DEVOTION / No need to love yourself

Google "love yourself." You'll find more advice on why self-love is important than you can read in a day. (My search found “about 4,690,000,000 results.”)

The thought is: if you love yourself, you can love others.

But is that true? How much attention should we pay to developing a love affair with ourselves?

Rod Busch, a friend of 316NOW, says self-love is not the key to loving other people.

After Good Friday's worship service, I got to thinking about all the people who say you need to love yourself before you can love others.

Knowing myself better than anyone else, I'd have to overlook some things in order to love myself.

My favorite Bible passage is from 1 John 3 where God has said, "When your heart condemns you, God is greater than your heart."

So I can say, "I don't have the need to love myself, because God, who knows even more about me than I myself know about me, loves me. He proved it on the cross. I don't have to love myself in order to love others. I don't have to love myself even for peace and joy in my life. The reason: I know God the Father, Son, and Spirit love me. That is enough."