The image of God & You.

"What you think of me is none of my business." This came to mind on Friday as I was having a sushi dinner with my wife and I stood-up in our little section of the restaurant and I began to stretch my back. I jokingly said to her, "I am really glad that I am not overly concerned about what others think of me." How 'bout you, are you concerned with what others think of you?

I realized after I said this that I did not intend to sound arrogant or disinterested in other people, but that I spoke from a place of freedom. Don’t get me wrong, I want to be liked, accepted and have many friends, but there is freedom in not being addicted to what you are thinking of me. It allows for me to be authentic; it allows me to be the person God created me to be. It allows me to love myself. God intends for me to love myself. God intends for you to really love youself.

I am reading To Love as God Loves by Roberta Bondi. She says, "The desire to love and be loved is part of human nature. It is part of the image of God. Loving is natural; it is unnatural not to love. Of course most human beings fail to love or love badly a lot of the time. This is because we are dominated by the fear of death and our own physical and emotional vulnerability, and our ways of compensating for this fear. We suffer from envy, resentments, depression, hyperactivity, and boredom."

I wonder if God gave us the desire to love ourselves? I know that one way we love God is to love others, but I wonder if one way we can love God is to love ourselves? Maybe we cannot really love another human being until we first are capable of loving ourselves. Perhaps that is why Jesus could empty himself to the world. He was at peace with who he was in God's eye. He loved himself so he was able to love us. Like Bondi says, we fail to love because we are dominated by fear. Perhaps that is why we often fail to love ourselves-- we are afraid.

Human beings are created in God’s image. It would seem that we cannot love God without loving God’s image. We are God’s image. You are God’s image. I am God’s image. As we love ourselves we cannot help but draw closer to God; as we draw closer to God we cannot help but love ourselves. As we love ourselves we cannot help but love others.

Bondi goes on to say, "A real love for God arises out of the knowledge of what God is like. With this knowledge, we come to know what being made in the image of God means. If God loved human beings so much that we are given the gift of incarnation, the terrible crucifixion, and the resurrection, then no one can offer an Christian justification for despising or hating any human being, ourselves included."

God loves you with a love you did not earn and therefore can never lose. You must remind yourself of this everyday. The image of God is at stake.