"Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?"
And He said to him, " 'YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.' This is the great and foremost commandment.The second is like it, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets."
On these 2 commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets. The entire point and message of God...depend on those 2 things.
Love the Lord with all you've got...and love others the way you love yourself...
Love others...the way you love yourself...
So...how do we come to love ourselves?
"We love, because He first loved us." 1 John 4:19
We learn to love by the way we're loved.
So...when you see a homeless person begging what are your 1st thoughts? Do you wonder what he'll do with the $ and therefore if he deserves your pity or not? Do you not wonder why he doesn't just "pull himself up by his boot straps and change his situation?" Do you wonder why he doesn't just help himself?
Where do you think we learn to think that way?
When a baby lies in a crib alone and cries...and mom comes sometimes and sometimes not...what do you think the baby is learning about "love"?
If everything about the whole point of what God's doing in the world hinges on us loving God with all we've got...and everyone else the way we love ourselves...it would seem that Mom's job in the first years of a baby's life are of critical importance. Critical. Mom represents God's love for the baby...and will shape the way the baby "loves himself"...and therefore how that baby will grow up to love the world...
You leave a baby alone to cry by themselves and "soothe-themselves"...you teach them...
...to judge the value of their perceived needs
...that they're on their own
...that they need to do it themselves
...that the only dependable constants in life are themselves and the material things around them they control
...that in order to get thru life they have to look out for themSELVES 'cause no one else is going to be there for them all the time...
So, if that's how they love themselves...that's how they'll love others...you've taught them to...
...judge the value of other's expressed needs
...that they don't need to help others because they should be able to take care of themselves
...that others need to get all their financial and material ducks in a row and then they'll be ok
...that not everyone's "cries" need responding to if it interferes with their own lives and looking out for their own personal interests
...that it's OK to ignore people when they reach out to you
Don't you see it in the Westernized church?
...we judge other's needs. We judge and criticize them. "Oh, that girl shoulda' not been foolin' around and she wouldn't be in this crisis pregancy!"
...we try to find other people to help those in need. You see it in the constant battle over Democrats vs Republicans...always trying to find a way for the gov't to do the church's job.
...we will show up in a girl's life in a crisis pregnancy and try to help her get a good job to make money, to teach the value of hard work...or we go into a 3rd world village and we build a church or a school or offer some other material thing and think we've helped because we changed their "physical/material world" for the better...
...we avert our eyes from the homeless man on the street corner, or we won't ask the single teenage mom to move into our guest bedroom because we don't really want to get involved...we can't risk changing our schedule, losing any money, having our leisure time cut into, or really disrupting our lives in any way to help others. We want to write a check to the church or vote for the right politician and for someone ELSE to help that person...Heck, we can't even put it as a priority to evangelize in our daily lives, we want to cuss, drink, smoke, speed, and then invite our unsaved friends to church so the pastor can do the evangelizing for us!
The whole point of all God's done and is doing in the world hinges on how we love Him, ourselves, and others...and that can all be put on a wrong path by well-meaning mothers...
The best way to teach your child to love God is by showing your child how God loves. And, then once the child is loved as God loves...he will then be able to love...
It is the whole point...
Picking your child up when they cry out to you does not spoil them. It shows them how God loves us. All the old wives tales...and books like, "On Becoming Babywise" are simply instructions on how to teach you how to not love as God loves you...and what's done in the first 3 years of life will be in your child till the day they die...and they will either survive what you do...or they will THRIVE...
No woman would ever think it is good and healthy and right to ignore their husband's need for sex and then for the husband to shut himself away in another room and self-soothe that need...and likewise it is equally sick and sad for a mother to lie peacefully in bed while their baby lies all alone in the dark in another room and strokes their own hair and sucks on their thumb to self-soothe...
One of the scribes came and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, "What commandment is the foremost of all?"
Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH.' The second is this, 'YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.' There is no other commandment greater than these.""
Matthew 12:28
