When Love Feels Like Disappearing
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
Christians are taught to love one another as Christ has loved us. We are taught that we should give up our entire selves for the sake of others, just as Jesus did. Many of us have absorbed the belief that we ourselves are nothing; neighbours, friends, and strangers are all more valuable than ourselves, so we must give up everything for their sake. We are totally depraved, after all. We are worms and nothing more, placed on this earth to be earthen vessels used for God’s glory, that is, to ignore our own needs and become emptied for others.
There are many Scripture verses that we quote to support these statements:
“But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people.” (Ps 22:6)
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” (2 Cor 4:7)
“Love your neighbour as yourself.” (Matt 22:39)
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” (Phil 2:3–4)
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)
“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” (Lk 9:23)
Over time, many Christians have absorbed the belief that love means disappearing for the sake of others. Verses like these are taken out of their context to support a theology reflective of suppression and rejection of God’s good creation; oh, but we call it “submission” and “love.” But this is not the vision of love Jesus gives us.
We forget that Ps 22:6 is a desperate expression of abandonment, a lament to God rather than an absolute statement of the human condition; we ignore the rest of Paul’s encouragement to the Corinthians to lean on God’s power in their human fragility—God’s power in us, not despite us.
We forget that Jesus commanded that we love ourselves first; otherwise, how can we know how to love others? Our self is the closest person we are to care for, yet we tend to neglect our bodies, hearts, souls, and minds and discard the self as irrelevant. It is only others that matter.
We call our internal desires selfish, giving them up for the interests of others and training our minds to distrust the feelings and desires of our hearts. We do not know how to trust ourselves because we have trained our minds not to do so. It is the external that matters more than the internal; the voice of the authority (the church leader, parent, teacher, etc.) knows best, and so we must fall in line.
We read Jesus’ command to deny ourselves as an imperative to ignore the inner voice, stifling the unique image of God within ourselves in the process, and interpret laying down our lives for our friends as a command always to be available to their needs, night or day.
Many Christians quietly carry the belief that love means continual accommodation to the needs of others: yielding, smoothing conflict, keeping peace, and saying yes. We bend ourselves backward for the people we love… It is for love, we insist. It is what Jesus commanded of us. Why should it matter if we feel walked over, ignored, and even disrespected? My feelings do not matter; submission to the desires of others matters most. We’ve learned to erase ourselves for the sake of others. We disappear, thinking that maintaining the peace and being always available for others is Christlike.
Over time, our very selves are hollowed out, ignored, shunted to the side, and discarded completely, and we wonder why we feel so very empty. We no longer know who we are, because we have been invisible for so long. We are used up. Drier than desert dust. And oh, so tired.
This is no way to live. This is not love, not for yourself nor for others. How can you love others well when you have not learned to care for the person who lives within your very body? How can you truly meet the needs of others if you have not learned to meet the needs of your heart?
What would it be like if you saw Jesus reaching out to you, saying, as he did to the blind man, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Lk 18:40) Or, to the invalid, “Do you want to get well?” (John 5:6) What if we took a page from Jesus’s handbook and withdrew from the crowds for a while (Lk 5:16)?
A life with Jesus is not a one-time recruitment onto the “Fix the People You Love” team. A life with Jesus means that we ourselves are transformed one day at a time, and this transformation can only happen if we spend time with him as ourselves, by ourselves. Spending time with him is not a pitstop to get you through another day of bending to others’ needs. It is simply to be with him, and him with you. John Mark Comer calls this “looking at Jesus looking at me, in love.”
Jesus wants to spend time with you because you matter. Your desires matter. They say something about who you are, the things you love, the things you want to do, and what you’re created to do.
Your desires are not inherently evil, nor are your emotions. Due to the broken human condition, they may be disordered from God’s original intent, but they are also little flags inside of you reporting on the state of your heart, whether it is steady, calm, and rooted in love and truth, or whether it is a failing flagship in desperate need of rest and repair. To ignore these flags is to become desensitized to your heart’s needs—and yes, you have needs, too. These needs are not eradicated when you become a Christian. No, instead, being a Christian means you let your deepest desires be spoken to by Christ’s love and presence rather than someone or something else.
Unfortunately, that’s just what so many of us Christians have done—we’ve let the voices of others dictate how our deepest desires will be met, and it is not at all satisfactory. We shove down our discontent, chalking it up to our selfish desires rearing their ugly head instead of recognizing the truth of the desire itself—that it longs to be seen, heard, and met by Christ.
Many people are afraid of loving the inner self because it feels selfish (hint: you’ve been conditioned to think this way). I might argue that we’ve gone about spiritual transformation backwards by insisting on loving others first at the expense of ourselves. We end up ignoring ourselves; discipleship, it seems, is for everyone but ourselves.
Instead, what if we discovered the self that God created for us? What if we delighted in our inner selves, exploring our hearts and finding that there is much good that wants to be expressed in it? What if we were secure in ourselves and in the love that Christ has for us, just as we are? Would that not open all sorts of doors to freely give love and grace to all because we understand it deeply for ourselves?
Love does not erase your self and make you disappear between the lines of your family or church. It does not mean subsuming into a role that you have worn your entire life. Love sees and hears your self and makes space for it just as you are. It is patient, kind, gentle, not envious, proud, or boastful, but delights in the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres—even for your self.
This is not to say that there is no inner healing, repentance, or removal of sin from your heart; that’s all part and parcel of living and being with Jesus. But the emphasis here is on seeing and accepting your self as Jesus sees and accepts you. Let everything else flow from that security.
Photo by Mathieu Stern on Unsplash
