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We’ve spent our lives prioritizing ourselves, our wants, and our happiness, and, guess what. We’re still not happy. So how in the world could it be that self-love is the answer to our problems when there’s no evidence whatsoever that we’ve ever stopped loving ourselves?
Maybe we’re unfulfilled, lonely, and purposeless because we love ourselves way too much. Yes, many of us struggle with insecurities and even self-loathing. But these are just other indicators of self-obsession. Even when we don’t like ourselves, our perpetual prioritization of our wants, needs, problems, and dreams above all else proves that we still love ourselves a whole lot.
The idea that you’re enough is central to the culture of self-love. The logic goes: because you are complete, perfect, and sufficient on your own, you don’t need anyone else to love you to be content. All you need is yourself.
But here’s the thing: our sufficiency isn’t the answer to insecurity, and self-love isn’t the antidote to our feelings of self-loathing.
Why? Because the self can’t be both the problem and the solution. If our problem is that we’re insecure or unfulfilled, we’re not going be able to find the antidote to these things in the same place our insecurities and fear are coming from.
The solutions to our problems and pain aren’t found in self-love, but in God’s love.
Self-love is superficial and temporary. God’s love is profound and eternal. And his love compels us to something much better than self-obsession: self-sacrifice. While the thought of putting others before ourselves is considered blasphemy in the culture of self-love, it’s the joyous mode of operation for those who follow God. God’s love frees and empowers us to consider and serve other people before and instead of ourselves.
No amount of yoga or sage burning or energy shifts or personality tests or essential oils or closet organizing or food prepping or booty exercises or whatever else the self-love stars say you need to finally, truly, be happy with yourself will ever convince you that you’re enough. Because you’re not. Neither am I. And that’s okay.
Any time we let go of a false hope and replace it with a hope that’s real, we grow up a little bit. That’s what this book aims to do: to help us grow up by replacing the empty hope we have in ourselves with the satisfying hope we can place in God.
Our desperation is exacerbated because of a reason we’ve already named: the self can’t be both our problem and our solution. If the self is the source of our depression or despair or insecurity or fear, it can’t also be the source of our ultimate fulfillment. That means loving ourselves more doesn’t satiate us. We need something else—something bigger. Simply, we need Jesus.
Motherhood is the calling God has placed on our lives now, and we fulfill that calling for his glory, not for our own recognition.
The only lasting joy we can find in the chaos of parenthood is in the knowledge that even the most mundane, trying moments of motherhood are meant to bring us closer to Christ.
And maybe they were significant, and maybe they taught us something. But in order to know whether these lessons we learned are truths worth building our lives on, we have to compare them to the standard of truth, God’s Word.
Meology seeks to comfort at the expense of conviction.
Our “truth” is that we want God’s stuff. The truth is that God has given us something better than stuff—himself.
The idea that the God of the universe can be limited by nine man-made personality types is silly at best and blasphemous at worst.
The Enneagram isn’t our source of knowledge about God; the Bible is. Introspection doesn’t take us down a path of sanctification. That’s a New Age idea, not a Christian one.
To constantly focus on our unique attributes is to totally miss the point of what God calls us to do. God calls each of us not to be our “best selves,” but to be filled with the fruit of the spirit, which, according to Galatians, is made up of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We are called to embody all of these qualities, not only the ones that come naturally to us.
We understand that each of us was made on purpose with purpose by a Creator who does nothing arbitrarily.
No matter how much we introspect, we will never find our good and perfect selves, because they don’t exist.
We can finally be relieved of the duty to constantly search for ourselves. We don’t need to search for our purpose or the meaning of our lives. We have worth and our lives matter because the God who made us says so.
Unlike the authors of personality tests who don’t even know your name, God knew you before time began. He is intimately acquainted with your thoughts, motivations, desires, dreams, what makes you laugh, and what makes you anxious. He wrote every single one of your days before any of them came to be (Psalm 139), and he is with you in each of them. His love for you gives you the comfort you’ve been needlessly looking for in personality tests and your journey to “find yourself.”
knowing him gives us the peace we’re looking for and that his love gives us the confidence we’re looking for.
Human beings need to be needed. Contrary to what AOC and others may say, capitalism didn’t make us this way; God did. Good work done well is both for his glory and our good.
The people who suffer from our narcissism are the most vulnerable. The idea that “you can’t love other people until you love yourself” reeks of entitlement and elitism. While we’re busy trying to come to terms with cellulite on our thighs, there are people who are desperately hurting, lonely, and in need of our love and care.
We didn’t wait until we loved ourselves to choose to love each other. We were imperfect, grateful, and sure.
In Ephesians 5, husbands are called to love their wives as Christ loves the church, and wives are called to submit to their husbands as they submit to the Lord. In this way, husbands and wives are engaged in mutual and constant self-sacrifice that reflects the good news of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross and his commitment to his church. Marriage serves as an earthly depiction of the eternal reality of God’s redemption of his people through his Son.
