LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR MORE THAN YOURSELF?
Jesus commanded that we must love our neighbour as ourselves. Most people see God as representing that attitude so to debunk it is to debunk God.
You cannot love your neighbour as yourself and there is nothing to be ashamed of
for that is the way we are. We get by and have a good enough life without people
loving us as they love themselves.
Love your neighbour as yourself is nasty but its being a
law makes it more vicious. Laws are not laws unless they imply threats if you
don't comply. A law that does not wish evil on you if you refuse to comply is
not a command or law.The command however seeks to make you feel awful about
being a normal person and makes you feel never good enough. (Its being a command
makes it more vicious. Commands are not commands unless they imply threats if
you don't comply.) That is why those who try to practice it, end up feeling that
they should love others and not themselves. It was a clever ruse by the Church
to put people down and to keep them coming to the Church for elusive comfort
from the sacraments and the prayers. You cannot love yourself if you try to love
others as yourself for it burdens yourself. In fact Jesus' commandment may have
been a poetic way of saying love others and not yourself. It could be like one
of his parables and ironies.
It is easy to love yourself but loving others is harder. You would have to do
more for others than for yourself because it is so easy to wrongly think you
love them as yourself. So you have to be sure and act as if you put them before
yourself. Is this loving your neighbour more than yourself? Some say it is not.
They it is only making sure that you do love your neighbour as yourself. Rather
than loving them more than yourself, you are acting as if you love them that way
in the hope that you will manage to love them as yourself. Even if loving others
more than yourself is wrong , you are doing the only thing you can to help
yourself love your neighbour as yourself. Thus your behaviour is justified.
Believers teach that if you act as if you adore your neighbour more than
yourself you will find eventually that you value the neighbour more than
yourself.
Jesus told the apostles that he gave them a new commandment to love one another
as he loved them in the John Gospel 13:34-36. This is different then from the
Old Testament commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself” for it was an old
commandment. Jesus accepted the Old Testament command so it seems that he meant
we have to love one another enough to die for one another like he supposedly
did. The preceding sentence has Jesus saying he will only be around a little
while so that was probably what he had in mind. The line after also says that
Jesus will sacrifice himself to death and Peter says he will sacrifice himself
too. The Law also commanded people to die for others say in war. So why does
Jesus say it’s a new commandment? Could it be that the gospel is obliquely
saying that Jesus wants people to die UNNECESSARILY for others? That is the only
explanation. If the apostles committed suicide by getting themselves martyred
then we cannot rely on them at all. Jesus said that the whole world would know
they are his disciples by their love and obedience to the new commandment. But
the apostles lived obscure lives and died deaths that are masked in legend. This
prophecy proved false. It was only in the second century that stories of this
remarkable suicidal fanatical love of the apostles appeared which tell us plenty
about when this ludicrous gospel was written. It was written too late to be
depended on.
In Ephesians 5:28,29 we learn that early Christian doctrine declared that
whoever loves his wife loves himself and that it is unnatural for a man not to
love his own wife for that is not loving his own self. So loving another person
at your own loss is loving yourself. That logic enabled the Church to mean, "Let
others use you as they please, serve them and forget about yourself or what you
need for yourself" while claiming that this loving was loving yourself. Strictly
speaking, other people come first. If squatters steal your house then you must
go and sleep under the bush and not complain. This is fully in line with Jesus'
teaching that if people take our things and do not return them we must let them
keep them.
The apostle Paul decreed in 1 Corinthians 10 that people must copy his example
and be anxious for the advantage of everybody else and not themselves so that
the people they help may be saved. He bluntly states that other people must be
put first. Here in Paul, the idea that some people will not achieve salvation is
used to argue that you must put the salvation of other people first when you are
already saved. Even if you are not saved you can still work to save them. This
is actually a very tough ethic and demands you love your neighbour more than
yourself.
You will agree with popular morality that all people are as valuable as you are.
Now since you are most sure you exist, you will have to treat yourself as more
valuable not out of snobbery but out of there being no alternative. Jesus wanted
us to have an other-centred outlook which means that his commandment really
means this: “Love your neighbour but instead of yourself and don’t mean it when
you say you love yourself.” We all sense this which is why we have a difficulty
in getting interested in keeping the commandment.
When X hurts Y, X has proven he should not be trusted. But if Y forgives we
celebrate that. In that case, we imply that she is bad if she does not forgive.
We are also implying that she should put herself at risk. If I forgive that is
my business. But when I encourage somebody else to do it and praise them for it
it is doubtful that I really care about the person.
The Didache, subtitled The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is a work that is
definitely from the first century for its Eucharist and rites are so primitive
and because it emphasises morality and not Jesus. It’s teachings then are closer
to what Jesus was originally believed to have stood for than the gospels which
are more advanced and embellished. Some indications of second century practice
occur in the text but there is no reason for dating it to the second century for
these practices could have been carried on before then and plus the evidence for
the first century date is more substantial.
The Didache claims that Jesus’ teaching was that I have to love my neighbour
more than myself. Hardly surprising after what the John gospel says.
Jesus said to a Jew that he must love his neighbour.
He asked who should count as his neighbour? Jesus singles out the enemy in need
of your help. The good Samaritan found a Jew in a terrible condition after being
robbed and beaten up. Jews and Samaritans hated each other. The Jew will be in
danger of being hated and hurt himself by assisting. There are bandits around
who will attack you if you hang around. That is what happened to the victim
after all. But Jesus tells you to go ahead and help for it is not about
what will happen to you but hat will happen to him if you walk away. It is
out of your control if bandits will attack you and your own people as well.
That is their call but your call is this man who will maybe die without your
help. Jesus is developing his doctrine that you deserve no praise for
loving those who love you. Your neighbour is really your enemy and the person
who needs your help most. Loving good neighbours does not count when you are nto
worrying about the sick person down the road. Jesus shows that love is not about
paths of roses but paths of thorns. If that is what you have with neighbour
imagine what you must do to love God! The command to love God totally is
the main command!
When you read the apostle Paul's letters, and the Church regards them as the
word of God, we learn that Christians are obligated to bear with one another in
total selflessness (Ephesians 4:1-6). Paul said that one meaning of Jesus' death
was that he died to spare us the death we deserved and he saved us from this
death so that we might live not for ourselves but for him (2 Corinthians
5:14-17). If we help others because we want to feel good and people to like us
then we are living for ourselves. Loving your neighbour as yourself really
should be clarified as love your neighbour more than yourself. Love your
neighbour as yourself means you help others with total disregard for self. If
you look after yourself so that you can help others you are doing it for them
not you. That is not loving yourself but using yourself as a means to serve
others.
Paul the apostle says that the best love is dying for those who hate you. That
is love your neighbour more than yourself.
One will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone
would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us… For if while we were enemies we
were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been
reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.
Romans 5:7-8, 10 (NASB)
The verse denies that God was helping his enemies and sacrificing for them
because he thought he could make them good. That would contradict the point Paul
is making that its love to die for enemies. If you can die for a good man, you
can die for a person to make them good. There is nothing remarkable about that.
Paul also indicates that those Jesus died for may be saved but they are not
necessarily good yet.
Christianity can only give love a bad name! It is conniving how the requirement
of love of neighbour more than self is kept from the people. But people sense
that it is expected of them and the anger simmers away. Consider how Catholics
take it out on Protestants in Northern Ireland and vice versa.
St Francis knew that what Jesus meant by love your
neighbour as yourself was not that you are to love yourself but to love rather
than be loved. Such love cannot be given to yourself but only to another.
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