It seems to trip people up. I’ve seen it often in my practice of Christian Science. A person comes to me seeking healing, and also wants to know how to increase the effectiveness of their own prayers—and we will be discussing the importance of understanding and living the two commandments Christ Jesus identified as the greatest of all commandments. The first is, “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” And the second, Jesus said, is just as important: “ ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ ” (see Mark 12:28–31, New Living Translation). Then I hear from my fellow spiritual seeker, “I’m not sure I love myself, so how can I love my neighbor as myself?”
It’s been helpful to me to see that second commandment as not asking us to love our, or another’s, human personality, which falls short of the divine ideal that is our true self. As human beings, we all have plenty of room for improvement. But it’s natural to care about our own welfare—about having a roof over our head, food on the table, clothes to wear, loving relationships, etc., and in that sense, we love ourselves. So, caring about another individual’s welfare in the same degree we care about our own would be an essential way of loving our neighbor as ourself.
But there’s more. The kind of unselfishness needed to be a Christian healer, as Jesus expected his followers to be, has to do with deriving our assessment of ourselves and others from what God knows and loves about us. That’s where the first commandment comes in, and why it is first. To understand what God knows, we need to know what God is, and what God does. Then we can truly love God with our all, and love ourselves and others as God loves us.
