06/03/2025
“…Love your neighbor as yourself…” Mark 12:31
But what does that really mean?
It means your love for God and others is directly connected to how you love yourself. And at its core, love of self and others means not causing harm.
But here’s the problem: a lot of you don’t love yourselves. Even worse, you’ve been taught that self-love is sinful; something to avoid rather than embody. You’ve been indoctrinated to believe that loving yourselves is prideful, selfish, even anti-Gospel.
And instead of doing the inner work, you’re taught to focus on other people’s “sin” like it’s a holy calling. You are told it’s your duty to call others out in the name of “saving souls” as if spiritual micromanagement equals love.
Meanwhile, Jesus literally asks the rhetorical question, ”Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye?” Matt 7:4
It’s almost like Jesus knew y’all would turn the Gospel into a weapon for policing others while dodging accountability for yourselves.
If your “love” requires control, shame, or surveillance, it’s not love; it’s spiritual abuse.
Jesus didn’t live, teach, perform miracles and die as a political prisoner of the Empire so you could play “moral” hall monitor with other people’s lives. Jesus came to set all of us free, including you, from the chains of fear, judgment, and performative righteousness.
The gospel isn’t about control.
It’s about liberation.
So ask yourself, are you loving like Christ commanded or just a modern day Pharisee?
LuzCelenia Arce
