Love thy neighbor

"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these" - Mark 12:30-31

I've been struggling a lot to love my neighbours. I've also been questioning a lot about who I am and whether or not there's something wrong with me. These questions and feelings of emptiness surfaces so often when I hear or think about certain people/experiences.  This passage has been echoing in my head for the past few days. OK... I exaggerated. This passage probably popped into my head only twice for the last two days. The words "...as yourself..." kept rippling out of the pages. When Jesus said '...as yourself,' does that mean that loving yourself precedes loving other people?

I forgot where I heard this from, but the story goes like this. There's a hammer lying on the forest ground. The hammer looks at itself and has no idea what it's purposed for. The efforts of discovering what it is made for only leads itself to utter failure and feelings of inadequacy. It begins to question its existence and how it's good for nothing. It's evident that the hammer cannot know what it is made for unless it has a creator and is used by the creator. You may argue, what if the hammer had a user manual? It could know what it is made for then! True! To have a manual means there was an original purpose written by an original designer. We could receive a manual on how to assemble a table or bed frame if we have a manual. Once assembled, we can begin using it to its manufactured potential. Likewise, the Bible (our manual) serves a similar, if not the same, purpose. The more we read God's heart breathed through his Words in scripture, we will begin to discover more of who we are and what we were made for.

So does loving yourself precede loving other people? Perhaps the focus should neither be on loving others or loving yourself, but on loving God. As you discover more of Him through committing your heart, soul, mind and strength to Him, you begin to discover more of your original purpose. I believe it is then that you are able to love your neighbors as yourself.

This principle of loving your neighbors and discovering your purpose and identity is something I struggle with very much. When numbers of people judge you or view you in a negative way, when people question your actions and do not give you a solution or recommendation, or when the people you once found security and comfort in are no longer there, you can't help but assume there's something negatively wrong about yourself. But God has been doing something very interesting in my life. As people release me from their life, I am noticing how God is also releasing them from mine.