One Sunday, a man walked up to a church and knocked on the doors. An elder came out to great him.
The man asked, “What are you doing in there?”
The elder responded, “Have you never seen a church?”
“No, what are you doing?”
The elder explained, “We’re practicing self-care.”
If you are not tone deaf, something should sound off.
I am far from denying that we must care for our own souls, have an interest in our own well-being, that we must retreat regularly from the world, rest, and be renewed in God, that we are each of value and worthy to pursue the good as God has laid it out for us. Nor am I denying that good habits include things like rest and eating well.
But we risk mischaracterizing ourselves, what we do, our moral-spiritual lives if we call something like the worship of God ‘self-care.’ In fact, we distort worship and even destroy it if this is chiefly how we think of it. To say that “I am worshipping God, praying, spending time with my family” does not carry the same meaning as ‘practicing self-care.’
For one thing, loving my neighbor is not me practicing a habit for me, but serving an actual person, just as the worship of God (which should occur not just in church but throughout the day in all that we do), is not me directed.
I am far from suggesting that we do not in a very real sense care well for ourselves when we pray and worship God. But going to Church is not chiefly about the self. It is an offering of the self to God. Even when we worship God through petition, through expressing our needs and fears, the tone of self-care falls short. After all, when we petition God, we ask him to care for us and we are expressing our need for him. We are turning to and focusing on God, rather than the self, even as we bring the self to him in all its exigencies and realities.
The life of a Christian is not chiefly about caring for the self. It is about loving God and neighbor. God himself showed this in his offering in Jesus Christ, by which he reconciled the world to himself.
“I have set you an example so that you should do as I have done for you. Truly, truly, I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.” –John 13:15-16
True worship is not self-centric. Love is ultimately not self-focused. We have been made for another.
My point is that our words matter. We must stop employing terms which echo and tacitly affirm a therapeutic, consumeristic, self-centered culture. We ought not cease from caring for ourselves and from seeking all the true helps we need, but we must stop talking like narcissists on a spa day. In doing so, we may in fact stop living like them.
There are many reasons that marriages, family bonds, and communities have been subject to so much degradation. One of them is that we have come to subject them to a self-focused utilitarian economy. We view the real demands of such relations as too costly. These relationships demand too much of me emotionally, mentally, daily. For instance, a Harvard Psychologist recommended breaking up with a friend by telling them:
“I’ve treasured our season of friendship but we’re moving in different directions in life. I don’t have a capacity to invest in our friendship any longer.”¹
How much is this friendship, this marriage, this faith really going to cost and where is mine? This is a question we all ought to ask. And we must consider what Jesus might tell us. How much will this cost?
Again, we must live wisely and have boundaries, we cannot serve others when we have nothing to give. But we must also take seriously how we have come to think of our own emotional and moral ease, our right to tranquility, comfortability, or to a certain satiation in life as primary.
Do we rightly capture the spiritual life, the Christian life when we describe it as self-care? Though Augustine spoke of having pity on ourselves and even giving alms to ourselves,² he knew that he spoke somewhat metaphorically and did not reach for such ways of speaking primarily when he spoke of repentance or the worship of God.
In contrast, self-care has become a common phrase among us, one that reflects how lightly we have come to think of the worship of God or our obligations to our neighbors (to one another).
In contrast, what price did our Savior pay for us? How often did our Savior speak of self-care? When he withdrew to the Father in prayer, he never spoke of this communion as self-focused.
Let me take care of myself vs. Let me go meet with my Father
Are these really the same? Do they ultimately echo with the same Spirit?
¹Here’s How You Break Up with a Friend @ Jan 9 2023 Harvard Psychologist
Dr. Arianna Brandolini.
²Augustine, Enchiridion: Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love §76
Same & Other 