SO GOOD QUOTES

Finally, to see how necessary it is to love yourself, look at God’s great commandment to love our neighbor as ourself. If you don’t love yourself, you can’t even get off the ground with that commandment. In the early days of Christianity, people were taught not to try to obey that commandment until they had developed a healthy love for themselves first, and learned to protect and benefit themselves in many ways. One holy teacher said it’s better to be regarded as a destitute tramp than to try to benefit your neighbor before you have learned to benefit yourself. Running around doing a lot of charitable things for others when you still aren’t able to do anything charitable for yourself is a dangerous waste of time, because it nourishes hypocrisy and arrogance and resentment and cruelty. And you can’t possibly understand how to protect and comfort another person, how to meet his needs or lead him into a good life, unless you’ve learned to do those things first for your own self. So before you worry much about anything else or think about really benefitting any other people in the world, take hold of the natural self-love God has given you and become a faithful benefactor to yourself.

Who is God? Who Am I? Who Are You?
Dee Pennock