus? Jesus came to show us what true love is - death to self. Christ is the standard - you cannot love yourself better than Christ can love you.
Self-love is saying I can love myself better than how Christ loves me and that’s a lie from the pit of hell. It is prudent to embrace God’s love, and not self-love. Self love comes with rules and conditions to make yourself feel “safe” and accepted. God’s love says you don’t need to do anything. I’ve paid the price. You’re perfect in me. You’re wonderfully made in me.
Let’s not jump on trends because it’s trendy; as believers we need to ask ourselves what does this trend seek to achieve? Self-love is so alluring and subtle that you don’t see that your attention is being drifted from God unto yourself- and that’s the modus operandi of the devil.
Honestly, I grew up with a lot of insecurities especially about my weight and physique so I consciously decided to embark on this journey of routines to make me embrace myself. But I realised it was exhausting and still fake because it felt like I was trying to prove a point. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit convicted me by telling me; “anything that starts from the premise of self fails”.
Until I embraced God’s love and truly began to embrace how He loves me, then I
was able to also love people the way He does. David understood this and so in Psalms 139:14 he said “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.”
This was the verse God used to convict me. David said “and that my soul knows very well”. You need to accept that the premise of your beauty, wisdom, personality and perfection etc is God. It’s not just that you’re wonderfully and fearfully made and so you have own it and flaunt it. First give God praise because he is the source of it. You see yourself through His workmanship and praise Him for it always.
Next, you make sure your soul - your mind, will, intellect and emotions know this and accept it!! You will see that you won’t need to prove to others that you are loved because you have fully embraced God’s love and accepted to love others just as He loves you. Of course do pay attention to your appearance, body hygiene, health and fitness but don’t let the goal of practicing such routines be to make yourself happy or fit into a societal perspective of how you should look.
Some of us started this self-love journey because we felt we have to love ourselves enough so people will not be able to take advantage of us. But sweetheart, that’s you trying to be wise in your own eyes like how the devil tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. What you don’t realise is that, in your quest to be wise in your own eyes, you are no longer loving in the nature of God or exuding the nature of love God has given you because it has made you prideful. You have chartered the path of the devil to self-gratification. Don’t fall for the trap of falling in love with your temple (body) – the focus should always be glory unto God and not yourself.
Don’t be confident in your love for yourself else you will fail yourself. The goal should be to be confident in God’s love for you and embrace that. The premise for loving yourself should not be to get enamored with your beauty and splendor, but to fall more deeply in love with the source of your beauty - God. The plan of the devil is to keep us more focused on our flaws through this façade of self-love so we don’t see ourselves as Christ sees us and keep us in a maze of pride in ourselves. The devil is an Andromache - He has spent centuries on earth to perfect the craft of deception by getting us to focus on always gratifying ourselves. Reject the lie of the devil today. Embrace God’s love now and always.
Your friends,
Becky and Sharon.
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