Campus Ministries: Catholic Ministries

HATE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOU HATE YOURSELF

During the momentous civil rights movement in the 1960's, Black demonstrators would hold up placards that stated: "I AM A MAN." This disarmingly simple statement went to the heart of the Black struggle to reassert their manhood, in a racist world that called them "boy."

During the heroic revolution of the Haitian masses in the 1990's, their common cry was: "TOUT MOUN SE MOUN" (WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS). It was an affirmation of recovered dignity, after centuries in which the wealthy elite had oppressed them contemptuously as beasts of burden, as nonentities.

Is there anyone we think of as less than fully human: people of a different color? gender? or sexual orientation? enemies? criminals? the disabled? If we are blinding ourselves into believing that we are superior to anyone else, BEWARE, we are at high risk of hurting another human being.

Paradoxically, the root cause of mistreatment of others is our own lack of self-esteem. None of us are perfectly secure, but the better we feel about ourselves, the more we want others to feel good about themselves as well. It's those who lack self-love who put on a facade of superiority, who project their own shortcomings and negative self-feelings onto others, and who try desperately to raise themselves a little higher by stepping on others. When we come upon people putting others down, what they are really doing is pitifully raising up a placard that says: "Help me! I don't like myself!"

I believe that a lack of wholesome self-love is the number one problem afflicting people today. It infects us both as individuals and as groups, and its shadow takes on many destructive shapes. In an individual, it may give rise to jealousy, gossip, abuse. When a group of people suffer from a collective inferiority complex, it may lead to prejudice and ethnic cleansing, massacres and wars.

We cannot "love our neighbor as we love ourselves," if we don't love ourselves. If we dislike ourselves, we will "dislike our neighbor as we dislike ourselves." And if we hate ourselves, we will "hate our neighbor as we hate ourselves."

As we come to recognize that "WE ARE ALL HUMAN BEINGS," we learn to accept and appreciate ourselves and others. And as we learn to truly cherish and be good to ourselves, we are able to do the same for all others.

"What shall I do to love my neighbor?"

"Stop hating yourself."

The disciple pondered those words long and seriously and came back to say, "But I love myself too much, for I am selfish and self-centered.  How do I get rid of that?"

"Be friendly to yourself and your self will be contented and it will set you free to love your neighbor."

                                                                                                Anthony de Mello

Ronald Stanley, O.P.

For additional articles relating to this topic see:

COMMANDED TO LOVE?

CHERISHING OURSELVES

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

GREED: THE SCANDAL OF SCANDALS

FORGIVE!  ...AND FORGET?

I NEVER SPEAK ILL OF ANYONE

EVERYONE HAS THEIR STORY

BE RECONCILED