The world is souring on self-love. The Church could make a better offer.
Photograph by Mayur Gala via Unsplash
Jen Collier
Love the Lord. Love others. These two simple sentences serve as the foundation of every upward and outward motion of the church body in response to the cross. This basic rhythm beats in our collective minds from the moment we start listening to the pastor speak. But what happens if we are missing something?
As yourself.
What if the omission of that one little clause has allowed a distortion to grow so loud that even the secular world is starting to take note? In a world where Time magazine is connecting dots between the self-love craze and loneliness, and university students are beginning to challenge the “cult of radical self-love,” we might feel justified in the stance that self-love only leads to sin. Or we might hold that the church doesn’t need to teach about self-love at all, because humans already know how to care for themselves. However, research suggests that some Christians have an ambivalent relationship with self-love stemming from tensions between self-love and beliefs about sin or pride. They could benefit from learning what it means to steward themselves.
So, one might begin to wonder: Is the problem that self-love leads to sin, or is the problem that Christians are ill-equipped to model a healthy version of self-love to a world seemingly obsessed with it? Is it possible that by omitting “as yourself,” we may have unwittingly created a vacuum that could only be filled by distortion?
For many Christians, self-love seems to operate like a coin toss: heads is self-indulgence, and tails is self-depletion. Therefore, if self-indulgent love is synonymous with sin, then pouring ourselves out to the point of dryness must be holiness.
But what if self-love were viewed as a continuum, with unhealthy versions of self-love that include both self-indulgence and self-depletion on one end, and a healthy version of self-love on the other? Self-indulgence comes at the cost of neither loving God nor loving others. Self-depletion comes from pouring out on others what God has not given us to pour. Some Christian psychological literature refers to this as an “ill-being cycle” similar to the secular concept of burnout.[i]
In both Matthew 22:39 and Luke 10:27, Jesus iterates that we are to love others as we love ourselves. This statement assumes that a settled self-regard is already established. Additionally, the as yourself provides a standard for what loving others looks like.
Just imagine if the body of Christ were humbly receiving the dignity and worth conferred by Jesus and holding ourselves with this level of self-compassion. And then turning around and treating every person we encountered with the same. It would be earth-shattering.
John 13 gives us the first clue to how we can define healthy self-love as this type of self-regard. This beloved passage has practically become a cliche in its instruction on how to love others by the washing of other people’s feet. When Jesus came to Peter to wash his feet, “Peter said to him, ‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered him, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’” (John 13:8). Peter has to receive, truly receive, what it was that Jesus was offering before he could then turn and offer it to another himself. The second clue quickly follows: what is conferred for us to receive?
Identity. We are adopted as his children (John 1:12, Galatians 4:4-7, Romans 8:15, 2 Corinthians 6:18).
Value. We are marked by the seal of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 1:13-14, 2 Corinthians 1:21-22).
Worth. We are his masterpieces (Ephesians 2:10, Psalm 139:14).
Dignity. We are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).
A third clue for how we treat what we receive is found in cultivation of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23. We treat ourselves with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
What we receive becomes the measure of what we can extend. A person who has truly taken in the dignity Jesus confers, who holds themselves with the gentleness of the Spirit, has a deep and steady well of self-regard to draw from when they turn toward their neighbor. But a person who refuses that level of self-regard is measuring their love of others against an empty well, and an empty well draws out nothing.
Just imagine if the body of Christ were humbly receiving the dignity and worth conferred by Jesus and holding ourselves with this level of self-compassion. And then turning around and treating every person we encountered with the same. It would be earth-shattering.
In 2023, 19% of young adults globally reported lacking social support, a number that has leapt 39% since 2006, and two in five U.S. high schoolers experience symptoms of depression. CDC data from 2024 reveals that 1 in 5 U.S. adults have been diagnosed with depression in their lifetime and another 1 in 5 have been diagnosed with anxiety. Contrast this with the 2025 World Happiness Report reiterating the finding that seeing demonstrable kindness in your community has more impact on happiness than the absence of violent crime or mental illness, or a higher income. Even more telling, other researchers found that motives oriented around serving others predicted higher life satisfaction than self-oriented motives, especially when done voluntarily versus from a sense of duty or pressure.
Love others as you would love yourself, not from depletion but from overflow. The world’s own data is describing the form of the scripture.
We live in a world where culture has handed us the choice between self-loathing and self-worship, and the church has a gap in evidence-based resources to effectively cultivate a third option. This leaves people with a lack of a stable measure from which to love others. They may have the compassion but lack the capacity.
The church has something better to offer. We just need to add it back into the rhythm.
Jen Collier (MSc, NBC-HWC) is co-founder of The Luke 10:28 Project and a researcher and practitioner working at the intersection of Christian psychology, coaching psychology, and positive psychology. Founded in her MSc research in Christian wellbeing, her work centers on whole-person flourishing through the call to love God, others, and self. Her work is grounded in theology, research, and experience, both personal and professional.
The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of American Baptist Home Mission Societies.
[i] Adams, C., & Bloom, M. (2017). Flourishing in ministry: Well-being at work in helping professions. Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 36(3), 254–259.
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