Know thyself

Self-discovery. Self-esteem. Self-fulfillment. Self-expression. Self-knowledge.

Library shelves –if not entire libraries – are filled with books helping us as individuals to learn more about ourselves, discover ourselves, look inside ourselves to feel better about ourselves.

And a certain amount of self-awareness and introspection is healthy.

But I fear there is a huge difference between a ‘certain’ amount and the amount of introspection that many of us engage in, that our cultural know-it-alls tell us we need to do in order to be emotionally healthy and well-adjusted.

Simply sign on to Facebook to see how many “selfies” – pictures we take of ourselves – are posted. I was on a flight recently with a women's college athletic team. The young lady across the aisle spent the entire two-hour flight scanning pictures on her phone – of herself. She zoomed in, cropped, turned, and did all the things we can do on our phones to see ourselves. I saw an article recently that said 30 percent of pictures taken by young people age 18-24 are “selfies.” In fact, "selfie" was the 'word of the year' recently, indicating how important and used that word became in today's world. The very word reeks of narcissism.

Most Christians are familiar with the verse where Jesus said he can sum up the law and the prophets in a couple of sentences: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

Unfortunately, the words from that verse that seem to stick with us are “buzz buzz buzz love noise noise noise yourself!”

I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t love ourselves. What I am saying is that loving ourselves is pretty easy. Even those of us who are not happy with the way we are seem pretty consumed with our own misery and insecurities and how we don’t think we match up to whatever the “ideal” is. We can be consumed with both how great we think we are as well as how lacking we think we are, and both are indications of an over-absorption with self.

That verse we usually call “the Greatest Commandment” (there is one, followed by "a second that is like the first") says nothing about loving ourselves, except that we should love others as we love ourselves. And I’ll come back to some thoughts on that idea in a minute.

There is a real value in some amount of self-study. Scripture acknowledges this: we're told to examine ourselves in 2 Corinthians 13:5; examine our ways in Lamentations 3:40; keep a close watch on ourselves in 1 Timothy 4:16; keep our hearts with all vigilance in Proverbs 4:23; look carefully at how we live in Ephesians 5:15, and to not think more highly of ourselves than we should in Romans 12:3. These commands require us to do some soul-searching and looking inside ourselves.

But not to the extent society says we should. Today, everything is about "how I feel" and "respecting my feelings" and "being real'' (whatever that means), and this type of extreme over-kill of self-study reinforces our own natural self-centeredness and self-absorption, which is the crux of sin.

In a previous blog I wrote about knowing God, and how our focus is supposed to be on knowing Him, not Him knowing us. He doesn’t need an introduction to us. He created us. The very hairs on our heads are numbered.

I don’t think the Bible is there to teach us about ourselves. I think the Bible is there to teach us about God – and to learn about human nature. The Bible teaches us more about ourselves than we can ever learn by constant introspection.

The most important things we can learn about ourselves we learn by focusing on Christ.

We’re called to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for focusing on our self.

The second part of that verse – love your neighbor as yourself – helps us, I believe, to find our true worth.

Maybe I’m wrong, but if you are confident and happy with yourself, then love others with the same confidence and happiness in them. See them as you see yourself – and encourage them to be confident and happy. Don't make your self-confidence based on how you compare to other people (thinking more of yourself than of others); see others as being just as capable and worthy as you see yourself.

If you have what we call a “poor self-image,’’ meaning you think of yourself as lacking and worthless and unlovable, and you want to overcome that, then start by treating other people the way you wish you could treat yourself, the way you'd like to see yourself. Look at them as if they believe they are lacking and worthless and unlovable, and help them get over that by encouraging them, telling them how wrong they are, reminding them of what they have and how worthy they are and how much you love them. I have to tell you, I can be around people who tell me how much they believe in me all day, and no matter how I feel about myself I always walk away wondering if they might not be right!

In turn, you just might find yourself. Psychologists or psychiatrists or whoever it is that studies people always point out that the people who are involved in other people’s lives tend to be happier and better adjusted. Maybe it’s getting involved in a program that feeds and clothes and builds houses for other people; maybe it’s as simple as talking to a stranger and telling them how great you think they are. But it’s been proven over and over again that when you focus on other people and get engaged in causes outside yourself, you end up feeling happier about yourself, better about yourself, and what we call “well adjusted.”

Crazy, isn’t it? The less we focus on ourselves, the more in-focus we seem to become.

The disciple John often referred to himself as “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Now, John may have thought of himself as being special in some way – and there are conversations he had with Jesus and the other disciples that could lead you to believe that – but I think John was simply saying what all of us can say; we are all the “people that Jesus loves.”

John, in 1 John, writes “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as he is.”

Looking to Jesus is not only how we learn who Jesus is, and what love is, but also who we are and who we are meant to become.

I can't learn that by studying myself.