life on planet earth on Self-Love

People often think of Narcissus as the symbol of excessive self-regard, but in fact, he exemplifies the opposite. As the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino observed in the 1500s, Narcissus did no...

Self-hatred and self-love are equally self-centered.

Who, then, are we, we prideful late-twentieth-century creatures? Lord knows, we no longer think of ourselves as belonging to anyone or anything. We do not belong – we own; we possess. And that, to say...

Compassionate God, you know the purposes of our hearts and the will of all creation. Hear with mercy our confession that we have not cared for Earth and all creatures as you meant for us to do; we hav...

Pastor: The serpent deceitfully says to the woman, “Did God actually say” what you think He said? All: O God, we have heard the deceiver’s words, and we have distrusted your word. We have not deligh...

Prayer of Adoration Good and Gracious Lord, You hold us in the palm of Your strong hand, working all things for our good and to Your glory. There is no place we can go that escapes your notice and i...

Prayer of Adoration Gracious God – our Father: Sufficient and sovereign, yet, compassionate and kind; You tell us the truth while the world lies to us; You give us light and hope, while all around u...

Eternal God, Your love for us is without end, yet our love for you and for one another is weak, often interrupted by self-centeredness ... distrust ... vindictiveness. Whenever we come together to...

In his important book When Narcissism Comes to Church, professor and therapist Chuck DeGroat makes an important connection between shame, narcissism and addiction by looking at the myth of Narcissus. ...

Know thyself — but don’t tell anyone.

Selfishness is the making a man's self his own centre, the beginning and end of all he doeth.

Self-judgment may be the greatest barrier to self-understanding.

You're always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.

Self-absorption in all its forms kills empathy, let alone compassion. When we focus on ourselves, our world contracts as our problems and preoccupations loom large. But when we focus on others, our wo...

To know oneself, is above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against the Truth, and not the other way around.

Self-Discipline is a form of freedom. Freedom from laziness and lethargy, freedom from expectations and the demands of others, freedom from weakness and fear—and doubt.

Our hearts love to manufacture glory for themselves.

A person wrapped up in himself makes a small package.

You follow your desires wherever they take you, and you approve of yourself so long as you are not obviously hurting anyone else. You figure that if the people around you seem to like you, you must be...

Self-acceptance gives assent to be who I am—a small, limited person with bents toward sin as well as hungers for holiness—and allows me to live with all my contradictions, because my will, at least on...

As long as we live, our self-absorption and our insecurity will walk together, holding hands and swinging them back and forth like two little girls on their way to a pretend playground they can never ...

It is estimated that over 80 percent of the books published in any given year are about the self.

The Christian’s self-understanding is that she is precious before God—however much a sinner, however much a failure (or success) she may be by the standards of worldly comparisons—and that every other...

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

Cultures like ours encourage us to consider all aspects of our lives in terms of self-interest. How do we cultivate a life marked by God’s love – a love that is always directed toward the needs of oth...

Expert Pamela Rutledge explained in an article for Psychology Today that taking selfies is indicative of the tornado of narcissism. The selfie is the appropriate snapshot of the state of identity in t...

“I'm not much but I'm all I have.”

Define yourself radically as beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is an illusion.

Over the next few years I collected data to suggest that we have seen a broad shift from a culture of humility to the culture of what you might call the Big Me, from a culture that encouraged people t...