It was Vivekenanda who said, "That man who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God." And as with faith, so with love: we cannot not love ourselves and yet think we can love another. Loving oneself is not a selfish act, but a healthy one; at root it is an affirmation that the universe is good, for the divine spirit – ‘that of God in us’ that the Quakers like to cite – is lovable. If that is not so, then why pretend we can reject ourselves but somehow find another lovable?
Yet, in a bizarre way, that is what many effectively do, although they are ‘good’ people. It is really the story of Mary and Martha in John’s gospel. Martha, you will recall, is busy doing all the housework and preparation whereas Mary is enjoying Christ’s company and listening to him speak. Martha gets so fed-up with this that she asks Christ to support her, criticise her sister, and get her sister off her rump and working! But Christ declines to do this, noting the importance of what Mary is doing, or rather not doing. What Mary is doing is loving herself, putting herself in the way of spiritual refreshment, and recharging her batteries.
Martha, on the other hand, is doing what she ‘ought’ to do, complying with an inner critic to be a good person, and almost certainly too is experiencing persistent feelings of guilt because she will not have done ‘enough’ to be good. As a friend of mine observed, we really must resist severe restrictions of the "oughteries"!
And this leads on to St Augustine’s profound theological observation about the nature of Jesus Christ. What is profound here is not merely the theology, which many can take or leave, depending on their beliefs, but the deep psychological insight that the observation makes on us as human beings. St Augustine said, We must not say that Christ was unable to sin, but rather that he was able not to sin. All the difference in the world.
If he were unable to sin, then he had no choice; if he were able not to sin, then he could have chosen to do so, but chose not to. The former means we can scarcely give Christ credit for being so flawless, so perfect, so … sinless: he was some sort of robot man that couldn’t fail. The latter means that, like us, he could choose to take responsibility or not.
But why is this so profound for us psychologically? Because while we see addictions and compulsions as primarily about negative life style choices like alcohol or gambling or drugs and so on, there are also more socially acceptable compulsions that are almost as debilitating: namely, the addiction or compulsion to help people! Have we all not met the person who cannot stand still, cannot sit down, is always helping others? A sort of living saint. Yes, and many of these people are unable to stop doing good; they are driven by guilt, by fear, by the need for approval, by other negative messages they learnt when they were very young. So OK, it’s nice – for a while – to have people around who do everything for you, but what about them? Are they loving themselves? And the answer is clearly not.
What then is important to understand is that the mature personality, the one that breaks compulsions, is the one who is able not to, rather than the one who is unable. Another way of putting this is maturity is about taking responsibility and first and foremost of all responsibilities is to love oneself. As Christ said, We need to love our neighbour as our self, but notice the implied given – we love our self first, then the neighbour. For those, then, in that restless state of always ‘doing’ good (always ‘being’ good, of course, is different) – examine yourself and your motives, and affirm with St Augustine that with or like Christ you too are able not to.
The Mapping Motivation Series 