Self-love and love of self

This lack of mattering objectively, however, does not mean that the Christian, like the fanatic, ignores himself. He is not important to himself, true. The fanatic is not important to himself, because his "cause" is of such importance to him that his own reality is totally subordinated to it. He will run himself ragged, destroy his health, and so on, if it promotes the cause.

But the self is a creature too; and the Christian has God's attitude toward himself, just has he has God's attitude toward everything else. He has infinite respect for himself; he loves himself with God's love for him. He does not love himself with self-love, which is an assumption that he is "objectively important," but he accepts himself absolutely.

This is a hard saying. Those full of self-love usually hate themselves, in reality. Why? Because they fall short of what they could have been. All of us are perverse; all of us are rotten. We can either forget about our rottenness and cultivate a "healthy sense of self-importance," or we can face the facts about ourselves. If we care about what we are, facing the actual facts can be devastating.

But this is the opposite pole from accepting ourselves as God accepts us. I talked earlier about the Christian's acceptance of someone who is an alcoholic; how it means not looking on the person as "fallen" and trying to make him live up to his "better self," but accepting him as he is, absolutely. Suppose now you are the alcoholic yourself. Should you have any different an attitude toward yourself?

The answer is clearly no, if you are not of any special importance in the divine scheme of things--as you aren't. The alcoholic is trapped; he is willing to face the fact that he is trapped into degradation; and insofar as he is a Christian, this does not matter to him. He does what he can reasonably do to get out of the trap, to take whatever is the step he can take; but when he falls down carrying this cross, even for the second and third time, he does not curse himself for a bad cross-carryer and feel guilt. He picks himself up (if he can) and goes on (if he can), not knowing whether he will ever get out of his trap, or whether he will die before he gets to the hill where he will be nailed to the cross. If someone takes the cross off his back and carries it for him, he does not feel guilty because it's his cross and the burden has been placed on others; it is simply not important how well he bears his burden and what harm it is causing him and others; he accepts the situation and acts according to the reality, not according to some ideal.

It is much easier to accept others than to accept oneself. It is much easier to love others than to love oneself. But the Christian loves himself. He respects not only his "soul" but his body too; he does not become so engrossed in "charity" that he has no charity for himself and destroys himself in the process.

This is not to say that it is always wrong to wear yourself out for others. Just as killing another in self-defense is not wrong, because the death is not chosen; so there are times when the harm to the self can be ignored because of the greater good that comes to others. But the point is that the Christian will take himself into account also; he will take himself into account just as he takes everyone and everything else into account; and if the act he performs happens to benefit himself more than anyone else, he will not refuse to perform that act out of some notion of "altruism."

In that sense, the Christian, the absolute altruist, is the opposite of the "altruist" that Ayn Rand and Friedrich Nietzsche castigate. The Christian is by no means against himself or a hater of himself, or even an ignorer of himself. He simply does not consider himself as in a special position in God's universe; he is no more and no less deserving of respect than anyone else. The Randian and Nietzchean egoist, however, is in an essentially false position. That person considers himself to be the most important person, the goal of his actions; but this is only from his own point of view, and not from anyone else's--which are equally legitimate points of view. Thus, Rand's philosophy is not "objectivism," as she claims it to be; it is radical subjectivism. The subject acting, being faithful to all of its aspects (including respect for others' rights) is the goal and the only reason for acting: "to thine own self be true." But this is true only from this person's point of view; from everyone else's point of view, this person's fulfillment is irrelevant. So the subjectivity is objectivized; but it has not escaped subjectivity. It can't, if the self is the end.

But the Christian can act for his own fulfillment, because, loving himself as God does, he has infinite respect for himself. Why not act for his fulfillment? Not that it is objectively important, not that "God has given me these talents and it would be sinful to waste them," as if the talents were God's goal to be acheived; but just why not? Again, true love of self is trans-rational, not rational. It supports reason, but it is beyond it.

And since a human being is self-determining, then when he sets non-self-contradictory goals for himself and his world, these goals will be fulfilled eternally. So the Christian, who loves himself with Jesus' love, not only fulfills himself and his world here, he does so eternally. He has a hundred times as much in this life and life eternal. The best of both worlds.

Here is the Christian paradox with a vengeance. Because he does not matter to himself, the Christian will develop himself with greater zeal than the secular humanist or egoist--because he has infinite respect for himself, and he knows that his goals do not depend on chance, but on his choices here and now. And he will develop his world, because he knows that God has no goal for this world beyond the goals that we humans have for it; but that our eternal environment will be just exactly what we choose it to be--no more and no less.

Confident of ultimately achieving his goals, the Christian can face reality as the non-Christian cannot; the Christian has absolutely nothing to worry about. Reverses, oppressions, evils, simply do not matter. Not even the goals matter, objectively. It is all a game; but it is an interesting game; it is a beautiful game.

And this, of course, is the Christian witness. Life is not serious, but it is beautiful. With all the horror in the world, life is beautiful. The Christian can live this out; no one else can, because no one else integrates both the divine and the human way of looking at things.