Love of Self

“From a spiritual perspective, much of what we experience on a moment-to-moment basis, is pathological. That is to say, it is a product of spiritual sickness. The root of this sickness, in Greek, is philautia, “love of self.” In more common parlance, we could say that we are ego-driven. We create a false-self through our collection of experiences, memories, decisions, opinions, feelings, habits – a false-self that is anxious about its existence, and that is constantly re-inventing and revising its story.” (Father Stephen Freeman) 

“It is his affection for himself (his self-love, philautia) that is the root of evil. Its effects are disastrous: he is cut off from God, and divisions appear in human nature. The active agent here, however, is the Devil, the seducer, divider, and engineer of all the vicious methods of sin through which man tries to find pleasure and avoid pain. Yet, in all this, man’s will cooperates with the Evil One…The first fatal step is his break with God, from which stems the first of three capital evils: ignorance. In being isolated from the creative source of his being, man concentrates upon himself in egoistic self-love, which is the second in his hierarchy of evils. Finally, this egoism brings man to the third evil, tyranny against his neighbor. These three evils represent a perverted use of the three constitutive forces of the soul: reason (logos), perverted into ignorance; the concupiscible, or desire (epithumia), perverted into sensual self-love; and the irascible, or temper (thumos), perverted into hatred against one’s neighbor…man allows himself to fall into sin, preferring the pleasures of the sensible world to his communion with God, and becomes ignorant, forming in himself a kind of likeness to the animals and using his intellectual capacities in a continuing search for pleasures where his self-love (His philautia) always directs him toward what is supposed to satisfy his sensual lust.” (St. Maximus the Confessor) 

“St. Maximus the Confessor wrote numerous times about the spiritual problem of self-love (philautia)…In his thinking, self-love is an evil self-centered narcissism which prevents someone from loving others as Christ taught us to do. ‘Self-love’, as he uses the word, is opposed to Christ-like love and prevents us from being Christ’s disciples. As Maximus uses the word, ‘self-love’ turns out to be no love at all, but rather just self-centeredness. His idea of self-love has little to do with our modern concerns for self-esteem. For Maximus, people are motivated to self-love either to find pleasure or to avoid pain. In either case they consciously choose something sinful because they believe it is to their benefit or serves their own desires while knowing their chosen action is sinful.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)

“We have all accepted lies about who we are, as though our true selves were somehow not in God’s image and likeness but in slavery to our own distorted desires for pleasure and fulfillment on our own terms. What seems second nature to us in our world of corruption is often simply a function of our passions, of our self-centered desires that keep us enslaved to the power of death. The Savior did not help the widow of Nain feel better about the death of her son or try to convince her that his death was not really that bad. No, He did what was impossible and totally unexpected by raising the young man up and giving the son back to his mother. In doing so, He also gave the widow of Nain her life back.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)

“…if fasting and asceticism are about the Beautiful, then you must use them to fall more deeply in love with Christ and not to fall more deeply in love with your own moral excellence. Self-love is the defeat of eros, the mother of the passions, and fasting is meant to cure us of the bad forms of self-love.” (Timothy G. Patitsas)

“Now it is fashionable (and I have seen it) to always tell yourself that “God loves us as we are, and we must love ourselves first of all.” But know that love for yourself can be different! There is good love for ourselves, stemming from the awareness that God has put into us, because we know that we are children of the Kingdom, that we are children of God, that we were created for eternity and are not content with this world. And there is bad love for ourselves when we allow ourselves anything, when we think and do whatever we like…” (Protosinghel Galaction Dominte)

“The early church’s understanding of self-love is much more closely related to self-centered narcissism which is particularly common in a society which emphasizes the individual self over and above everything and everyone else. In America sadly enough, we sometimes glorify the person, celebrity or politician, who is narcissistic. Narcissism (philautia) is a spiritual affliction which is directly opposed to Christ’s teachings on loving one another…someone is afflicted with the spiritual disease of self-love: “insensitivity to others coupled with a hypersensitivity to satisfying one’s own desires.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh, Bishop Trader)

“The church has rightly proclaimed Christ as the Truth—the one whose utter freedom from the distorting effects of self-promotion enables him to see things as they truly are and, indeed, enables all things to be what they are. (All self-promotion warps both the self and all those with whom the self comes into contact, squeezing them out of their proper shape; that which is free from all self-promotion does the opposite.)” (Sarah Clarkson)

“Self-love and love for God are at polar opposites on the spectrum. Since few of us are entirely free of self-love, we must ask ourselves: “Toward which of these loves am I moving?” We may also be tempted to wonder about others, speculating as to which kind of love is manifested in their lives – in which direction are they moving?” However, we are easily deceived. Many nice people are also very self-serving; they have the outer form of godliness but choke its roots before they can sink deeply into the heart. There is no objective tests for identifying empty piety. Whenever we assess ourselves and others, we do so from hearts that are not reliable testing instruments. This is why Christ warns us against judging (Mt 7:1).” (Dynamis 2/27/2021)

“The farther Christians remove themselves from the spirit of their faith, the more they become divided by self-love; the more they are absorbed in themselves, the lesser community they have in spiritual and material blessings— especially of material ones with those in want—love becomes exhausted in them, and mankind more distressed...St. Paul describes with some horror what life will be like as the world comes to an end. It will be ‘perilous’ times for people will become completely self-centered and so individualistic that they will care nothing about others. In other words, self-love will prevail and Christ-like love for others will disappear. It will be something like what God brokenheartedly noted about humanity in the days of Noah as recorded in Genesis 6:5 –The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” (St. John of Kronstadt, Fr. Ted Bobosh) 

“Love is the “weakness” of God. His love can be frustrating, even maddening, when we long for our will to be made dominant. In the face of human suffering, Christ suffers. This is not the answer we desire from our gods. In our culture, love is understood to be a desire, or a passionate mark of brand loyalty. We want to possess the other.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“This definition of love is not how most vehicles of pop culture portray love—what psychologists call “limerence,” a psychological state of deep infatuation that doesn’t last. The form of love I’m describing is something much surer and better. It is something much holier. It is not as much about desiring a person as it is to desire their well-being, their physical, mental, and spiritual growth. Metaphorically, this form of love is not the beautiful, briefly blooming rosebud, but its thorny stem—the flower’s protection and source of all nourishment and life. This love is selfless in that it frees the ego from narcissism and the constant clamoring of me, me, me.” (Richard Paul Evans)

“ ‘Self-love is not natural to man. It is the result of original sin, which is contrary to man’s true nature’…This is a difficult spiritual truth for modern Americans to understand as we are told endlessly to bolster self-esteem. The saints, however, are not using self-love in the same way we in the 21st Century do; they certainly don’t equate it with our sense of self-esteem. After all, Jesus did teach that the second greatest commandment from God is “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:31). There is a good and proper love of self. But there is also, especially in our highly individualistic culture, a self-love that can be opposed to the Gospel. A self-centered and selfish love that turns out not to be love at all for it puts your own concerns ahead of the neighbor or friend and is spoken against in the New Testament and by most saints who could see that this more distorted self-love is actually the opposite of godly love (see 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 for a description of love).” (St. Macarius of Optino, Fr. Ted Bobosh)

“Love is so much more than a powerful emotion or a deep feeling. Love is a way of being or un-being. It is a sweet place of self-forgetfulness where fullness of self is realized. It is an incredibly joyful state and an extremely painful one all at once. It unburdens you with the divine insight and experience of who God is and that no matter what happens, all will be well. Yet it wrenches your heart, the deepest part of who you are, because of the pain and sadness you feel when you love someone who suffers. Yet even this suffering begets a deeper love you wouldn’t trade for anything. Love and lack thereof is the experience of heaven or hell. When you love, you long to draw closer to others because you feel your oneness with them in God. When you don’t love, you wish to create separation between yourself and others and your lack of love causes you to experience any form of love, consciously or unconsciously, with bitterness, anger, apathy, and general negativity. By doing so and rejecting others, you are essentially rejecting God whether you know it or not.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)

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…the Eucharist heals us of self-love, the source of all the passions, shatters the very backbone of individualism and teaches us to exist in a gathering with others and with all the beings of God’s creation. Thus the Eucharist ceases to be a “religious experience” or a means to individual salvation and becomes a mode of being, a way of life, illuminated by the vision and the expectation of the future, by that which the world will be when it is finally transfigured into the Kingdom of God.” (Metropolitan John Zizioulas)

“Although we live in the most prosperous culture of all time, many of us go from day to day with an aching sense of never enough. At the heart of our never-enough culture is the underlying fear that I am not enough—that being me is not okay…Self-criticism actually increases your body’s cortisol levels. Cortisol is a stress hormone, and too much of it can compromise the part of your brain involved in reasoning, creativity, and problem solving.” (Robin Phillips)

“The “judging” that takes place in our minds is the sound of an “inner critic,” a voice that begins early in childhood and can continue to torment us throughout our lives. It is, of course, rooted in shame, but can be a painful, even nasty voice that is harsh, unfair, and unrelenting. We are human beings. We seek to minimize what is unpleasant and maximize the pleasurable. As such, we develop strategies in our lives to “cope.” Many of the components of what we describe as our personalities are simply the long habits of coping. Sometimes, the strategies (and so, our personalities) become our own worst enemies. The very things that once seemed to lessen pain may now be a source of pain. The force of habit, however, leaves us burdened and miserable.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“Many of us don’t have an image of ourselves like the image God has of us. We don’t have a strong sense of loving gentleness toward ourselves. Hence, we get into a performance mentality, a mindset that tightens our brow, flexes our mental muscle, and tries to do too much, not because God is calling us to do so much, but because pride and ego want to perform better. Yes, we can be gentle with ourselves within an ascetical life of integrity.” (Albert S. Rossi)

“Practicing self-compassion promotes physical/emotional health and human connectedness through the understanding that we are more alike than different. In children, promoting self-compassion can be a more powerful tool than promoting self-esteem (which is based on comparison to and competition with others)…self-compassion is an extension of God’s mercy upon His beloved through the sacrament of Holy Confession and our ability to accept His forgiveness. Self-compassion speaks to the fact that we have an all-merciful God who created us out of His love in His image and likeness and continues to love despite our brokenness.” (Dr. Evelyn Bilias Lolis)

“To repent is not to look downwards at my own shortcomings but upwards at God’s love, it is not to look backwards with self-reproach but forward with trustfulness, it is to see not what I have failed to be, but what by the grace of God I can yet become…It is okay to forgive ourselves once we have repented. It is okay to relax. It is okay to enjoy something. It is okay to let others do something for us. It is okay to allow ourselves to be loved. it is okay to come to the conclusion, when appropriate, that we are being too hard on ourselves…It is amazing how much more efficiently someone heals and grows spiritually once they cease having a harsh and merciless disposition towards themselves.” (St. John Climacus, Fr. Joshua Makoul)

“We are often encouraged to reflect on and be mindful of how we relate to and treat others. We also, quite naturally, are very mindful of how others treat us. However, we very often pay little attention to how we relate with ourselves or how we treat ourselves. This aspect of our spiritual lives is almost entirely overlooked. Some of us might have an aversion to being mindful of how we relate with ourselves. Perhaps it conjures up fears of being ego-centric or self-focused. However, as we shall see, making sure we are relating with ourselves as Christ would want us to, has huge ramifications for all areas of our spiritual life.” (Fr. Joshua Makoul)

“We are created to exist as love – love of God, love of the other, love of self. When we withdraw from the love of God and the love of other, then the love of self collapses into a solipsistic loneliness. Sadly, we have frequently structured the modern world to accommodate and promote the lonely self. Our neighborhoods, our cities, our mode of transportation, our world of entertainment and consumption thrive on the lonely self and seek to fill the space between. However, you cannot fill emptiness with emptiness.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“There is a treasure that lies buried beneath our shame: our soul, the nakedness of the true self. We often spend the better part of our lifetime constructing a scaffolding of pretense, delusion, and imagination, largely to create a world of “safety” around the core of the self. That safety represents (for us) the absence of difficult or unbearable pain. This is understandable. The world can be a cruel place. It is best, however, if our armor is honest. A difficulty with the armored life is its tendency not only to protect us from others but to hide us from ourselves. What we hide from ourselves, we hide also from God…Shame is a wound made from the inside, dividing us from both ourselves and others.” (Father Stephen Freeman, Gershen Kaufman)

Humility is seeing ourselves as we are and loving ourselves. It’s not thinking less of ourselves but thinking of ourselves less. Don’t confuse it with modesty, though modesty is a good thing. Humility is more simply putting others and their needs above your own. Humility leads to sincere repentance, which is a continual heart for God, and self-forgiveness. (Sacramental Living)

“We are called to show ourselves the same mercy and love that Christ Himself shows us. It is not spiritually self-indulgent to be merciful towards ourselves, if that mercy is applied and practiced appropriately. We all sin and make mistakes and when we do, we must go through the process of repentance. However, some of us are constantly and forever punishing ourselves and feeling badly about ourselves. We sometimes confuse this with humility. Living in a state of shame is not humility. Many of us relate with ourselves in a very harsh, demanding, and critical way; always feeling bad about everything we do. This is because ultimately, we feel bad about who we are. This is not what God wants. We are children of God and made in the image of God. We must show ourselves the same mercy that Christ would show us and affirm ourselves in the same way Christ affirmed all others.” (Fr. Joshua Makoul)

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