Lenten Live Series 2026 #6 – Human Formation
by Annie, ARK
“Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).
In order to have healthy relationships with others, we must first have a healthy relationship with ourselves. Self-love or self-esteem is essential to having a healthy relationship with ourselves and will benefit all our other relationships as well.
Church teachings on this topic can sometimes be misinterpreted or misrepresented. Some people think, because pride is a sin, we must lower ourselves as we are “unworthy” before God. This lowering of self can result in interior flagellation or self-loathing, in the name of becoming holy or virtuous. This can be taken too far.
The opposite of pride is humility; humility is not equivalent to self-hatred.
Being too hard on ourselves is not holy, and does not lead to holiness.
If one extreme end of the pole is narcissism, and the other extremity of that pole is shame, the healthy balance in the middle may be humility and love.
Sometimes in our fear of vanity or narcissism we can overcorrect and become self-shaming. This is not a healthy or appropriate psychological response, but a swing to the other extreme. We should be striving for self-respect, self-acceptance, self-awareness, and positive self-regard.
Over-examination of our mistakes, weaknesses, sins, or failings, and over-identification with our shortcomings, gives us a distorted view of ourselves and allows those weaknesses to grow. We should be focusing on our strengths and virtues and allowing those to grow instead.
God loves us. This is the foundation of our faith. Knowing that God loves us unconditionally, we can therefore surmise that a) we are lovable and b) God wants us to love ourselves.
When you love somebody, do you hope that they hate themself or hold themself in poor regard? Or is it actually painful to see someone you love suffering from self-loathing or shame? How would you like the people you love to view themselves? As worthy and loved, or as unworthy and not good enough?
Make a list of ten things you like about yourself.
Reflect on whether this exercise feels hard or easy, and why.
Make a list of the things you have done right today; how many things you have done in the past day, week, month, or year that were good, noble, selfless, generous? What have you done recently that was difficult? That was the right thing to do? Have you done anything recently that was hard but you did it anyway? (Give yourself credit for small things!)
If you’re interested in more exercises like this one, consider taking a Backpack course, where you can delve into these topics.
