Lucille Ball said, “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” While Ms. Ball played a funny character on a popular TV show, there’s nothing amusing about that quote. Unfortunately, that line of thinking seems to have become universal. Robert Morley wrote, “To fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness.” According to Rupi Kaur, “How you love yourself is how you teach others to love you.”
While, presumably, these people are well-meaning, they fail to make an important distinction between self-love and contentment. The former places “self” at the center of the issue and the latter focuses on God. Self-love asks, “How do you feel about you? Do you believe you are attractive? Do you like your personality? Shouldn’t you have the success that you deserve?” In each of those reflective questions the standard is self. The Bible firmly opposes that way of thinking. “Then Jesus told His disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (Mt. 16:24). What’s more, Scripture tells Christians to dispose of that past-life mindset. “Put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (Eph. 4:22-23).
There are many examples of self-love gone wrong in the Bible. When God did not have regard for Cain’s offering, his love of self was manifested in jealous anger. He accommodated it by rising up against his brother and killing him. Ahab did not struggle with self-love. He gratefully took possession of a vineyard that he coveted after its rightful owner was murdered to free up the claim. David was captivated by self-love when he took another man’s wife and then calculated how to have her husband killed. The biblical record is filled with the names of those that put self-love into sinful action.
The truth is that the world longs for the fruit of the Spirit as long as they can replace the Spirit with themselves. People want the fruit and the credit. In this case, the biblical virtue of contentment is the mechanism to achieve the goals the self-love quotes are going after. Instead of looking at yourself to determine your degree of satisfaction, contentment finds satisfaction in what God has decided and provided. Consider a modification to the quotes above.
“[When you strive for godly contentment] everything else falls into line. You really have to [be satisfied with God] to get anything done in this world.”
“To [be content with God’s providence] is the first secret to happiness.”
“How you [exercise godly contentment] is how you teach others to [enjoy godly contentment].”
Now those are some useful quotes!
Self-love drives a person to submit to one’s own desires like Cain, Ahab and David. But godly contentment drives a person to submit to God’s good and perfectly executed will. In fact, there is an indirect proportional relationship between the two. As godly contentment increases, self-love decreases, and vice-versa. This principle is at play in John 3:30, “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Also, in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” The two philosophies are in direct conflict with each other.
You are constantly subjected to the refrain “You’re number one,” “You deserve more,” and the message that any sacrifice is acceptable if it is offered at the altar of your personal happiness. The world is indoctrinating a self-love ideal to any who’ll listen. Recognize the tactic and reject it, knowing also that a repudiation of that ideology is not self-hate, but godly contentment.
We are not called to self-loathing. After the biblical mandate to deny self, is the positive command to “follow Me.” After the instruction to put off your old, deceitful desires is the directive to be “renewed in the spirit of your minds.” Even at the point of conflict when you must choose between two masters, the choice to hate the world is a simultaneous choice to love God. Following Christ, a renewal of spirit and loving God are the Christian’s antidotes to the poisonous doctrine of self-love. You may love Lucy, but don’t adopt her position on love of self or one day you’ll find you have some ‘splaning to do.
But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. (1 Tim. 6:6–8)