Treat Yourself - Part 3

This blog is designed to give people an inner look at a devotional life. Taking time each day to spend time with the Lord. The hope is if you travel on this journey with Rev. Jacob Shaw, you may be more inclined to spend time with the Lord as well. I encourage the use of a devotional, a scripture reading and prayer, then finally some form of artistic mark to tie it all together. 

Today's devotional is taken from: Peterson, Jordan B. 12 Rules for Life: an antidote to chaos. Great Britain: Penguin Random House, 2018. Rule 2: Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible For Helping – part 2 pp. 49 - 65

Opening Thought: A very interesting conclusion to the second rule. In a nutshell, Peterson says that people are likely to not care for themselves, because at some level we hold a resentment against ourselves. This resentment is born out of our awareness that we each fall short of ideals and the Ideal (being God). We cannot help but feel shame to some extent, so as a result we do not hold our own wellbeing to a standard of care that we might offer to another. People often care for pets, like dogs, more regularly and consistently with popper food and exercise, or medications when required, than they do for themselves. This is likely because we see the animal as fundamentally innocent, they are not held to a moral law to the same extend we are. Peterson goes to the story of Adam and Eve and demonstrates that this shame, (self-hatred due to our knowledge of our inherent vulnerability and corruptibility), is seen when God looks for Adam, who is hiding from God, because Adam (after eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil) could now understand himself to be naked. Adam hides from God because Adam become aware of his finite reality and vulnerable reality. Adam and Eve both acted as if they were the Ideal when they took authority into their own hand by defying God’s rules. When this exposes their true limited being, they became shameful as they could now see that they fell short of the ultimate Ideal. Not only did they fall short of the Ideal, but they also stood against that ideal, showing them to be foolish. The nakedness is both a literal and a metaphor. We struggle with the same nakedness; we all hold a level or guilt or shame because we know we are not perfect. We long to be in one way or another, but we fall short. It is in that struggle which we hid from, like Adam did from God. But often we also hide from ourselves, denying the care we ought to show ourselves. Despite our fall, we were still created in the image of God, so we still hold a level of dignity which we should treat with respect. The shame we feel, should lead us to humility, not neglect for self and/or others.

Opening Prayer: Our Father, help us to see ourselves as we are, broken, hurting, short of the ideal. Let us find completion in you, by the image of Christ, coming into our hearts and making us whole. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Reflection: One thing I would like to focus on is what Adam does when God finds Adam suddenly self-aware. Adam immediately does something that most of us will know all too well, he passes the buck on the blame. He blames Eve, and he blames God for giving him, Eve. This speaks so loudly to the nature of sin; it is a shame Peterson did not focus more on this point. In our shortcomings, one of the reasons I believe people often get so hard on themselves is not that they have these shortcomings, because you can be pitiful for people with shortcomings, even sinful shortcomings. Rather it is the unwillingness to recognize your shortcomings and therefore having to face them head-on. We blame others because if we blame ourselves, that means we are responsible and would have to do something about it. There is a reason why Jesus says the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love the neighbor, and that the whole of the law hangs on to these things because the law is a tool to help govern the self morally. You cannot be morally sound if you pass the buck of your sins onto others, whether that be blaming others or God for your shortcomings, or directly taking your sin out on them in aggressive or neglectful tones.

If we wish to love ourselves enough to care for ourselves properly, we also need the ability to love God and our neighbor. And we may just need to step out of ourselves for a little bit and see ourselves as a neighbor who needs care, and also a person who bears the image of God.   

Scripture Brought to Mind: Genesis 5:1-2

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God. He created them male and female, and He blessed them and named them Man in the day when they were created.

As Christians, we cannot think of ourselves outside of the presence of God. because God is the ultimate Ideal that we are going to fall short of, and it is wise to be humble in that knowledge. However, because we are created in the image of the ultimate Ideal, we also have an extreme amount of potential. When we move through our lives, we need to be aware of our shortcomings, so our hubris doesn’t get the better of us or others. But we also need to hold to the fact that a part of what we are is “sacred”, it is worthy of love, mercy, and kindness. We should care for ourselves, take our medicine, eat a good diet, and when we our well cared for, think about how much better we could care for the world around us.

Continual Work: What are some changes in your life you could make today that would mean you would be healthier mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially, relationally…etc., Treat Yourself Like Someone You Are Responsible For Helping

What Rev. Jacob is Working On: A lot in this department, I’m the type who resists going to the doctor because I don’t like the wait times. So…. Yeah. I’ll be working on this self-care thing.

Prayer for your week: God help us to love ourselves, not in a prideful sense, not in a self-relishing or affirmatory sense. But in a humble loving care, knowing that you made us to be in line with your will, and to do so, we need to be well in body, mind, and spirit. Amen.  

Artistic Close: There are a lot of images for Christ, but a nurse or doctor would be a fitting one too.