There is an appropriate kind of self-love, where I take care of myself and my needs; and there is an inappropriate kind of self-love--namely vanity and all things related to it.
"Love your neighbor as yourself" is about recognizing that the same things you want for yourself are also supposed to be for others; so that we regard others with the same care and concern as we have for ourselves. So rather than envy, we rejoice in our neighbor's good even as we would rejoice in our own good; the good that we would wish for ourselves we wish for our neighbor. I need food, so does my neighbor. I need water, so does my neighbor. I need shelter, a home, clothes, safety, security, and so does my neighbor.
Then there is also this: Christ desire for His Church is to be the kind of community where we are freely giving to one another, building each other up, encouraging one another, so that where in all my deficiencies are made up for in my brothers and sisters. I am not a lone island of humanity; but a member of a holy village, the Christian Church, and the village lives together. This is the way we see things presented time and again throughout the New Testament about how the Church is supposed to be.
The modern West, especially America I'd argue, has largely adopted a hyper-individualistic ethos--each individual is supposed to be entirely self-sufficient, and when they aren't they become a problem, treated as parasitic. And the internet has exasperated this. We are more disconnected from our neighbors more than ever. We prize vanity and selfishness, we praise the supposedly self-made man and present the success of wealth accumulation and the autonomy (even when it comes at the expense of the least of these) as the virtue to aspire to. But Christ calls us to step down from ourselves, to inhabit our neighbor, to be for other people; not ignoring our need, but recognizing the mutual need of all--if I would feed myself, I should feed my neighbor as well, or otherwise do what I am able to see my neighbor well fed. And this transforms us, it conforms us to being the sort of people who imitate God, who look more like Jesus. And if we are living as we ought, if we have the kind of communion and community that Jesus and His Apostles preached then we can depend on one another, because our affections are mutual, because our desires are no longer self-centered, but other-centered; and even when I lack, my brother or sister supplies; even as when my brother or sister lacks, I supply. So that there is always an abundance that flows from communion and love within the Church.
Imagine, for a moment, a church that actually looks like Jesus in a neighborhood of the poor, homeless, and hungry; where rather than the false virtue of self-sufficiency, we lived out the virtues of charity. So that the hungry mouths of all are fed, because of the abundance which God has blessed us with.
The hoarders of wealth deny their neighbor. This has been the teaching of the Church since the beginning; but as we have forsaken biblical and godly Christian virtues and values, we have replaced them with the virtue of "self". And our societies starve, not only of material good, but also starve of opportunity, starve for freedom, starve for dignity and compassion.
-CryptoLutheran
