Monday 30 October 2017

How do you show compassion to yourself?

Good morning and welcome to this week.  Yesterday's scripture is a passage that is core to the Christian life.  It invites us to love God and to love neighbour and implies that there is an inseparable link between these two actions.  Yet, I have always been intrigued by the end of the passage which reads, "Love your neighbour as yourself."  My life experience suggests that most of us carry around negative messages that hinder us from truly loving and valuing ourselves.  The Gospel of Christ is filled with stories of liberation - liberation from oppression, liberation from injustice and liberation from those negative self-messages.  In the context of the sermon (found at:  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCPprVUGjDc&feature=youtu.be ) I attempted to apply Jesus' message of personal liberation to individual lives.  I'm wondering what you think about God's encouragement to forgive and accept yourself.  What have you learned about self-compassion in your own life?  I'm be glad to hear from you.

1 comment:

  1. Good evening Rev Walton,

    Recently you spoke about the Biblical injunction that we ought to 'love our neighbour as ourself'. This put me in mind of Henry Sidgwick's spin on this in his book, Practical Ethics, published at the end of the 19th Century. Here is what he said:


    ... But perhaps the answer that goes deepest is that suggested by an old remark that the precept "Love thy neighbour as thyself" might—when it has attained general acceptance and serious efforts are made to fulfil it—be advantageously supplemented by the converse precept "Love thyself as thy neighbour": since a genuine regard for our neighbour—when not hampered by the tyranny of custom—prompts us to give him what we think really good for him; whereas natural self-regard prompts us to give ourselves what we like. Thus the spontaneous expression of altruism, rather than the spontaneous expression of egoism, corresponds to our deepest judgment, the judgment of our best self, as to the good and evil in human life.
    - p.210 in his Collected Works

    Just thought you might find this interesting.

    Cheers,

    David Crossley

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