Jesus said the greatest commandment was to love God with all your being, and the second was to love your self and your neighbor. Then he gave us a new commandment to love one another as he has loved us. Everything else scripture offers, everything else we do or say, hangs on these commandments. Thousands of sermons and tomes of writing have tried to spell out how that gets worked out in real life, yet too often they overlook one key element buried in the middle: love yourself.
In the last few days we’ve had a powerful example of what loving yourself looks like. When Simone Biles pulled out of Olympic competition citing mental health needs, she demonstrated what it means to know when caring for yourself is more important than risking long term damage and disappointing a faithlessly fickle audience. It’s something athletes have too long failed to recognize, and the price paid has been deadly. It’s something others have also failed to recognize as they’ve sacrificed their health and families to institutions that demand submission with only feigned regard for human well being. Selling one’s soul to the devil is the stuff of folklore and operas, but selling one’s soul for money and momentary fame is the stuff of real life.
Lest we forget, Jesus, the Word of God made flesh, knew when it was time to take a break, to pull out of the work he was doing for the restoration of his own emotional and spiritual health. He often found deserted places in the wilderness or on a mountain to escape the pressure and demands of crowds expecting more miracles, and crowds pressing so hard there was no room to move. He didn’t always go off by himself. His disciples were urged to join him for their own well being. It was an important demonstration of what it means to love one another as he loves us. Love one another by loving yourself enough to take care of yourself. Jesus did.
To love God, to love neighbors, to love others as Jesus loves us, requires that we love ourselves, and that means being kind to ourselves.
Ms. Biles is this week’s headline example, but it’s a message that’s been heard by others as well. Changing attitudes about PTSD as a real consequence of traumatic experiences, especially among combat veterans and first responders, has led to greater recognition of the importance of emotional and spiritual health among those whose physical prowess and commitment to duty is legendary. Even the NFL appears to have turned a corner. Americans, especially men, have been raised to value competition where there can only be winners. Losers are losers, failures of no account. Competition is good to a point, but the cult of living on the competitive edge has been oversold. It provides little marginal benefit, and can cost everything of real value in life. The competitive cult of toxic masculinity, with variations distributed across genders, occupations, and socioeconomic class, has been exposed as a fraud.
We’re called on to be the best that we can be, and the best requires emotional and spiritual health as well as the usual trappings of competitive spirit and commitment to doing hard work under difficult circumstances. It’s a balancing act that requires each of us to recognize when it’s time for us to step away and go to our deserted place on the mountain for rest and recuperation.
For Christians, it’s a commandment direct from God. You can’t love God, or others, or follow Jesus if you are not also caring for yourself.