Your Birthday > Jesus’ Birthday

At least Jesus would likely see it this way.

With the passing of Christmas and New Years we’re often filled with a desire as Christians to reinforce the spiritual hierarchy endorsed by many churches through these celebrations. Often the message comes out as something like Jesus > Church > Minister > You.

However, think of how Jesus actually came into the world. The events were about as humble as you could get in terms of a celebration for God and it certainly wasn’t the pinacle of what he was here to do on this earth.

If you take a look at his life and his message and his death they point more to Jesus wanting to teach people how to put themselves first. Spiritual guidance from Jesus was designed to teach people how to live with love towards others and through that learn to live with love towards God. This is for OUR benefit. We find more happiness and fulfilment if we can see the completion of ourselves as human beings through our empathy towards others.  That in turn strengthens our ties to others and helps us learn how to accept love in return, growing our faith in the decency of the human spirit when giving them optimum, compassionate conditions. Growing faith in imperfect human beings in turn strengthens our faith in a perfect God.

This point is often lost in translation in our desire to have people follow the bible or simply follow God. What we miss is Jesus’ message that love of ones self does come through a love of being selfish. We should take a cue from Jesus’ practical life lessons. Teaching abstinence from earthly pleasures through condemnation is less effective than showing how earthly pleasures can consume a person at the expense of themselves and those around them. Learning to love others as we love ourselves means not just learning to love others but truly meaning what it is to love ourselves. The two are intertwined and you can’t begin to understand what it is to love and be loved by God without them. You can’t truly love yourself if that love comes at the expense of others, and you can’t learn how to love others unless you truly love yourself.

Never forget that our life was always more important to Jesus than his own. He did want his death to be greater than ours by defeating death to give everlasting life, but this again reinforces the original point being made.

Perhaps take a moment to remember this before you seek to use the season to place another at a lower rung on the spiritual ladder, or even take a moment to re-examine how well you are loving yourself.