04-04-2008, 09:39 PM
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 | McFadderator Minimizing | | Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: San Gabriel, CA
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Forgive me if this has come up in discussion already. In an article in the Reformed Journal 30 years ago, John Piper differentiated two forms of self love: Quote: |
"First, a person can be said to love himself if he is devoted to his own interest. You love yourself in this sense if you desire and strive for your own happiness. It follows from what I said above that all people love themselves in this sense. Since happiness is the fulfillment of one's desires, and all people desire, therefore all people long to be happy.”
| He also defined self-love in a second way as well: Quote: |
“There is a second way to define self-love. This is a more frequent usage today: self-love is taken to mean the sense of self-esteem one feels when he looks at his appearance, personal habits, morals, and achievements and likes what he sees. Here self-love is not the desire to become happy by bringing into actuality your values; rather, it is the pleasure you have in looking at the values you have already actualized.”
| Back in Christianity Today three decades ago ( August 12, 1977 to be exact), Piper wrote as a NT scholar, saying that Jesus referenced the first definition of love when he said: Quote:
"Love your neighbor as yourself." He did not command self-love; he assumed it and made it the measure of neighbor love: “As you would that men do to you, do so to them.” Similarly, Paul argued in Ephesians 5 that each husband should love his wife as himself (5:33), "for no man ever hates his own flesh but nourishes and cherishes it" (5:29). How radical Jesus' command is can be seen, therefore, from how deeply rooted self-love is in every man. No one is without it and so no one escapes the point of Jesus' command: one must be so transformed in what he values that to seek his own happiness and to love his neighbor are the same. That is indeed a radical commandment.
When we thus define self-love, the goal of the counselor cannot be conceived as building self-love. It is not the goal, but the presupposition of all counseling. People do not seek counseling help unless they have a desire to be better off than they are. This desire to be happier is what Jesus meant by self-love. Therefore, self-love, so defined, is the foundation, not the aim, of counseling; indeed, it is the foundation of all human life. For without it there is no motivation, and without motivation there is no action, and if we do not act we die.
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Dennis E. McFadden, Ex Mainline Baptist (in Remission)
Atherton Baptist Homes, CEO
First Baptist Church of Alhambra, Member, Transformation Ministries (CA)
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