Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 20 | The Myth of Self-Love

Episode Date: July 17, 2018

"You can't love others until you love yourself." "Just pursue what makes you happy." These are the ubiquitous mantras of our day, encouraging us to ditch the "bad vibes" and do whatever makes us feel good about ourselves and our lives. The problem is that's not biblical. I'll explain why self-love isn't Christlike and how Christians, according to the Bible, are supposed to view ourselves.  Copyright CRTV. All rights reserved.

Hey guys, happy Tuesday. I hope that you guys had a great weekend. I had a work slash fun trip in Florida and my husband got to go with me this time. So that was really fun. I spoke to a non-political group actually on Saturday morning about how to engage and motivate millennials in the workplace. Public speaking, if I haven't already said this to you guys, public speaking and presenting is one of my favorite things to do. I know for most people you're like, this is the bane of my existence, but I love it. It just gives me a lot of energy. And plus, this time it was at a beautiful beach and my husband was there with me. And actually, my mother and father-in-law were there too.

So that was really fun. So it was just a great time. I hope that you guys had a great weekend too. So today I'm going to talk about this subject of self-love. This is something that a lot of you have asked me to talk about. And I'm really excited to get into it. I had a lot of fun actually planning this because it is no doubt a trend that has infected every part of our society and unfortunately even Christian society. So I want to break down

the good, the bad and the ugly of self-love and talk about how it lines up with what the Bible actually has to say about how to view ourselves. But first, since it's the beginning of the week, I want to make sure at least that you're a little bit up to date on what's been going on in the news just so you can kind of be in the know. Now, as I'm recording this and by the time that you are listening. I'm sure that more news will occur and has already come out because this is a 24-minute news cycle, but this should still give you some kind of good overview of what people are outraged about. And if you're not outraged, is it even 2018? So a lot happened last week that carried on over the weekend. One of the things that people have been talking about is Peter

Strock. I don't even know how to say his last name. There's like six consonants in a row. So I'm just going to go with that. He testified before Congress last week. He was the FBI agent, if you remember, who was having an illicit affair with former FBI lawyer, Lisa Page, and he was caught sending anti-Trump text to Lisa Page about how they're going to, quote, stop him supposedly from getting elected. He testified before Congress about his bias, which you know you're not supposed to have if you're an FBI agent or at least not talk about. Republicans, of course, were tough on him as they should be. but most Democrats treated him like he was some kind of hero. And I mean that literally one congressman even told Strach that he should get a purple heart,

which is completely disturbing and really disrespectful to the men and women in the line of duty. Strach was stupidly arrogant the entire time and acted like he hadn't done anything wrong. But the reality is any FBI agent who showed this kind of bias towards a presidential candidate, no matter what side of the aisle it was on, should be ashamed of themselves. So there's that. Of course, people are still freaking out over Kavanaugh, the potential Supreme Court justice

that was nominated last week. We talked about that last week. So-called journalists are writing absolutely ridiculous stories about how he uses his credit cards, what condiments he uses, making fun of his volunteering, his faith, gasping at the fact that he wants to uphold the Constitution. So we have all that in more to look forward to over the next few months as he awaits his confirmation.

President Trump also met with NATO last week, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, just in case you don't know, although I'm sure a lot of you do. It's an organization of 29 countries based on the North Atlantic Treaty that was signed in 1949. The 12 original country signed, but they've added all the way up to 29 now, or they've added 17. now it's 29. It's basically an alliance that says, hey, if you're in trouble, we will help you out militarily. All in all, NATO was a good thing,

and it's important that we keep these alliances strong. But the reason you probably heard about some drama about this is because President Trump has been pushing other members in the alliance to cough up some more money towards defense. If you're in the alliance, you're supposed to meet a certain spending threshold on defense. So other countries are, supposed to actually

spend or reach that threshold so that they are actually able to help us if we are ever in a bind. Some countries are not meeting that threshold so Trump is like, what the heck? Plus, President Trump rightly pointed out that Germany is paying Russia billions for gas and energy.

Russia is not in the alliance, so shame on Germany for that. But still, people are criticizing Trump for his harsh language towards our allies that would possibly push them away. Trump and his defenders say that this is just what it looks like to put America first. And let's hope that's true because even though we want to be tough, it doesn't help us to

actually make enemies out of ally. So we will just stay posted on that. Trump also met with Putin yesterday in Helsinki, which is in Finland, by the way. And there's going to be a lot of continue talk about whether or not Trump is too nice to Putin. But again, that's another story for another day. Just wanted to give you a really quick briefing. and I'm sure there's plenty of news that I didn't cover, but those are some hot topics. So now you know that. Okay.

Now, to the good stuff, self-love. So I don't even have to cite specific examples of this whole self-love thing for you guys to know exactly what I am talking about. This is a trend and an attitude that I think has been building for, I don't know, maybe five, probably even 10 years, this idea that the most. important thing in the world is for you to love yourself, to be confident in yourself, to be comfortable in your own skin. And I'm sure strands of this attitude have existed forever and ever and ever. But I'm really talking about it rising and being celebrated on social media

most recently, probably in the past decade. You hear it all the time. You can't learn to love other people unless you love yourself. Or we hear a lot about self-care. You can't care for other people unless you care for yourself first. This also comes in the form of saying, oh, just stay true to yourself. All your opinions are justified because it is your truth. It's all about empowerment, because apparently that's what people need these days to just feel empowered. And not all of these things are necessarily bad, but some of it, actually, I would say the vast majority of it is absolute garbage. It is complete in total stupidity. Okay. I get it though. I understand why this kind of self-love mantra, the mantra of, oh, I just love myself, is attractive. I understand why the non-Christian

world would want to go in this direction. It is a way to sound compassionate and caring while really just serving yourself. So you can prioritize your own happiness, your own comfort, your own convenience above the happiness, the comfort, and the convenience of other people, and provide a really virtuous sounding reason for doing so. It is a sanitized version of selfishness. That's all it is. You can protect yourself from criticism when you know you're wrong because, well, you're just a free thinker. You're just staying true to who you are. It's a way to be arrogant and self-absorbed while sounding moral. So it makes sense why someone who believes, that this life is all there is, that their citizenship is here on earth, that fame, money, success,

love, whatever are the highest goals. It makes sense that they would think this way. Why wouldn't you love yourself above everything else? Even in your humanitarian pursuits and good deeds, you do those things because it feels good, because it serves you in some way. If your hope and identity is not in heaven, is not in Jesus Christ, why wouldn't you always be looking out for what's best for you? But for Christians, that outlook does not hold up next to how the Bible tells us to live. And I hear too many young Christians today, especially young female Christians, promote some kind of theological, and that's in scare quotes, by the way, theological version of this. They attempt to make self-love sound biblical.

Well, spoiler, for those of you who don't know, the Bible never commands us to love ourselves. Not once. The Bible never mentions self-care. The Bible never mentions feeling comfortable in your own skin. The Bible never talks about empowerment. Now, look, I'm going to get into why I think aspects of these things, like I've said, are biblical. Why being comfortable with how God made you, the body God gave you and being confident and empowered in some way are Christ-like attributes? And I'll talk about legitimate struggles with insecurity and things of that nature. But I need to be. I need to be. I need to be. I to get through this hard truth first. And that truth is, according to the Bible, it is not about you. It's not about you. It's not about me. It's not about any of us. It is about Jesus. The entire Bible is about him. All of history is about him. Everything is about him and giving him glory because of God's incredible mercy. He has allowed us, those who believe in Christ, to be beneficiaries of his grace by way of Jesus's saving death and resurrection. By his grace, by his grace, means that God didn't have to do that. And sometimes I wonder if we actually understand that.

Sometimes I wonder if we really get how little we deserve God's love and salvation. I mean, it seems like sometimes we look at ourselves and think, hey, you know what? I'm actually pretty lovable. It makes sense that God would love me. I mean, come on. Or, you know, I really am a pretty good person. It's not that unbelievable that God would say, me. No, you're actually not. You're not lovable. And neither am I. We are not worthy of being saved. Ephesians 2.1 says, before Christ saved us, we were dead in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked. Dead. Romans 5.8 says that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Two verses later, verse 10 says Jesus died for us while we were enemies with God. That is the state of

all of us apart from Christ, hostile to God, as Colossians 121. says, separated from God, as Ephesians 212 says, no person in the world who is apart from Christ has a reason to boast. And those of us who are in Christ have no reason to boast outside of Christ. Galatian 614 says, but far be it for me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. Jeremiah 9 23 through 24 says, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast in his might. Let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the

earth. We are all guilty of this kind of pride, me included, but First Peter 55 says, God opposes the proud. And yet this seems to be the pervasive attitude today, especially, like I said, among young Christians who have been conditioned to believe our entire lives, just like young non-Christian, through personalized technology, social media, that everyone gets a trophy culture in which we grew up, even through helicopter parenting sometimes, that it's all about us. Even that the Bible is about us,

that the salvation story is about us, that in everything we need to be able to see ourselves in it and apply it to ourselves. Well, I hate to break it to you. Actually, I don't. I like to break it to you. The Bible isn't about you. Now, do we have commands

that obviously are meant to apply to our life? lives, yes, are there lessons to be learned from the stories in the Bible that should have an effect on how we live? Absolutely. After all, Jesus did come to earth, die on the cross, and rise again that we might have eternal life. God did create us and he loves us. So it's not like we're completely irrelevant. I'm not saying that we should never see our lives and our own hearts reflected on the pages of scripture. But I am saying that we miss the point of scripture. We miss the point. We miss the point of the gospel, we miss the point of everything if we first see ourselves in God's word. One of my peeves is when I hear a pastor or a Bible study teacher put themselves in the place

of people in the Bible. So, for example, you are Noah building something, but you don't know why. Or you are like Ruth trying to find her Boaz, or you are David slaying the giant, the giant is really that girl that talked badly about you. Now, I know some of you are thinking, what's wrong with that? Well, what's wrong with that is you are not Noah. You are not Ruth. You are not David. The first thing that we should see in every story in scripture is God. What God did, the character of God, what this story says about who God is. What we see it in in the story of Noah's Ark is God's faithfulness, not our own. What we see in Ruth is God's

providence. What we see in David and Goliath is God's strength. These stories are meant to show you what God is like. Do they speak to human nature? Sure. Do we see resemblances of ourselves in scripture? Absolutely. But the goal, the point of every single story in the Bible is God, who he is in his glory. And knowing about his character does, affect our own lives, how we think, how we feel. It should. It's meant to. In fact, it is in focusing on his glory that we are changed. It's the looking away from ourselves and towards him that we receive all the benefits we stupidly look for in this whole self-love movement. When you only see yourself in scripture, when you only look for the ways God can benefit you or make you feel better,

you end up with some really bad theology. And theology, that's going to end up really disappointing you. So if I look to the story of Noah, for example, and apply it directly to my own life right now and say, I am Noah, then I could say, see, I'm building this podcast. I'm building this audience. I'm growing my Twitter following, whatever.

I'm speaking to different groups. And I don't know where this is going to lead. It's just like Noah. I know that this is what God is calling me to do. So if I read the story of Noah and say, oh, this is exactly the same. God told him to build the arc and everyone's laughing at him, but he's trusting in God that this is what he's supposed to do. And that's just like me. I've got haters, but I'm just going to keep building. God's going to show all my haters when I'm

floating high up and they're all drowning, metaphorically, of course. And then God will give me a rainbow in the form of a million dollar check. Okay, maybe that'll happen. But what if it doesn't? what if actually I don't end up succeeding in this? What if I fail? And this is ultimately not the path that God wants me on. What if something happens to me or my family that causes me to quit this? What if nothing goes as planned and this thing that I'm building is actually destroyed? Well, then my comparison of myself to Noah doesn't really work, does it?

Then I start to think, wait, is God really faithful? Is the story of Noah even true? why did that work for Noah but not for me? Are God's promises really reliable? We start to question God's goodness because things didn't go as planned. And if we ever question God's goodness, something that by the way I've been guilty of doing, we probably all have at some point, something is wrong with us, our thinking, our theology, not with him. When we primarily look for ourselves in scripture rather than God, we end up with disappointment. but if we look for God rather than for ourselves, we end up with hope.

Because even though we in our life circumstances change, God doesn't. So if we go back to the Noah example, if in the story of Noah, I see not my own efforts to build something, but I see God's faithfulness, then instead of saying, wow, this story means I'm going to be successful and God's going to take down my critics, I can say, wow, this story shows me how incredibly faithful God is in keeping his promises. And that last one is so much more comforting than the thought that I might succeed and be famous one day. That's an abiding comfort, not dependent on what happens in my life. And yes, sure, I can look to know it and say, man, that's an obedient guy. I want to emulate that kind of obedience in my life. And man, he trusted in God, even when I'm sure

things seemed absolutely insane. Like, how do you keep your cool when two pythons slither onto your boat? That's what I want to know. I want to have that kind of faith. But the point is that application flows first from recognizing God's power, his authority, and his faithfulness, and our obedience and our obedience and God's faithfulness are principles that outlast every situation in our lives, no matter what. But the idea that like Noah, we're going to build something and God's going to bless us doesn't. It doesn't last. And ultimately, that kind of thinking, like I said, leads to questioning God and his goodness. Whenever we find ourselves questioning those things, we need to ask for wisdom, ask for understanding,

ask for the Holy Spirit to search our hearts. We need to search scripture ourselves and see what it is that we don't get or haven't yet learned. James 1-5 says, you guys know this. God gives wisdom to those who ask for it. So that's the direction we need to head, not into ourselves or into social media or the world who's going to tell us something that's not true. So this concept or this trend of self-love extends beyond a superficial call for confidence. It pervades Christianity when it leads to this idea of self-truth. When we put ourselves in the center of the Bible story rather than Christ, we end up coming up with interpretations of scripture that are not true. And ultimately,

they leave people astray. This is like the millennial version of the prosperity gospel, I think. Millennials fall into this category of something called postmodern. It's a concept that promotes individualism, this idea that you are your own arbiter of morality, your own truth, and what is in what is good and bad is up to you. What is right and wrong is up to you. And while I am a fan of individualism from a more political, politically conservative standpoint, the idea of working hard rather than relying on the government, individualism when it comes to morality and in particular theology does not work.

Truth is not subjective. You do not get to decide what you want to uphold in scripture and what you don't. We do not get to decide on what right. wrong is. As Christians, we believe God tells us those things. So it's not up for a debate. We don't make compromises. And while we certainly study well-researched theology and context and history and all of these things that rely in large part on human intellect, we don't get to freely decide what a passage means and what it doesn't based on our feelings about how we think the world should work. Millennials don't like to be inconvenienced, though. We don't like to be told when we're

wrong. We definitely don't like talking about sin or hell or all of these very objective and quote, judgy things, which is why so many young people have adopted this feel good, social justice, self-love postmodern Christianity that really just says love yourself, do what makes you happy, be nice to people, and protest the right political causes when it's convenient to you. But that's not biblical. The Bible says deny yourself. The Bible says take up your cross and follow Christ. The Bible says, yes, fight for the oppressed, but not for social justice, which like we discussed last week, even though it claims to fight for the oppressed, it actually just demeans one group of people to elevate another group of people based on some subjective standard, which is

not biblical. God calls us to something much higher and much better than this worldly trash that some Christians are packaging is biblical. We have to watch out for this because it sounds good. But remember, 1 Corinthians 1114 says that even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. How do you know you're being deceived? You don't. That's the whole point. And this quasi-theological love yourself, make yourself feel good, Jesus exists for you. The Bible is about you nonsense sounds good because it uses scripture like I did with

the story of Noah to cater to your selfishness. Female Bible study leaders and teachers are the worst about this. They're the worst. That is why I have always, even when I would say that I myself wasn't walking in step with Christ, have had a problem with a lot of women's Bible studies. This feel good, emotional, self-centered stuff actually isn't helping anyone. How we see this played out is a lot of times through what we call word of faith teachers. These are charismatic teachers who say that you can basically access God and God's power through a word of faith.

So, for example, by crying out Yahweh, all of your fear will be eradicated or by extending your hand and saying be healed that the world will be healed. This is a false doctrine. Not that the power of prayer doesn't work. It does. Not that God doesn't heal through prayer or work miracles. He absolutely can. But saying a word and expecting it in itself to hold power is it biblical.

Similarly, similarly, a false message we see that's related to this is saying, I have have a word for you today? Well, unless you're talking about God's word, no, you don't. We don't have words apart from God's word. Yes, the Holy Spirit moves and works and speaks through us, convicts us, empowers us, strengthens us, but only in accordance with scripture. We do not receive separate, special revelations that are not biblical. This whole idea of, oh, I have a divine revelation from God to go tell this random person on the street that there will be $5 under their pillow tonight. No, This is just a modernized version of the televangelism that we saw in the 80s and 90s where the televangelists would say, I feel that there's someone in the audience whose leg needs healing. I just don't think that that's biblical. I think it's actually very emotionally manipulative. I recently saw a very prominent Christian social media influencer and now Bible teacher apparently do this. She posted a video saying that God told her that someone in her audience was dealing with something, XYZ. I mean, sure, pretty smart to hedge your bets that someone in the audience of millions to

millions of people that follow you is probably going through something. But again, let me be clear. There is no revelation we receive that is not backed up by scripture. That means that does, or I guess the question is, does prophecy exist? Yes, I think prophecy exists. And we could go on a whole tangent here. But there's a great sermon by John Piper on this from 1990, where he explains very well that prophecy today exists in a way that is prompted by the spirit but is still fallible.

He says it like this. Prophecy today and in the New Testament is spirit prompted, spirit sustained utterance that does not carry intrinsic divine authority and may be mixed with error. He also points out that prophecies or any spirit sustained utterance must be tested by scripture. It does not have the same authority as scripture, which as it currently is scripture is final and sufficient. But that's kind of, like I said, going off into a new territory, and we could do a whole episode on that later, and there's plenty of stuff that I still need to learn about it.

But the point is this, self-centered Christianity leads to bad theology, which leads to a manipulation of the gospel, and any gospel presented to you that is not found explicitly in scripture, namely that Jesus, a part of the triune godhead, one with God himself, the son of God, came to earth voluntarily to die for your sins, reconciling believers to God. and rose again, defeating sin and death, and will one day come back and will one day defeat Satan once for all and reign in totality, banishing, suffering, confusion, sin, and death. Any gospel, apart from that is not a true gospel. That is hope. And by God's grace, we get to be beneficiaries of that gospel. And it is through a deeper understanding of that. It is through meditation on that

that that we are made new, made better, our sanctified, our given peace and joy through our closeness with Christ and our hope of what's to come. It is, that message that gives us confidence. I know there are some of you, if you're anything like me, who have gone through seasons of deep insecurity, of joylessness, of anxiety, of depression, these are real emotions that have damaging effects on your psyche, on your life. We go through loss, rejection, sickness, persecution, all these things that make us feel desperate and even tempt us into self-pity. We struggle. Sometimes we actually do struggle to see anything good about ourselves. Sometimes we do actually hate ourselves. Sometimes maybe we do struggle with seeing why God

would send Jesus to die for us. Haven't we done too many bad things? And so this self-love, empowerment, self-care message can sound especially appealing to us during those times. But it's not self-love that we need. In fact, focusing on yourself only makes it worse. It is by focusing on God that we are free to be comfortable in our own skin and confident in who we are as people made in God's image and as completely undeserving objects of his love. It is by focusing on God's goodness, his character, his salvation, his grace, his call to self-denial, self-crucifixion, generosity, hospitality, selflessness that we learn to see ourselves as he sees us. And it is true that God calls us beautiful. Psalm 139 says that we're fearfully and wonderfully made

that he actually took time knitting us together in our mother's wombs. And for those of us are believers. Ephesians 1 says that he chose believers in him before the foundation of the world. So he had us in mind when he created the universe. We serve an awesome, gracious, merciful God who even though he doesn't have to loves us and gave us a way to be redeemed through Jesus. So that is where our confidence comes from. So I can say, hey, I am worth something because God says that I am and I find my worth in my creator, not in my appearance or other people's affirmation. So I can say, hey, I like my body because I know whether I look perfect by the world standards or not, I know that God gave me this body. And because of that, all I can do is be a good steward

of it and thank him for what he's given me. That gives me confidence. I can say, hey, I know that I'm good at public speaking or I like public speaking. I know I'm a good writer, that I'm a decent communicator. These are the talents that God has given me. And all I can do is cultivate them, be the best that I can use them for his glory. They're not mine to use. They're his to use as he sees fit. There's nothing wrong with that. And in fact, I would argue that that is the only righteous, biblical way to see yourself. It's not self-aggrandizing and it's not self-deprecating. It's, I was made in the image of God and Jesus has made me a new creation. And as such, God has purposed me for something. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's speaking and being on TV.

maybe it's being a missionary in the Congo, maybe it's being a stay-at-home mom. But whatever it is, whatever I do, it is for the glory of God. We are free to recognize that it's not about us. It is liberating to realize that, that I don't have to worry about how much I love myself because God loves me. And while I do think it's important to recharge and genuinely enjoy life and take time to relax, God did make us to rest and to sleep after all. I don't have to obsess. over self-care because God cares for me. I just have to follow what he says when it comes to rest and releasing anxiety, especially, and go to him for strength and for wisdom, and he will care for me.

I am called to obey God and he is going to worry about the rest. That is a wonderful, freeing thing. So that's that. I hope that that helped. I hope that answered the question thoroughly enough about what I think about self-love and all of its kind of theological stupidity. but if you still have questions, please feel free to email me. It's Allie at the conservative millennial blog.com.

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So you can see my lovely face as I am giving these podcasts. But anyway, I love you guys and I will see you back here on Thursday.