"Loving Others and Loving Yourself: A Balance"

During my last sermon, I talked about the importance of striking a balance between the important aspects of body, mind and spirit. These three components are not the same in every person and in any individual their importance changes through the different stages of life.

As I said, a young person is usually not very spiritual. They are focused on their body. A middle aged person often focuses on mind – pursuit of the mind such as a career, family, material pursuits. Spirituality can become more important to a person as they grow older. Failure to strike a balance between these three forces a person to compensate, usually by pursuing one or two of the other components of one’s being and this leads to a sense of unhappiness and a sense that something is missing in life. Today, I want to take a look at how loving others and loving yourself is an integral part of a healthy balance of body, mind, and spirit.

There is often a difference between what we may seem to enjoy in life and what truly makes us feel a sense of happiness and wholeness. I give the example of smoking. A person might like to smoke, but smoking rarely brings happiness because we know the ill affects that smoking can bring to our body and to our ability to enjoy life.

What about when we love others? This is certainly a potential source of happiness and it is a component of spiritual wholeness. Loving others and helping others is very,very important. Hence comes the adage: “it is better to give than to receive.” There is no question that when we do things for other people we feel good about it and it generally gives us a sense of wholesome happiness.

A very good friend of mine who passed away from cancer many years ago use to often make the statement to me: “Chris there are two kinds of people in this world, those who take and those who give and its not very difficult to distinguish between the two.”

Perhaps there are more than just these two kinds of people, but I believe that my friend offered a truism. It is easy to identify givers and takers in this world. I believe that its also easy to see that the takers are generally selfish people who never seem to experience what we term wholesome happiness. They are always looking for out for their own interests. Most often they have a very overdeveloped sense of entitlement. “What’s in it for me” is the slogan by which they live. There is certainly no balance in these people between body, mind and spirit. (And most often these people feel they are always victimized – that it is others who get all the breaks.)

I am not at all a fan of talk show television, but one of my co-workers once described an Oprah Winfrey show where Oprah was interviewing a number of lottery winners. The common topic was that all of these winners were being sued by family members, neighbors, and even fellow employees who believed that the winner owed them part of their lottery winnings just because they knew them.

Pathetic? Certainly, but I think this sense of entitlement pervades American culture.

The abject failures in parts of the welfare system and even the Medicare and Medicaid systems are directly related to people whose greed and sense of entitlement have placed demands on these systems that were never expected when they were originally developed. ***(Lisa as a nurse.)

The business of law in the United States has mushroomed due to greed and to an ever expanding sense of personal entitlement. “If something bad happens to me, someone owes me something” is the ever repeated message in legal advertisements. When I was in seminary in California one of the more common TV adds featured a man sitting in a chair sipping a cool drink on a beautiful beach. His words to viewers were: “I was in an accident and it was my fault, but the law firm of Smith and Smith still got me $500,000.”

The bottom line is that selfish behavior and constant action to seek personal gain cannot enable us to experience a sense of wholesome happiness. Beyond the ethical considerations of giving to others, religions of the world emphasize giving because they know that giving to others is a way to connect with others, connect with the sacred, emulate God’s love, and develop a feeling of what UU’s call the interdependent web of all existence. Doing so can help us experience wholesome happiness.

American culture is oriented, in large measure, around Judeo/ Christian values and both of these religions stress the importance of trying to reach out and solve the problems of the world. The Gospel message is quite clear in this regard. It espouses the golden rule: Do onto others as you would have them do unto you. This is a message Jesus often preached but it is a Jewish law found in the Book of Leviticus in the Torah or Old Testament.

Frankly, the best of Christianity is replete with the message of caring and sharing with others. The rise of the social gospel movement in the late nineteenth century is completely oriented around loving our brother and sister human beings. This movement was and is responsible for the creation of numerous charitable institutions which are designed to alleviate the suffering of the world.

But the gospel also contains a radical suggestion offered by Jesus to the rich young man in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 10 vs. 17. A rich young man asks Jesus what he should do to inherit eternal life and Jesus tells him to give away all that he owns and follow him. Apparently this message of Jesus seems to be to give away everything to others. Is this possible? Is this the “right” thing to do. Will such action truly solve the problems of our world? Will it lead us to a sense of wholesome happiness? Before considering this let us look at a few other points first.

It is important to emphasize that Christianity and Judaism do not hold the monopoly in the call for people to love their brother and sister human beings. In fact there is a strong message for compassionate action in every one of the world’s major religions.

One of the most basic tenets of Islam, for example, is the command to contribute a substantial amount of personal income to supporting the poor and needy. (In today’s terms, this is considered ten percent of one’s income). One is not considered a good Muslim unless he or she gives significantly to charity which is also known as alms giving.

Hinduism also calls for loving brother and sister human beings. One Hindu practice for achieving personal salvation and spiritual enlightenment is entirely oriented around serving other people. This is known as Bhakti yoga; the way of love.

Likewise, Buddhism is full of messages of love and compassion. The form of Buddhism having the largest number of adherents is known as Mahayana Buddhism. The Mahayana teachings are centered around the notion that spiritual enlightenment can be achieved by care and compassion to other people and to all living things.

And certainly, non religious, but ethical people emphasize the need to solve the world’s problems by helping our brother and sister humans.

The point is that most human beings intuitively know they should give and care for others. They know that giving generates a wholesome sense of happiness. Still, many of us do not try to help others in ways that we can. Why is this so? As we noted before, selfishness and greed are often obstacles to giving, but there are other reasons as well.

One reason is that merely trying to help others, trying to alleviate misery and suffering can cause us to feel the pain in the world. Seeing others in pain can cause humans to emotionally shut down. When we do this, we build walls of denial around us so that we do not have to care.

So I submit that many people do not give to others because merely the act of giving can overwhelm. How many times have you walked past homeless people begging for money, felt a sense of guilt and turned and looked the other way. I have. How many times have you read or heard charity appeals, one after the other, and felt a sense of overwhelmed frustration and had a sense of powerlessness. I certainly have.

In truth there is great need for each of us to help solve the problems of the world; to love others. It truly is a road to spiritual happiness. But just how far should we go? Should we follow the suggestion that Jesus gave to the rich young man? Should we agree with the extreme Buddhist and Hindu message that possessing anything is an impediment to spiritual enlightenment.

Should we give away everything that we have? Why should you or I have anything when others have nothing? After all, as long as we possess any material thing, we are better off than some other human beings in this world. Since I recognize the absolute importance of loving others, I have agonized over these kinds of questions many times.

But I submit that taking the message of loving others to the extreme is a formula for personal disaster. And giving too much of oneself to others can come in other forms besides the monetary and the material. Some people feel obligated to give their entire self away emotionally.

Some people feel the need to become completely immersed in other people’s problems as well. Some people feel that in relationships with others, they should always give and never receive.

In my opinion, all of these actions are formulas for personal destruction. Is then the caring and sharing messages of the Gospels, the Torah, the Qur’an, the Buddhist Sutras, the Hindu Upanishads and other sacred scripture - is their message to love others in such an extreme manner that we give away everything? I think not.

Consider the times in your life when you personally have given too much of yourself to a person, or persons, to a job, to a cause, to anything. What has been the result? Wholesome happiness, a feeling of spiritual connection? Not very likely

Or think of someone whom you know or admire who has done this. What has happened to them. Have they felt a sense of empowerment, a sense of peace? I really doubt it. Frankly, the result of giving away too much of oneself, in any form, most often results in despair, brokenness, and disempowerment.

There is another problem when we consider loving others and helping heal the problems of the world. Like everything else we humans do, most of us compare ourselves to other people. In regard to caring and sharing, we ask ourselves impossible questions.

Why should I retain my vanity and conceits and love of worldly things? Other humans such as Mother Teresa, Ghandi, Martin Luther King, The Buddha, and Jesus, to name a few seem to have pushed aside human arrogance and selfishness. In there place they have created models of human compassion and love for others that seem so exemplary and worthy of emulation.

Why can’t I be like them? Why can’t I do more and give more like these people? I believe that such questioning of oneself is also disempowering and destructive.

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, human beings are not equal. I am not the same as you. I have strengths and weaknesses that are quite different than yours. We are not the same. And this relates in our ability to care and to share with our brother and sister human beings.

We may not be able to become who our heroes of compassion are. But this does not mean that we cannot admire our heroes and try to be like them with regard to caring for and loving others. This does not mean that we should not try. Loving others and doing things for other people can lead us to wholesome happiness, to a sense of connection, and to spiritual enlightenment. It is an integral part of the balance between body, mind, and spirit.

So the question is how much should I give? To what extent should I love others? I believe that the answer to these questions lies in balance; in harmony. Eastern philosophy and religion have been teaching us this for thousands of years. Taoism talks of this. Buddhism talks of this in the message of the “Middle Way”, the path between asceticism and overindulgence.

I believe that this directly applies to how we should live our lives in relation to loving others; on how we should fulfill the Gospel message of “doing to others as we would have them do unto us.”

By all means give to others. By all means care for others. By all means love others. But also love yourself in the process. Challenge yourself yes. Question yourself yes. Wonder always if you are truly loving others and using ALL of your abilities and talents to relieve the pain and suffering that grip our world.

But also try to find and experience the joy and happiness that can be found in the world. Do things that make you happy. It is OK that you may have material things that give you joy. It is OK that you may live in financial comfort that others do not have.

The fact is that those who glorify their own unremitting contribution to others, in whatever form, without consideration of their own needs, are committing but another form of idolatry. Lack of love and care for oneself can be as harmful and immoral as complete selfishness and lack of concern for others because such action dishonors the sacredness of one’s own being.

We come back to the idea of balance; of harmony. When a person focuses all or most of their efforts on selfish pursuits, there is disharmony and there is no love. When a person focuses all or most of their efforts on only caring for others, self destruction and dysfunction are the inevitable result.

Do not judge yourself by the standards of others. Judge yourself by your own standards of what you are capable of doing. And when you do this, be honest, be very honest with yourself. Give to other and love others. But give to yourself and love yourself as well.

It is a curious thing that when a person lives with such a balance, they are greatly empowered and are actually able to do more for other people anyway because they feel happy.

Striking a balance between loving yourself and loving others is very much a part of a healthy body, mind, and spirit.

Reverend Chris McMahon UUMH, August, 2024