How Do We Love Ourselves?

“I think that we must first, and always, adhere firmly to the view that the right way is there to be found. ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.’ Yet we shall not always find the right way. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ How do we love ourselves?

Part of it is the capacity to know that we are better than we are able to be, because only by knowing this have we something by which to grow. We all know of resources that sometimes help us sustain this self-love: in Jesus Christ, and the fellowship he initiated and sustains among men; in the Holy Spirit he brought from God to all those gathered in his name; in the majesty and the intimacy of nature; or in the works of man. We all find it better when others help us with their love. It is better still, when a healthy Christian life keeps us aware that God who created us loves his creation, as it is, and yet is constantly at work to improve it. For this helps us to love not only ourselves, but our neighbours as ourselves, with a sense of the glory that hovers over the effort and striving of every man, even our adversaries. 

We are, after all, primates – only too recently evolved – who are daring to help one another build the City of God.”

— Thomas H. Silcock, 1971
Australian Quaker professor of economics
Carey Memorial Lecture