A phrase I hear often is "Learn to forgive yourself." Another is "You can't love others until you learn to love yourself."
My issue with these quotes:
1. Only God can forgive sins, Jesus said. I don't see any scripture that says I'm to forgive myself. Rather, I am to accept his forgiveness and extend it to others.
2. Jesus said to love others as we love ourselves. He knew human nature better than anyone. He assumes we love ourselves. Self-consciousness, self-esteem, self-pity, self-loathing. He died to eliminate all of this. We are to love God and die to self. The more we grasp at keeping our own life, loving our life, we will lose it. If we lose our life for his sake, we are saved.
I am to see myself in his light. Then, when I am truly worshipping, I will not be aware of it or myself because my entire heart, soul, mind and strength will be taken with him.
Am I missing something?
1. Can you accept his forgiveness without forgiving yourself?
ReplyDeletehahah Brad just said - sounds like a minefield of wordgames to me!
so maybe a better way to say this is - accept that you are forgiven. if you accept that, you stop beating yourself up for past mistakes and move forward?
Ditto the love ie replace the word forgiven with loved
yes/no?
S
Yes that's what I was trying to say. Apparently not very well. :-)
ReplyDelete