~Do to others as you would have them do to you~
Luke 6:31
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I'm sitting here, in the deserted library of my college campus, "writing" my senior thesis. I'm hoping to get a large chunk of it written during the summer, that way during the semester, I have more time to get a job and write all the other papers my Lit classes will demand of me. I'm really excited about my topic, Jane Austen's emphasis on romances built first on a foundation of friendship rather than infatuation, but right now I'm not really digging the whole research thing... So as a break from poring through my stack of 14 books on Jane Austen and her novels, I decided to finally write another post for my poor little blog.
The other day, I was meditating on this famous line from the New Testament, "Do to others as you would have them do to you." It is so easy to just brush over this, telling yourself, "oh, that just means be nice to people, like I want people to be nice to me." However, like pretty much everything in the Bible and under the sun, you shouldn't just understand something based on its face value. There is always a second, more subtle meaning to be unveiled through contemplation.
It is part of human nature to love and to be loved. God created man to be loved by Him and to return love to Him. Love is something every man, woman, and child desires. Even those people twisted by hate all secretly desire love, deep down inside of their souls. So, Luke 6:31 can be interpreted to mean that we must love other people as we love ourselves. To truly learn to love another person, we first must begin by learning to love ourselves. In a culture so filled with self hate and twisted body image, this can be really hard. Everyone, at some point or another, has looked in the mirror and thought, "Ugh, look how fat I'm getting," or, "I look so tired. Those bags under my eyes are so ugly. I have zits everywhere..." The list goes on. The vortex of self loathing goes on too.
Like I said before, we can't truly love the people around us until we learn to love ourselves. Like, REALLY love ourselves. This involves loving yourself even when there's an uninvited pimple and a muffin top hanging over your jeans. Every moment of the day, we need to remember that God, Who is infinite Perfection, cannot go against His nature and create something that is evil. You are beauty, just how you are now. I am beauty. Everyone is distinctly beautiful, each in his or her own, unique way. Comparison is the destruction of joy. True, it is good to exercise in order to get healthy, but the moment you work out for the purpose of looking like so and so, you are denying your own beauty. I don't need to look like say, Emma Watson to be beautiful, I am beautiful already. Recognizing your own worth is the first step towards loving yourself. Once you learn to love you for YOU, then you can learn to love others. Every relationship, sibling, friendship, or romantic depends so much upon your own relationship with yourself.
~Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good and His steadfast love endures forever~
Psalm 136
