A MESSAGE OF LOVE
by Sandra Brown
A short Christian meditation explores the nature of love and self-love.
“What is your definition of love?” Sandra asks in her nonfiction debut, laying out a call for embracing self-love as a foundation for pursuing a deeper bond with the Christian God. One big benefit of loving ourselves, according to the author, is that it allows us to “begin to accept ourselves for who we are in Christ.” We realize greater self-esteem when we welcome who we are, the book asserts, and “when we believe that we are entitled to greatness, purpose, and blessings, we demand it and receive it.” Each of the manual’s quick, clearly written chapters ends with a recap of its contents, a “proclamation” designed to help readers turn sentiments into actions, and a suggested activity to give form to those efforts. Sandra illustrates her points with quotes from Scripture and incidents from her own life and the lives of others, stressing the fine line between loving yourself and loving others in correct balance. “Love is bigger than you and me,” she writes. Loving someone means being “willing” to rank that person’s “happiness on the same level as your own.” And yet “love is helping one another without being abused; giving, but not being used!” This balancing act can sometimes be a problem for a philosophy of self-love, of course, as can be seen, for example, in that previous quote. Christians are explicitly instructed to love others even while being abused by them (Matthew 5:38-39, etc.). A similar difficulty arises when the author encourages readers to “celebrate your achievements. Acknowledge your feelings, forgive yourself, and then work on letting go so you can move on with your life.” There is a perennial conflict between modern self-help books urging self-love and Christian teachings advocating self-abnegation in service to others, and that clash isn’t solved or even addressed in this volume. What readers get instead is reassuring self-affirmation delivered in brisk prose.
An energetic, interactive guide that encourages Christians to love themselves in order to love others.