Tag Archives: Neighbor

Lighting Matches Part 3: Start Here

The big picture of America today is intense. One look at the price of gas and my anxiety shoots up right along with those numbers! War, government shutdown, and voting redistricting ramp up emotions. Every day uncovers a new crisis!

Here’s the thing. You cannot control what happens in the world, but you are in charge of how you respond when your own anxiety rises.

We began this series by zooming out. In an effort to look beyond the reactive, emotional intensity in our nation, I described America as a gas-filled room where people keep lighting matches. This way of thinking is called systems thinking.

Systems thinking challenges you to be thoughtful instead of reactive – to look beyond the immediate, flammable frustration (war, shutdown, redistricting) and investigate the cause of the gas leak, or the anxiety. It is easy to get upset when a match is lit. It is more difficult to slow down, notice what else is going on, and decide how to respond.

Last week, I wrote that in emotionally intense times, hate binds people together. When anxiety rises and emotions are ramped up, we join a group – maybe adhere ourselves to a political party, or become a Swiftie. The options are endless! Instead of slowing down to think through what “I” believe and value, “we” remain stuck together by our intense feelings.1

One more summary of the first two posts in this series:

  1. We zoomed out to confirm that we live in an anxious society. The individual, flammable frustrations (war, shutdown, redistricting) are not the problem, the problem is the gas filling the room.
  2. We confirmed that in anxious times, we react quickly rather than respond thoughtfully, and find our “tribe.” When emotions ramp up, we tend to rely more on intense feelings of togetherness than on our best, individual thinking, leaving society stuck in the gas-filled room.

What now? Knowing that you can only control how you respond and nothing else, what path might you take out of the gas-filled room?

The path out of the gas-filled room begins at your doorstep.

Let’s zoom back in, all the way into your neighborhood.

Ben Sasse is a former Republican senator of Nebraska. In an interview with 60 Minutes, he spoke of mending the brokenness of politics by starting where you live. Rather than getting caught up in the impossible, big political arguments, think neighbor-to-neighbor. “I think your fundamental political community is your neighborhood, and your city hall and maybe even your state legislature.”

Neighbor-to-neighbor is actually something you and I can work on; it is one path you and I can take to thoughtfully slow down and respond, instead of quickly react in this anxious moment in America’s life. Start in your own neighborhood.

A few years ago, I told the story of a failed attempt at a neighborhood get-together one summer. A couple of years later, the results were different. Marcus and I hosted 25 or so neighbors in our backyard.

It was a casual pizza party.2 Kids played. Neighbors young and old chatted. The group included a cyber security expert, doctor, teachers, retired folks, an oil field employee and a rowdy group of kids, among others.

I believe neighborhoods are safer when we take time to get to know one another, neighbor-to-neighbor. What do you believe about neighborhoods?

A casual pizza party will not fix war, shutdowns or redistricting. It will not immediately fix the gas leak in anxious America. Yet, it is one small step toward mending the brokenness.

I believe that professing I am a Christian requires me to be invested in my neighborhood – to look up and down the street for neighbors to get to know, even to rely on at times.

The big picture of America may be intense. Remember, your sole responsibility is not to fix it, but to decide how you might thoughtfully respond. Instead of lighting a match, or letting another match ramp you up, let the light of Christ guide you into the way of peace – peace for you and for your neighbor.

Photo by Marcus Moore on Unsplash

  1. Of course, there are times in a society when matches need to be lit: slavery must end, women must vote, LGBTQ people must be recognized as human beings. There are matches that need to be lit for the sake of justice, don’t get me wrong. Here, I am focusing on lighting matches that are not thoughtful or productive, but reactive to the anxiety. ↩︎
  2. In this blog post, I shared that Shannan Martin wrote one of my favorite books on this subject. ↩︎

Lighting Matches Part 2: When a President Hates

What happens when a president speaks aggressively against particular groups of people? You have a few options:

  1. Join in and light more matches!
  2. Or, as long as you are not part of that group, you can ignore it.
  3. Or, you can slow down, notice the gas leak, and get curious about this word from systems thinking (Bowen theory): togetherness.

When a crisis strikes a community, people come together – shoveling driveways after a winter storm or hauling away a neighbor’s debris in the aftermath of a tornado. It is natural for human beings to come together for the common good.

It is also natural for human beings to come together when emotions are ramped up and society becomes a gas-filled room. We gravitate toward like-minded people who do not challenge our thinking, but affirm our thinking. In this kind of togetherness, we seek the company of those who agree and make us feel comfortable and correct. This way, we can like and dislike the same sorts of people.

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.”1

Hate can be a product of the togetherness force. We experience this…

  • within families (in our family, we hate when people add vegetables to tater tot hotdish),
  • or among friends (we cannot stand the White Sox2),
  • or at work (the competitor is our mortal enemy),
  • or in church (God forbid our grandchildren ever convert to that other dreadful religion),
  • or in society (if you do not belong to my political party, you are so very Wrong).

The togetherness force allows us to hate with others and not alone. It is more comfortable to surround ourselves with people who would not upset the hate vibe, but simply agree in order to keep peace in the group. And, you guessed it, the silent gas leak in American society persists when we rely on this sort of unhealthy togetherness.

When we rely on hate to bind a group together, we join in ramping up emotions when it might be better to slow down and think alone. The group becomes a clump of people instead of individual, thoughtful selves.

Instead of blindly agreeing with the group, you might do some research on your own. Get curious and ask yourself whether the White Socks are really so bad. (Jim Thome, after all.) You can look at the group you are part of (family, friend group, political party, church, etc.) and recognize that a healthy group not only allows for individual thinking, but even individual, respectful disagreement.

When you step back from the group and ask your self some questions, this is called the individuality force.

You are your own person with your own unique beliefs, principles, values and goals. But when you are fused to a group (a political party, family, church, or friend group, etc…) and emotions ramp up, it becomes extremely difficult (like a camel going through the eye of a needle) to manage your own thinking without letting your emotions take the lead.

  • Consider a subject you feel particularly passionate about these days. How much of your thinking has been inherited from your family or borrowed from a group?
  • Consider a group you are formally or informally part of. Does this group bring out your best self and encourage you to stick to your principles? Or is it so emotional to be part of this group that you aren’t quite sure just what you believe when you are with this group?

A group of any sort that encourages hate is suspect. Hate is antithetical to the Christian faith.

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. (1 John 4:20)

  1. Beartown by Fredrick Backman, Chapter 35 ↩︎
  2. This is a baseball given, said any Twins fan ever ↩︎

Photo by Morgan Caradec on Unsplash

Lighting Matches: When the President Portrays Himself as Jesus

Consider this image: An enclosed room with a silent gas leak. No one notices the gas until a troublemaker lights one match, and then another. The match matters—but the greater danger is the invisible gas filling the room.

This is called systems thinking. Instead of focusing on the troublemaker lighting matches, it would be more effective to address the gas leak.

Why in the world am I telling you such a strange story?! Let me explain.

I write blogposts to invite you to be thoughtful in your relationships with family, colleagues, friends and neighbors. Relationships, as you well know, can get tense. When there is tension (also called anxiety) in a relationship and emotions ramp up, words or actions that would otherwise be no big deal are suddenly flammable. Examples:

  • Your co-worker left colored paper in the copy machine (a match is lit) and now your agendas are neon pink. Normally, you would recall the 80’s and laugh, but…you lose your cool.
  • Your kiddo spilled a full glass of milk at the dinner table (a match is lit). Most nights, you understand kids are clutzy, but…you cry big tears over spilled milk.

Systems thinking challenges us to be thoughtful instead of reactive – to look beyond the immediate, flammable frustration and investigate what is causing the gas leak, or the anxiety. It is easy to get upset when a match is lit. It is more difficult to slow down, look around the relationship, and wonder what else is going on.

If we investigate those examples, we can see what else is going on.

  • Your co-worker left colored paper in the copy machine and now your meeting agendas are neon pink, but because your dog kept you up last night, your car payment is overdue, and your grandma is sick, (the gas-filled room) you lose your cool.
  • Your kiddo spilled a full glass of milk at the dinner table, but because you are anxiously waiting for the doctor to get back to you with test results (the gas-filled room), you cry big tears over spilled milk.

You can see it is easier to react to the match lighting and harder to investigate what else is adding to the anxiety or tension, resulting in a gas-filled room. Here is another example:

  • The president posts a meme of himself as the Son of God…and people. go. nuts.

I am less interested in the content of this blasphemous post in which my own president portrays himself as the Son of God among exclusively white people. It’s just a match being lit. However, I would like to investigate what is filling the room with gas.

  • The president posts a meme of himself as the Son of God, at the same time trust in institutions has been depleted, social media speeds up our reactions to the news, news is posted in real time and not always accurately, the rich and powerful have left the poor and unemployed in the dust, and people. go. nuts.

America today is a gas-filled room and people (not only the president) keep lighting matches. The people lighting matches may be looking for trouble, but the greater trouble is the flammable gas all around us.

Wouldn’t you like to investigate the gas leak and how we, as a nation, might address the leak? The Christian faith requires each individual to consider how we are faithful citizens outside of church building. Let’s investigate:

  • How is social media ramping up emotions in the United States? (match-lighting)
  • How are smart people get duped by ridiculous claims and memes on the internet? (match-lighting)
  • How do “Christians” seem to overlook the president’s significantly un-Christian motives and actions? (match-lighting)

Putting out small fires is not as effective as addressing the gas leak. With the leak under control, troublemakers could light matches with little to no effect.

But today, as long as there is invisible gas filling the society, America will react and not thoughtfully respond to each match.

Circling back, I write blogposts to get you thinking about your relationships and what happens when there is tension or anxiety.

This three-part series is meant to get you thinking about how you as a person of faith and a citizen want to move through time of tension and anxiety as matches are lit in a gas-filled United States of America.

I also write blogposts to invite you to rely on Jesus’ tender love for you. When you rely on Jesus’ tender love in our own life, you may be more compassionate with others and the gas leak may begin to close.

The president’s blasphemous meme is not the problem, it’s just a match being lit. There is more going on as emotions keep ramping up. I wonder what might happen if each of us were to investigate the leak, that is, to do our best, most faithful-filled, individual thinking and rely on the tender love of Jesus for ourselves and for our neighbors.

Two posts will follow this one:
Part Two: The danger of relying on emotions and sharing a common enemy
Part Three: A thoughtful, Christian, neighborly response to this time in America

P.S. As I offer this invitation to think more clearly as individuals, I welcome your feedback, and your own thinking and wondering as we move through this season of America’s life. Please comment or message me directly if that is most comfortable for you. Your thinking helps my thinking, as we rely on the tender love of Jesus together.

A Time for Every Matter…But Not Every Matter Matters

If you were to ask me what a pastor does, I would say we tend to the matters named in Ecclesiastes, chapter three: birth and death, planting and harvesting, weeping and laughing, tearing (broken relationships) and sewing (mending relationships), love and hate, war and peace.

I was 26 when I was ordained at Holy Nativity Lutheran Church in New Hope, Minnesota, a most welcoming and gracious first call congregation. With them, I tended to the chapter three matters: walked with the grieving, celebrated the new births, prayed with those tearing or mending relationships, and prayed for peace in this forever war-torn world.

Twenty-six!!!??!!! Good Lord, who was I to walk with people through these matters that matter so much in our lives? “You are a pastor? You look like a teenager.” I did! Who was I to help people comprehend life matters?

The privilege of seeing all at once so many matters that mattered shaped my understanding of what matters. Not every matter matters. Some do, some do not.

My spiritual director might point out here that I am speaking of letting go. What matters in life is what we keep and what we throw away (Ecclesiastes 3:6b). We tend to keep matters that do not matter.

What matter matters so much to you when perhaps you should let it go?

  • It is a physical matters matter? Are you holding onto possessions that get in your way? Or spending money on things that serve little purpose in your life? Are you keeping house more than you are keeping relationships with the people who live with you or near you?
  • Is it a relationship matter? Does an old grudge matter so much that it gets in the way of your other relationships? Or are you so swept up in work matters that you go home without truly connecting with another human being?
  • Is it a faith matter? Imagine your life as though you could trust God more than anything or anyone else. Imagine your life as though the things that don’t really matter, really do not matter! This gives you margin to tend to the matters that do matter.

Perhaps there are few things that do matter, once we sift through what doesn’t matter.

  • What we have does not matter as much. What matters is that we take care of what we do have.
  • Where we live does not matter. What matters is that we live with love for our neighbors.
  • The one to whom you belong matters – the one in whom you can put your trust, who has claimed you as one who matters.

To God, your every matter matters.

Photo by Jorgen Hendriksen on Unsplash

A Cookie Contradiction

My daughter baked these lovely sprinkle cookies. She is a near-master of the Crumbl knock-off recipes, which was the answer to my husband’s question a few months ago: “Why in the world do we have so much flour?”

The cookies are as good as they look…most of the time.

Always the willing taste-tester, she handed me one after it had cooled. At first, I could not describe what I was tasting. It looked sweet, yet the taste did not match. A weird contradiction clung to the roof of my mouth.

“You should try these,” I told her, or warned her, before she took them over to her grandpa for his birthday.

“What do you mean?”

“Just…try one.”

When she did, her face matched my perplexed tastebuds. What was this odd, perhaps even savory flavor competing with the rainbow specks of sweetness?

After some deliberation, we realized the culprit was the cutting board. She had asked if I thought it was okay to set the cookies to cool on the cutting board instead of dragging out the cooling racks, an act of injustice we will never again commit.

I did not consider the onions and garlic that had been chopped up for something, probably soup, just a few days before. Those savory flavors rose up in delight, invading the warm sweetness of the cookies like a sneak-attack, flavor-massacre.

Luckily, setting them back on the baking sheet for an hour or so seemed to undo the disaster. I did appreciate the lesson.

Human beings, like those cookies, are absorbent. Without realizing it, we soak up the sweet or spicy flavor of the spaces in which we gather. We can easily absorb both loving and unloving attitudes toward the world and our neighbor from those with whom we spend our time in-person and online.

“You are what you eat,” is perhaps a simpler way to say all of this. Hang out with angry people and we absorb that anger. Hang out with joyful people and we absorb that joy. Hang out with people who are curious, or kind, or bitter, or hateful and we will find ourselves like that cookie: one thing on the outside and another on the inside.

The slipperiest part of being human is that you think you can change another person, but you cannot. You can try to make the angry person less angry, or the bitter person less bitter, however, without even noticing, those exact flavors have a way of sneaking in from the cutting board and shaping who you are and how you see the world and your neighbor.

What flavors would you like to absorb as you live your life with people?

For years, I have prayed with this New Zealand Prayer Book, a prayer book my internship supervisor first introduced. The ELCA lacks in prayer books, unlike our friends in Christ who are Roman Catholic or Episcopalian, which is the source of this prayer book. A few months ago, I tried to be more disciplined in reading the morning and evening prayers daily. As these things go for me, most days I remembered and other days I did not. I am no champion of perfection.

I can tell you that on the days I start and end with these prayers, it feels as though the day fully begins and ends with the Lord. Dare I say it is absorbing! The morning and evening prayers of each day are tied together and somehow, each prayer has spoken directly to my life, as the Holy Spirit has a habit of doing.

Here are two wonderings for you to absorb:

  • Consider the people with whom you spend your time at home, work, and wherever you go for fun. What might you be absorbing? What is the same or different in each setting?
  • What are you absorbing in the time you spend online? Does it make life sweeter when you spend time wherever you do online? Or would you like to reconsider what you prefer to absorb when you travel around the internet?

Imaginary Enemies

I hope I wasn’t the only one who grew up with imaginary friends. I also had real live friends, but my two imaginary friends were the most reliable. Always there when I needed them!

Since then, both of them have moved on, or I have moved on. Perhaps both.

There comes a time when the imaginary people must move on, and we must move on. Definitely both.

Just as there are reliable, imaginary friends, there are reliable, imaginary enemies. People we have pitted against us, even though they may not even exist. Imagined enemies we have learned to hate.

I noticed when our president spoke against imaginary enemies in his eulogy for Charlie Kirk. His words reminded me of Fredrick Backman’s definition of hate in his novel, “Beartown.”

Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes much easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn’t through love, because love is hard. It makes demands. Hate is simple.

At about minute 24 of the eulogy, the president referred to debates he’d had with Charlie Kirk. According to the president, Kirk did not hate his opponents. That, the president explained, was where they disagreed. “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want what’s best for them,” the president proclaimed to a cheering funeral crowd.

Like any president ever, ours has a long line of opponents, enemies he has made here and there. And yet, I’m not sure all of his enemies are real. I wonder if his love for having an enemy can threaten to create imaginary enemies, enemies that invite people to hate even further.

Hate is so powerfully stimulating, it can baptize a crowd of Christians in an amnesia bath, foregoing a substantial pillar of the Christian faith: love thine enemies (real or imagined), do good to those who hate you, offer the other cheek, and so on.

When there is tension in the air in our society, in your family, or in your work, you are in charge of only one person: You. You cannot change the people around you, especially your enemies, but you can decide how you will move through the tension.

  • How do I want to show up in this anxious time of our country?
  • What emotion do I need to notice in myself, so that it does not get the best of me?
  • Am I watching too much news? (I appreciated Danielle Webster’s words in this episode of The Prairie Beat podcast.)

Blessed are you as you wrestle with your place in this anxious time, for you will be filled with the real live love of the God who came to live among you in a real live body simply to love. Love. Love.

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

The Hen

What do you know about hens? I know very little except that I really like their beautiful and expensive eggs, which I eat very sparingly these days.

I also know from Luke 13:31-35 that hens gather. They are they original mother hens, buk-buk-buk-ba-gwacking and fussing over their babies.

Jesus offers the image of two animals in this passage: a fox and a hen. The fox is endless bad news for the hen, of course. The hen gathers because the fox prowls.

The fox, Jesus interprets for us, is Herod, the Roman governor on the prowl. As best he can, he gathers power and control.

Who, then is the hen? God Almighty.

Who is she gathering under her wings? You, beloved one.

God is the fussing hen, buk-buk-buk-ba-gwacking all the way to you.

And that is not all.

God is the fussing hen gathering all the beloved, all the broken, and all who live under the threat of Herod.

Herod is long gone, of course, yet the threat of those who love power and control remains. Where there is love of power and control, there is a threat for those whom Jesus describes as the least of these: those who live on the edges of safety, the neighbors who barely scrape by each day.

I imagine the hen gathering those who are still living in a warzone in Ukraine, the mothers whose husbands and sons will never come home. And those in Gaza, the brown-skinned ones whose homes, sacred spaces, schools, hospitals and coffee shops have been destroyed.

Still, the hen fusses.

Global Refuge is a non-profit with Lutheran roots. For Christmas, all of St. John’s offering went to the neighbors who are served by this organization. I learned from my colleague that when the federal government cut funding to organizations like this one, the federal government had the privilege of defaulting on their debt. Not only did Global Refuge lose future funding, it lost the funding the federal government had promised to pay.

And so, the hen’s work is never done.

Certainly, the fox has good intentions. I prefer a balanced budget and I dislike wasteful spending. Are there lines in the federal budget that should be cut? Has spending gotten out of control? Absolutely.

What does it say about the fox and its den when many of very first budget lines cut were the lines meant to become food for the hungry and shelter for the poor? It says that the hen will continue to fuss. Buk-buk-buk-ba-gwack.

Photo by Aditya Tma on Unsplash

Everything is Fake

Late last night, my daughter and I flew home from a lovely vacation with my mom in New York City. It was so great! The city resembles the kingdom of God, just as Elizabeth Passarella describes it. Every kind of people reside within the five boroughs. Elbow-to-elbow, they share sidewalks, subway trains, and tiny apartments. I squeezed my eyes shut while vehicles squeezed around remarkably tight corners, narrowly missing bikers and pedestrians.

Thousands of religions are represented in the city. In Times Square, we listened to the Muslims chant the mysterious Ramadan prayers. Skull caps and head coverings move through the crowds. Today, my Manhattan friend, Pastor Marsh pointed out, the Christians will be visible with their ashy crosses.

To witness New York City is to see the kingdom of God at work. We are not intended to be a nation of Christians, but a nation of God’s people reflecting God’s limitless glory.

On this Ash Wednesday, I am drawn to a particular story from our trip. We spent much of one day on a bus tour to see some of the major sights that one must see in New York City.

The city that holds every kind of people also holds people with sketchy intentions. We drove by perfectly lined up purses on the sidewalk. Nearby were women with black coats and black bags. Next to them were young men selling AirPods.

“Everything is fake,” our snarky tour guide translated the scene for us. “Those purses,” he explained, “just look closely before buying. The purse might say ‘Couch.’ See the woman with the bag? She will tell you her best handbags are in a building down the street. And who knows what you might buy. Oh, and the box with the AirPods just might be empty.”

He had been a detective once, he explained as he went on to identify a number of other scams we might encounter.

Everything is fake, we remember on Ash Wednesday. The handbags that make us feel as though we have arrived; the purchases that appear to be a good deal when they are no more than an empty box.

Everything is fake. The skincare products that promise to keep us young; the news that convinces us to fear our neighbor; the abundant salary that tricks us into a job we know will leave us miserable.

Everything is fake. The snake in the garden. The voice in our heads that whispers we will never fit in. The machine you work for that never ceases to demand more of you.

Everything is fake. Except for…

the ashy cross someone will draw on your forehead today. This is not fake. It is real. It is as real as the death of Christ for you, as real as God’s promise that you belong to God for all eternity. In fact, the cross is a symbol of the very real promise that no matter how many times you get tricked by the Couch purse or the snake in the garden, you have been claimed forever by the God who remains genuinely faithful.

Photo by Andreas Niendorf on Unsplash

Pray to the Lord on its Behalf

At this moment (along with many other moments) one of my neighbor kiddos is swinging in her backyard. She spends hours swinging – up and down, again and again. And again.

It has to be peaceful for her, which is ironic because it is the squeakiest, most annoying-sounding swing in the entire universe! It’s enough to drive a neighbor into insanity. Don’t believe me? Play this soundtrack in your head: squeak, squeak, squeak, eighty-five thousand more times! Perhaps tonight I can sneak over with some WD-40, like a thief in the night to steal the squeak.

And yet, the squeaking swing and the person on it are part of my neighborhood and part of my community. They both belong, despite the irritating squeak. My neighbor loves to swing and I love my neighbor (so do you if you do what Jesus says) and so all manner of things shall be well.

Neighborhoods and communities include squeaky sounds and squeaky voices. Bring people together, whether there are two or two hundred or two million and it quickly becomes a challenge to be next-door neighbors who belong to the same community.

We might forget that we belong to the same community. We might stick with our own tribe of people, live life through a Facebook group, or imagine that the community and the world were better years ago.

Associating only with people who are like us, communicating heavily through a screen, or betting on nostalgia are guaranteed ways to hinder community-building.

The people of God who had been exiled to Babylon were not interested in their new community. (Jeremiah 29) When they preferred to stick with their own people and recall their days back at home in Jerusalem, God gave this instruction:

"But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." (Jeremiah 29:7)

God breaks the news that this is their community, even with its squeaky swings and voices.

When we pray to the Lord on the community’s behalf and work toward the well-being of the community, we work toward our own well-being.

This can only mean that whenever we neglect to work toward the well-being of the community, we neglect our own well-being. When your neighborhood suffers, so do you. When the community is not well, nor are you, so connected are neighbors in a neighborhood even if we do not know/speak/or appear to care for one another.

Daily, the Spirit issues invitations for you to be a conductor of well-being in your neighborhood.

  • Meet a next-door neighbor you haven’t yet met. Chocolate chip cookies are an excellent ice breaker.
  • Go somewhere in your community you’ve avoided because it might feel uncomfortable. Talk to someone who isn’t like you to see your community from a different angle.
  • And that Facebook group – Lord help us all. What might you do to work toward community well-being in the toxic Facebook groups? I tend to avoid it, but fortunately not all of you do. Some of you with great courage speak truth into lies.

Pray to the Lord on its behalf, God instructed God’s people. May our prayers lead us to actions that bring healing, presence that brings peace, and squeaky, persisting sounds of mercy. Again. And again.

Photo by Kaleb Kendall on Unsplash

As Yourself

“Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.‘ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Mark 12:28b-31

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been in a wrestling match with Jesus’ two words: “as yourself.” How would this verse sound if these two words were dropped and Jesus’ instruction was simply to love your neighbor? What is Jesus up to by shaping your love for others based on how you love your own self?

So…how do you love your own self? What does it look like to love yourself?

  • Do you forgive yourself? Or do you replay that mistake you made so long ago?
  • Do you beat yourself up emotionally if you make a mistake? A mistake with your family or at work? Are you kinder to others than you are to yourself?
  • How do you look at your body? Do you recognize its beauty or do you regularly wish you could trade it in for a different model?

How do you love yourself?

If you dig around Jesus’ words here in Mark 12, you quickly discover he is not saying anything new. In fact, his words are among the most ancient of words. First, he quotes the Jewish Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4-5, the most important commandment of the Jewish faith: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” This is a helpful reminder that Jesus was not Christian, he was 100% Jewish. This Jewish command shaped his entire life.

Then, Jesus goes even further back to Leviticus 19:18b. Leviticus 19 is a how-to for loving your neighbor. Before and after this command are rules against slandering your neighbor, what to do if you impregnate your slave, instructions to love the elderly, and a command to love the immigrant. Tucked into a chapter outlining rituals and morality is God’s command, “…you shall love your neighbor as yourself…”

Now the question is not, why did Jesus add the two words ‘as yourself,’ but why did God add them? Why does God’s guide for loving your neighbor demand that you look not only outward but also inward?

Perhaps because loving your neighbor and loving yourself are inextricable. You cannot love your neighbor without also loving yourself. Let’s think of some examples.

  1. If you give yourself away again and again by doing service for your neighbor, but do not take care of your own body in the meantime, you will get resentful, worn down and even sick.
  2. If you care for the needs of your neighbor without ever recognizing your own social and emotional needs, your care for your neighbor may become shallow.
  3. If your main purpose in life becomes caring for the needs of others by ignoring your own needs, your co-dependency will drive others away, or debilitate the person you think you are helping.

In a nutshell, nothing good comes of loving your neighbor without loving yourself. Those two words, “as yourself”, cannot be removed from the equation of how to love your neighbor. How you love yourself matters for your neighbor!

  1. If you step back from the hustle of caring for everyone else, you might notice you have more genuine love for your neighbor if you rest.
  2. If you pay attention to your feelings, you may notice your helpfulness might be for show, and not out of sincere love for your neighbor.
  3. If you slow down, you might realize the people you are helping may not want so much help! How might not-helping actually be more helpful? This is tough news for moms, I know!

As yourself.

You, beloved one, matter enormously to the Creator. Take a breath and notice. Loving yourself is of great service to your neighbor.

Photo by Amy Shamblen on Unsplash