Love your neighbour as yourself

One of the great theologians and mystics of our day once said, “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

Every episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race ends with this line, so it’s worth repeating: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

To a community of drag queens — to a group of people who from the outside look bold and confident, but on the inside bear the wounds of rejection and ridicule — RuPaul makes them repeat it out loud: “If you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”

This is not just affirmation. It is the foundation for a radical social and spiritual transformation.

These words didn’t originate with RuPaul. They are a paraphrase, a reworking of a much older wisdom, a truth from the Hebrew scriptures, repeated by Christ: love your neighbour as yourself.

Let me repeat that: love your neighbour as yourself.

RuPaul simply draws that argument to its next logical step: if you can’t love yourself, how the hell are you gonna love your neighbour?

When we fall so far short of following Christ’s command, I think this is what we are stumbling on: “as yourself.” Do we love ourselves? I think this is where we get tripped up. Sadly, we do treat our neighbours as we treat ourselves — and we treat ourselves pretty poorly.

Just think of it. Anyone who has worked with kids knows that the schoolyard bully is usually the person with the lowest self-esteem in the classroom and the highest self-loathing. They act out and attack as a way of hiding their true selves, afraid of being vulnerable, afraid of showing how weak they feel.

And that moody teenager in your life, who grunts and won’t look away from their phone — you know what they really feel about themselves, because you’ve been there too. The mean things a teen says to you, and they can be vicious, are nothing compared to the mean things they are saying to themselves.

And then that teenager grows up to be an adult who yells at customer service, who criticizes their spouse, who has no patience when things don’t go their way — an anger rooted in the fact that they are unhappy, deeply unhappy, with who they are. They want to make everyone else around them perfect, because they can’t accept how imperfect they are themselves.

If you can’t love yourself, if you can’t treat yourself with kindness and compassion, there’s no way you can show it to others — or even accept it when it is shown to you.

Here’s a story I frequently share, because it was a real insight into human behaviour for me. There was a period in my life when I was taking classes for fostering and adoption; we thought we might adopt a child. The instructor of those orientation classes said that when you foster or adopt, you’re going to feel like a hero, coming in to save a child from abuse or neglect. And you are a hero.

But the child isn’t going to treat you like one. They won’t be grateful. They’re probably going to do the opposite: they will attack and lash out at you and antagonize you, because they won’t understand the kindness and affection you’re showing. They’re not going to trust it. They have no reason to trust any adult, and their self-esteem is so low that they assume any affection from you is a trick.

So they push your buttons. They break every boundary. They make you so angry, to the point where you lash out at them, and then they say to themselves, “See, I was right. That’s what adults are like. It’s all I deserve.”

Those children can’t accept the love you are showing them, because they are utterly convinced that they are unlovable.

That reality breaks my heart, especially because it’s not just foster kids who do that. I’ve seen people sabotage relationships, neglect friendships, respond to kindness with cruelty, all because they didn’t trust that kindness or love. They didn’t believe they deserved it. They’d rather surround themselves with people who treat them like garbage, because that feels more familiar to them. That feels like home.

I shouldn’t say I’ve seen other people do it. Those are all things I’ve done myself.

If I say that our society is full of self-loathing, some of you won’t believe me. You’ll say we are an entitled generation, filled with people pampering themselves, treating themselves to all sorts of indulgences in the name of caring for yourself or loving yourself, with a whole industry for self-care and self-improvement.

And to that I would say: yes, that’s precisely my point. Self-care and self-love is an industry built on the exploitation of people who hate themselves.

I don’t buy the anti-wrinkle cream because I think I look youthful. I don’t have a gym membership because I think my body is attractive. Our consumer society depends on me feeling ugly, so that their products will give me worth. We’re trained to hate ourselves, because that’s good for profits.

We know from academic studies what the Meta company already knew: that social media is designed to lower our self-esteem. A lowered self-esteem keeps eyeballs on the screen.

But don’t blame all that on social media. Companies have been doing it forever. Low-wage jobs are kept part-time, with high turnover and poor working conditions, so that you as an employee will feel worthless. Employees who feel worthless and replaceable don’t unionize or ask for raises.

The scale of self-loathing in society is enormous, and no amount of face cream is going to balance what’s really going on.

So what do we do? How do we respond to that? How do we find love for ourselves? We can find wisdom on that in all sorts of places, and it’s all good. But as Christians, we know the answer is Christ.

Just telling you to love yourself more doesn’t work. This isn’t an issue of willpower. Instead, we need an entirely different perspective on reality. We need to look at ourselves the way that Christ looks at us.

And for that, I want to shift the sermon from preaching to meditation. I’ll ask you to do a little exercise with me as we start viewing ourselves as Christ views us. At points you might want to close your eyes, and that’s okay; I’m going to assume you’re meditating and not sleeping.

I invite you to think about something about yourself that you dislike. Don’t think about it too hard; go with whatever comes to mind first. Maybe it’s something about your personality, maybe something about your body.

For me, that’s my chin, because it is so exposed and naked right now. If this is your first time coming to First, let me tell you: I once had a very dashing and voluminous beard — many hours ago.

They say that beards are the socially acceptable makeup for men, and I used mine as such. Without it, I feel like a Simpsons character. I am goofy enough already; the beard was the only thing keeping me serious.

You don’t need to agree or disagree with this — please don’t give me your opinions! I’m just sharing something I’m self-conscious about, to give you time to think about something you’re self-conscious about.

What bothers you about you? Think about it for a second.

Now that you’ve thought of something, I want you to imagine that you’ve just shared that negative thought out loud with a friend — any random friend — or maybe told the whole congregation. If they knew that you hated this thing about you, what would they say?

I imagine, when I told you about my chin, some of you may have said, “Well, you have a great chin.” And I thank you for lying. But I imagine most of you just shook your heads and said, “Yeah, so? That’s nothing new. You look just the same to me.” Not a single one of you cared. I’m going to take it one step further and say that those who know me best and love me most would say, “I think you look great.”

Now what about you? Whatever that thing about you that you hate, whatever your issue is, I guarantee you that there are people around you who are going to be a lot more gentle, a lot more understanding, a lot more loving about it than you are yourself.

Picture for a moment those people talking to you, caring for you, laughing with you. They see you, they understand you, they still like you. Take a moment to sit with that feeling.

Now let’s escalate this. Instead of just a group of friends or loved ones, what if the person you’re talking to was Christ? What if it was Jesus looking at this thing about you that you feel so self-conscious about? What would he say? What would he do?

I’ll tell you. If your friends showed you a little kindness, he is kinder. If they forgave your little flaws, he forgives everything. If they would sprinkle you with care, he pours down love until you’re drenched in it.

Jesus does see what it is that you hate about yourself. And Jesus says that’s a part of you that makes you beautiful. It makes you human. Jesus loves every inch of you. You might struggle to love yourself, but please, please know that he loves you.

We are adopted into his family, and like any adopted child, we might resist it. We might be mistrustful of it, because we think we know better. We think we know what we are worth. But we are wrong. He sees what you’re really worth, and he thinks you’re worth dying for. A lost coin, an errant sheep, a pearl of great value: in Christ’s eyes, you are more beautiful than you’ll ever realize.

The moment you start letting yourself feel it, there will be this negative worm of a thought trying to curb the moment. It will say that you’re being proud, you’re being self-indulgent, vain. No. Snatch that thought right out of your head and tear it out. God loves you.

Do not undermine that feeling. Never undercut it. That’s Satan trying to tell you that you’re not worth what God has already demonstrated you’re worth. Toss those dirty thoughts away. Stop listening to the voices of evil. Hear God’s voice.

In this worship service, right now, God is saying the same thing God has been saying to you Sunday after Sunday, if only we would listen: I love you.

And if God loves you — you know what? It’s okay for you to love you, too.

Love yourself for the sake of Christ. Do it for the sake of your neighbour. Love yourself as God loves you, and we might change the world.

This is the root, the foundation of spiritual transformation: when we can finally love ourselves as God loves us, that love flows out to every neighbour everywhere. So if you won’t do it for you, do it for them. Love your neighbour as you love yourself.

Amen.