Three Aspects/Commands in the Great Commandment? Reflections
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.” -Mark 12:30-31
Some people like to say that the Great Commandment is really two commandments— love God, love Others. I don’t like to say that because that implies the possibility, in theory at least, of fully obeying half of it. To me it that misses the point somehow. To miss one part of it is to miss the whole thing. That being said, the version of the Great Commandment in Mark (as shown above) does make it sound like the two aspects are separable. The version in Luke, however, suggests that it is one command with two aspects:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” -Luke 10:27
But if we look at the Commandment (or Command) as singular with two aspects, is it possible then to extend it to being singular with THREE aspects? These would be:
Aspect #1. Love God
Aspect #2. Love Others
Aspect #3. Love Self
This is an area of reflection of mine for some years. I have never delved into it theologically or expositionally. But here are my thoughts. I will look at a couple of reasons why the answer might be “NO”— there are only two aspects to the Command. Then I will delve into one reason why I think the answer should be “YES.” I will argue that one of the reasons for answer NO is ultimately invalid, but the remaining NO and YES arguments I think hold merit. Ultimately, you can decide for yourself.
–”NO” Argument #1. It seems like the command is two parts (Love God, and Love Others) with the rest providing clarity. How do we understand or love of God? It is to be understood in terms of our entire being—- all of our heart, all of our soul, all of or strength, and with all of our mind. How are we to love our neighbor? We are to love as we love ourselves.
–”NO” Argument #2. There is no command to love ourselves because either (a) everyone loves themselves, or (b) love oneself is a necessary prerequisite to love others. There are of course those who would say that one cannot love others unless one first loves oneself. I don’t believe one can argue that this is what this passage implies. Instead of trying to make the argument myself, I would like to push people to a video essay, “A Philosopher’s Guide to Self-Hate” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_icvgGo06A) on the YouTube channel, Lady of the Library. The essay is not about the Great Commandment, but I think the discussion is relevant. Not everyone loves themselves, and people who don’t love themselves can still love others.
–”YES” Argument #3. If one accepts what I said in the previous two paragraphs then, (a) Not everyone loves themselves, and (b) Love oneself is not a prerequisite for loving others, but (c) If one does love oneself, it gives clarity as to what it means to love one’s neighbor. All of this does seem to imply at least that loving oneself is good and something that God wants of us. Going back to the video I mentioned above, self-hate (lack of loving oneself) is often (always?) the result of being torn down by others around. The video looks at the situation through the lens of narrative therapy where our self understanding is seen in terms of stories we tell ourselves. Not loving ourselves then is a response to being sinned against by others. I think we are on pretty safe ground up to this point. But I would also suggest something more controversial— As we grow in our relationship with Christ, our love for ourself should grow. This is more controversial because some theologians like to point out our worthlessness. And perhaps they have a point. But God loves us and values us. God’s desire is to raise us up not tear us down, so it seems reasonable that God seeks for us to love ourselves in some sense as God loves us <Using an analogy of sorts, I love my wife and because I love my wife, I hope that she loves herself as she feels loved.> I think one can make the argument that God commands us to love ourselves.
So how would I bring all of this together. I do think that the Great Commandment is meant to be seen as having two inter-related commands. Nevertheless, God does want us to love ourselves, and while it may be too much to call it a “command,” loving ourselves is God’s desire.
It may not the same to say that loving ourselves is God’s command versus loving ourselves is God’s desire. But maybe it is correct to say that God commands us to root out the voices and stories that tear us down and bring short of God’s desire for us.
