Love your Neighbour as Yourself
I am currently training to be a counsellor and as part of my course I was required to read a book on Person Centred Counselling. For those of you who don’t know much about this type of counselling, simply put, it was developed by a Christian man, Carl Rogers who believed that the counselling room should be completely focused on the client and that if the client was offered certain conditions within the therapeutic environment, the client was able to harness their own natural self-healing process and can decide what they want to do with their lives. This was very different from the psychodynamic and cognitive traditions of therapy at the time, whereby the therapist was the expert.
While I was reading this book, something in particular struck me. The authors write,
“The world is full of helpers whose activity is a desperate strategy to avoid confronting themselves. This self-evasion is sometimes mistaken for selflessness and can receive reinforcement from a misguided understanding of the Christian Tradition where the concepts of selfishness and self-love have often become hopelessly confused.”
They go onto say,
“It is impossible to offer a client acceptance, empathy and genuineness at the deepest level if such responses are withheld from the self.”
Now I am aware that not all of you are training to be counsellors and therefore this level of self-awareness is maybe a little much, but it occurred to me as I read this, how many of us Christians are dogged with the belief self-love is wrong?
We throw out Bible quotes such as,
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. … And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.” (Matthew 22: 35-40).
But what does it truly mean to love your neighbour as yourself?
So many of us have taken this to mean that our needs must always be subordinated to the needs of others. But what if we turn this around? What would happen if we took care of our needs, what if we offer ourselves love and acceptance and no judgement, first? What happens then? I would argue that maybe we come from a much better place to offer that same love and acceptance, without judgement to the people around us. If we don’t do this doesn’t our “helping” and love come from a place of martyrdom rather than a real outpouring of God’s love? I am reminded that water cannot flow from an empty cup. If we do not top ourselves up, how can we then give freely to others around us.
So today, I pray that you will find some time this week to top yourself up, in whatever way helps you to feel fuelled and ready for another week ahead. That you will be able to offer yourself love and acceptance and in doing so share that with the people closest to you.
Written by Naomi Ackland, Office Coordinator.