The Roofless Church

The Greatest Love of All

Dedicated to the True Person of Whitney Houston

If you’ve been hanging out here lately you might see a theme emerging.  But in case you aren’t catching on, here’s what’s going on.  I’ve been talking a lot about loving ourselves.  Why?  Well, I have come to the point where I think that our inability to love ourselves is what is the fastest way to healing the appearance of a destructive world.  As I get better at articulating exactly what I mean by saying “love yourself”, you are likely to hear more on the subject.  Another thing I’ve talked about lately is the manifestations of loving ourselves and not loving ourselves.  In my most recent post, This Is Bully Shift I go so far as to say that loving ourselves is the best way to dissolve the false power that bullies wield.  Other posts that speak on ways to dissolve this energy can be found in my post about Bronies.  That one speaks to surrounding yourself with people who love and accept you rather than seeking approval from people who are too lazy to try to see where you are coming from. And the post called Coming Out of the Dark gives exercises to tap into this Love I am talking about.  If you are curious about why  am all into this, it is because I am igniting a “love yourself” revolution.  As  said in the video, I think that without loving ourselves, there’s no chance of really loving God or our neighbors.

The Greatest Commandment

34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m no longer going to coddle people who believe it is possible to love God and yet hate themselves or others.  They can disagree with me, but they will definitely know where I stand on this.  Does loving someone mean you must understand and agree with them in everything?  No.  It simply means this. “Do unto others as you would have them to unto you.”  Which by the way is also contingent upon loving yourself.

1 John 3:14-16

14 We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. 16 We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

1 John 4:20

Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.
I am so grateful that I learned to love myself as early as I did and I have to really thank Whitney Houston for that song.  It really did come to me at a critical juncture.  And now I am passing it forward to you.  Despite the tragedies in her life, I believe she tapped into the power of loving herself.  And I would venture to say that much of her pain ans struggle did not come from her not loving herself, but rather by succumbing to the lie that she was wrong for doing so.
I love you because I first loved me.

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9 responses to “The Greatest Love of All”

  1. revsandy Avatar
    revsandy

    This is an awesome article. I so touch and agree with you. We each must learn to LOVE our self without fear, without restrictions, without hesitation. This was part of my message to a group the other day. It seems so simple or perhaps too simple for people to grasp. We want the answers to be complicated and they just are not!! Pedro your vision is always so right on point and thanks for your due diligence in repeating your message of love yourself until we all get it and do it!!

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    1. therooflesschurch Avatar
      therooflesschurch

      It is simple but not easy. Why? I do not know. From where I am, God is the All in All. In this context when Jesus teaches this universal love that even includes enemies, it must of necessity include ourselves. God is where Love is. If we cannot love ourselves, would that not mean that God is absent from us? But this would be impossible for an omnipresent God that is even in the hells we create for ourselves (Psalm 139) loving us wholly. Either God is everywhere or not. And if I seek to love the God who is ever-present how can I achieve that by not loving myself who is a Creation of God? No one has to agree, but I have to seek this in my life.

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  2. katelon Avatar
    katelon

    I’m presently staying with a couple who read the bible daily, are very warm, caring and generous and yet when we discussed this topic one day, they didn’t get it. They felt like it was ALL about loving God and others. In fact, they both stated that without the God part of them, they were awful beings?! I tried to point out that innately we are Godly…it is the lies we are taught that say otherwise and lead to us acting otherwise and they just wouldn’t hear it. It felt sad to me.

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    1. therooflesschurch Avatar
      therooflesschurch

      Kate,

      There is a long tradition of believing that hating ourselves is holy and pious. And honestly, the function of this technique was liberating for many people who were bound by what we could call, “sense addiction”. There were–and still are–people who became very frustrated with their inability to overcome their knowingly harmful habits. Paul talks about it in Romans 7 when he says:

      14 For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. 15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17 But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

      To the Romans, and still to many of us, the body is separate from the mind and soul. I don’t believe that, but I am not going to write about it. I’ll just stick to the example of Jesus who is said to have been totally God realized–mind, body, and soul. This can go on forever. All I can say is that the love I am talking about is holistic and that I believe the biblical use of hate is used differently than how we use it today. I would say hating the false idea of self in order to love the reality of our true selves could be a useful technique if used wisely.

      Take your friends for example. Despite what your friends say, they sound like they love themselves or they would not be warm to you. But if they had a hard time releasing negativity, then they may need to believe that there is no goodness in them. But the fact is that God is a part of all of us. And God loves us despite our idea of goodness. If we received that love, then we wouldn’t even have to talk about God parts and non-God parts, because we would always experience ourselves as One with All and the One who lives in All. Make sense?

      Please share this post with those who you think can receive it. Some people will get thrown off by it. I’m not trying to do that.

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      1. katelon Avatar
        katelon

        I understand what you are saying and understand why and how this belief started, but that is the very root of the spiritual work I have been led to do since childhood, ..for myself and for others. This idea of separation, to me, is the “sin” that is so often talked about throughout the bible. Oneness is the only reality, and I feel that the beliefs and religions that continue to teach separation just keep people further away from knowing the truth that Jesus struggled to demonstrate. To me, it is the very core of his teachings and yet it seems that religion still keeps people from stepping over that line that allows them to fully claim their divinity/oneness with God and thus allow that God/good to fill them up and flow through them.

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  3. hbf Avatar
    hbf

    Thanks for getting this post out there, Pedro. I also remember this song from childhood, but now I understand the message, “the greatest love of all is easy to achieve” not as meaning it is easy for us to do (since we make it hard on ourselves) but rather as “this love is always here” for us… it’s up to us to claim it.

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    1. therooflesschurch Avatar
      therooflesschurch

      Thanks for checking it out. You’re right. All we have to do is claim it. It is everywhere. Sometimes I get so filled with love that can barely function because I don’t know how to communicate it. So I’m just trying to be it.

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  4. hbf Avatar
    hbf

    Reblogged this on A Honeybee's Foot and commented:
    This post from The Roofless Church puts it so well: the greatest thing we can achieve and the greatest gift we can give is learning to love ourselves. That doesn’t mean feeding our egos, which say we are different and separate from others. And it doesn’t mean liking ourselves in the conditional way we often frame relationships (contingent on doing things “right”). Loving ourselves means accepting ourselves in all our perfect imperfection, and in our unfashionable connection to all of life.

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  5. therooflesschurch Avatar
    therooflesschurch

    Reblogged this on Seriously Tripping Through Life and commented:

    The greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.
    –Whitney Houston

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