If someone were to ask me what is the best way to learn how to ride a bike, I would think about two ways to answer the question. On the one hand, I would think of the physicists who can tell you the laws of physics of what happens when the tire hits the road and the need for the rider to balance on the bike. On the other hand, one can simply get on a bike and ride it. When I think about the two options, if given a choice, I would choose the second way. The obvious reason is that one may be able to study the physics of riding a bicycle and yet not be able to mount a bike and ride it down the street. On the other hand, those who learn to ride the bike actually put physics to work, almost instinctively turning the wheel to counterbalance the direction they are about to fall. The simple truth is this… the more the bike is ridden, the more the skill is acquired. Those who have mastered the bicycle have learned well enough how to ride that they no longer think about how it is to be done.
This riding-the-bike metaphor can serve us as we try to wrap our minds around the profound idea of loving ourselves. I am finding that it is very tempting to theorize about the idea of the self and love, and yet it is quite a different story to ride the bike where the rubber hits the road in our everyday existential lives. Truth be known, we love the “idea” of love more than love in shoe leather out on the street. What I am discovering is that there has to be a movement from the idea to the actual for self-love to be real. I have chosen self-love as a subject for this blog because my experience as a pastor has taught me that self-love is an aspect that cannot be ignored in the whole relational orbit of loving God and our neighbor.
It is not always easy to put our finger on the pulse of self-love. Just think of it…
- What environment would be conducive to encourage us to love ourselves?
- How would we know when we love ourselves?
- What do we mean when we refer to the self? Where is the self?
- Is it located in my capacity to remember experiences, relationships, and events?
- Is the self dynamically in flux, always on the move, or can it be frozen in time and observed as a snapshot?
- How do we know if we are living out of a false or true self?
- Is loving myself something that would primarily occupy my thinking faculties, or is loving myself an experience I would feel?
These questions and many more can easily take a hold of us as we try to make sense of the relational mystery of loving others and ourselves. Given all the questions above, I had thought it well to invite Mildred as a conversational partner with us. It would not be an understatement to say that Dr. Mildred Wynkoop has been one of the most influential persons in my life. I met her in 1980 as my dad and I traveled from South Africa to attend the General Assembly for the Church of the Nazarene here in KC. My dad was one of her students a few years prior and had always spoken with such fondness about this brilliant woman theologian who had changed his life. My memory of our first meeting will always stay with me. At the time we met I was 21 and she was 77 years old, serving as the resident theologian at the Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City. I still remember our get together one evening as she and her husband Ralph joined my dad and me for dinner. Her powerful listening presence and her piercing eyes will always be vivid in my memory. I recall a dinner filled with laughter and theological humor that made a big impression on me. Little did I know at that time that 29 years later I would spend six years in doctoral research on her life and work. If I had known, I would have asked her lots of questions when I had the chance. She was a theologian who made it her lifetime work to explore the theological undercurrents of the elusive concept called “love.” I hope her thoughts on love will be as helpful to you as they have been for me.
Given the limited scope of this blog, I will only introduce one of the key concepts that Wynkoop brought to the surface in her research on love. Wynkoop brought this mike drop idea that “agape love” is part of our make up as a person. I had always thought that this Greek word for love refers to the idea of a Godly love that I receive from God if I was a good person. Needless to say, in my growing up years, the idea of capturing and holding on to agape was an elusive endeavor. Sometimes I thought I had it, and sometimes I thought it slipped through my fingers. What Wynkoop helped me to see is that agape is not so much something God gives me because I was good, but rather a description of a very human function by which every person operates. It was Wynkoop’s assessment that agape is basic to all human beings. No one is free not to love. For Wynkoop, the deviant person loves and the non-deviant person loves. At the point of loving there was no difference among human beings.
“No one is free not to love.”
What made the difference in people and their love was the object of agape love. Basically, Wynkoop was saying that agape is not a higher kind of love, but the basic faculty necessary to make relationships possible. By using the idea of agape, she was able to give us language to describe that deep urge and search for fulfillment that we all have in common. The difference agape made in my life was based on the object of my dedication. If I agaped God, I was living into the way I was designed, which gave me a way to come in touch with my true self, but if I agaped the world I was more likely to drift away from living out of my true self and experience a false sense of self-love. This is the bike we need to just jump on in order to learn self-love. The way we follow Christ in a life of trust and obedience has a big impact on our on-the-ground appropriation of a healthy self-love.
Based on Romans 12:1–2, Wynkoop’s assessment was that a proper regard for others starts with a proper self-love that is centered in God. Romans 12:1 says: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship.” “Present your bodies a living sacrifice” (KJV) to her was a call for holistic engagement of the self in all its relational dimensions. She wrote, “In this exciting passage, we see not only how to treat others but we see how we ought to regard ourselves. Self-regard is basic to a dedication to ‘other regard.’ Our obligations to others cannot proceed apart from a proper and virile self-love.” This revelation was very personal to Wynkoop. From this text have come some of the most soul-searching insights of her life. Her personal testimony and struggle on this matter of self-love is revealing. She wrote:
I was looking for some magic instant salvation that would take my real humanity out. The problem with me was my human nature… I had to learn that my human nature was rather important to God and to me. I really couldn’t get along without it. I thought I had to be humiliated before I could receive the Holy Spirit. I thought I had to get rid of myself, hate myself. Be a nothing, a no self…. However, I learned that God does not humiliate us, tear down our self-acceptance, embarrass or de-self us in order to whip us into line. He builds up our self-confidence and then approaches us as if we were worthy of his attention and love.
The theological rationale of Wynkoop’s understanding of self-love has helped me to realize that a discovery of the self, not a rejection of the self, is the first work of God when we respond to his invitation to aim our agape to Him. When we have God as our object, it doesn’t take long to see the effect it has on all our relationships, including our relationship with ourselves. Other factors that can be explored are the way that divine forgiveness, self-compassion, and trust in God’s love enable a person to recover possession of his or her true self. I celebrate today that God is not in the business of making us cookie cutter expressions of love. Every one of us is unique and loved by God. May we get on our bikes and live out of this truth…
If you want to read more on this topic, you can get a hold of my work at the Foundry Publishing Co. The title is: Mildred Bangs Wynkoop; Her Life and Thought. Another good book along this same line of thought is written by James K. A. Smith, entitled… You Are What You Love.
Photo by Michal Vrba on Unsplash