Redeeming Self-Care
Self-care has become quite the buzzword in recent years, hasn’t it? In a culture where exhaustion and burnout have become commonplace, it’s encouraging that more people are recognizing their limits as human beings. Greater attention to the care of body, mind, soul, and spirit is well in order in our time. Unhealthy habits among adults has led to greater anxiety, stress, depression, and panic attacks. Those unhealthy habits have been passed down to younger generations, too. From 2008-2018, anxiety symptoms doubled among the population of 18-25 year olds. Self-care is a timely, needed intervention in the midst of these worrying patterns.
But what ought self-care to look like as a disciple of Jesus? How can self-care contribute to one’s spiritual formation and one’s calling to serve others in the Kingdom of God?
These are questions Christians need to ask. In our time, the virtue and practices of self-care are often promoted from an altogether different religion–secular humanism. What is the ultimate good in a secular view of human beings? Self-fulfillment without God. The International Self Care Foundation lists 7 pillars for self-care, and spiritual life has no place among these seven pillars. This is self-care that sees no room for relationship with God. It is therapy without the goal of redemption.
When the flourishing of the self is the ultimate good, there’s no stopping a culture from the escalation of another disease: the disease of narcissism. As Christopher Lasch anticipated in the late 1970s, our time has become a culture of narcissism. Lasch perceived the following reality even in the 1970s:
People today hunger not for personal salvation, let alone for the restoration of an earlier golden age, but for the feeling, the momentary illusion, of personal well-being, health, and psychic security…Plagued by anxiety, depression, vague discontents, a sense of inner emptiness, the ‘psychological man’ of the twentieth century seeks neither individual self-aggrandizement nor spiritual transcendence but peace of mind, under conditions that increasingly militate against it.
There’s no question that our age has urgent needs to improve mental health and well-being. I pray that anxiety and stress will diminish and depression will lift from all who suffer these internal maladies. May it be so.
Yet our means of healing need not exchange one illness for another. Without the wisdom of Christ, self-care will become the means by which the idol of the self will be enthroned in the soul. In the virtues of good physical and mental health, one can sweep away numerous unhealthy habits, only to introduce new and subversive problems.
The spiritual forces of evil seek to disguise themselves among virtues, to appear as angels of light (2 Corinthians 11.14). Jesus said when an unclean spirit leaves a person it is like a house which is swept and put in order. Except that those expelled spirits return to that same house, summoning seven more spirits to occupy the dwelling anew with an even greater stronghold. (Matthew 12.43-45) The principalities of our secular age seize on our weariness to lead us astray from the way of Christ. Practice self-care from a secular worldview and you will never take up your cross to follow Jesus.
Self-Care Anchored in Baptism
Self-care must be care for the whole person made in the image and likeness of God–body, mind, soul, and spirit. To redeem self-care, we must see these practices anchored in our baptism. Baptism is both an identity and a vocation to grow in Christlikeness. At its best, self-care is cooperation with God the Holy Spirit to redeem one’s whole being and fulfill our baptismal calling.
In baptism, one hears the same words of blessing that the Father speaks over Jesus: ‘You are my beloved.’ Self-care means renewing your mind with the love of God for yourself. This is a rightly ordered self-love: to embrace the love of God and find rest in his love.
Care for one’s self needs to include this rightly ordered way of self-love. I can love myself because God in Christ has loved me first (1 John 4.19). A disordered self-love is ego-centered; a rightly ordered self-love is Christ-centered. To love oneself in Christ–accepting gentleness, compassion, and grace for yourself–leads to healing and a rightly ordered self-love.
Yet here is the great paradox of this rightly ordered self-love in God: the one who speaks the blessing of his love also calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow Jesus. The way of Jesus leads one into a paradox of self-love and self-denial.
Self-denial has often been mistakenly taught as a kind of self-loathing. This is not the self-denial Jesus teaches in the Gospels. Self-denial means that love for neighbor is equal to the love of one’s self. Self-denial is the way of Jesus, but not self-hatred.The French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos wrote these words in his novel Dialogues of the Carmelites, “Above all never despise yourself. It is difficult to despise ourselves without offending God in us.”
Self-Care, the Great Commandment, and a Sabbath for the Sake of All
The question we need to be asking is this: how does self-care lead us to fulfill the Great Commandment?
Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commandment to ‘love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.’ The Great Commandment is the wisdom of God, bringing order and beauty where there has been disorder and weariness. The Great Commandment offers healing where there is brokenness.
If the Great Commandment is the measure for faithfulness to God and others, I believe the Great Commandment is the best measure for rightly ordered self-care. Self-care that aims to love God and neighbor will lead to something that is even greater than renewing one’s strength–it will lead to a fulfilling life with ‘righteousness and joy and peace in the Holy Spirit.’ (Romans 14.17)
The sabbath command is another instruction in wisdom that incorporates care for one’s self and others. When I began practicing sabbath as a young priest, I focused on stopping from my activity–a good habit to develop. However, it wasn’t long before I realized that the sabbath had become a means of self-indulgence rather than self-care and renewal. Whether it was watching movies or eating too much, I noticed at the end of sabbath days that I wasn’t feeling renewed. I was taking a break, but not receiving the sabbath.
Abraham Heschel said the following regarding the Sabbath:
the Sabbath is not an occasion for diversion or frivolity; not a day to shoot fireworks or to turn somersaults, but an opportunity to mend our tattered lives; to collect rather than dissipate time.1
A closer look at the sabbath command in Exodus changed my understanding of what embracing the sabbath means. The sabbath is not exclusive self-care. It is self-care fused with loving, gentle care for others, especially one’s family and neighbors.
the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 2
Not only does one receive the sabbath, one also creates sabbath spaces and rhythms for others, too. Here is the biblical way: God provides rest for you and calls you to offer and provide rest for others. The sabbath is not a zero sum game.
Renewal in the Image of God
Recovering the sabbath as a Christian practice is not only beneficial for one’s own health, it leads us to practice self-care in spiritual community. Here is, perhaps, the greatest paradox in Christian self-care: the most effective form of self-care is that which is practiced in Christian community, which means celebrating the sabbath together. If renewing my strength is solely up to me and my willpower, I’m not going to receive regular renewal. But if I embrace the sabbath rhythms of Christ in spiritual community, I will find much greater consistency and help renewing my strength in Christ.
Should we be surprised that the most effective form of self-care can only be found in spiritual community? For we are made in the image of that ineffable spiritual community which is One God in Three Persons, the Holy Trinity. Redeeming self-care means finding renewal in the image and likeness in which we were made, the image of God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
