Thoughts on Self-Care and Service
Take care of yourself. You can read that as an opener to this article, or a serious command. You are made in the image of God, your body is His temple, so you had better keep yourself safe and healthy if possible. If you’re tired, rest. If you’re sick, take medicine. If your mental health is suffering, do what it takes to receive help. Yes, this may be difficult at times, but the need for taking care of oneself is pretty obvious to most people. But for some reason, self care as its own concept can be confusing. It seems like it should refer to the same thing, but apparently it doesn’t. Or maybe it does? If you’re like me, you keep receiving conflicting answers. The culture tells us one thing—and then another when we try asking them to go deeper on the topic—while most of the Christians around us tell us another, and then there’s our friend’s mom over there who says something totally weird and extreme, and that one kid at our school who’s extreme on the other end of the spectrum. I think about things too much, and I’ve thought about this too much (no surprise there). I’ve come to the conclusion that making sure you have somewhere to give from, some resources of your own to expend, is important—but you’ll always be sad or reluctant or hurting. Jesus modeled complete selflessness in giving His life for us; discomfort shouldn’t be enough to stop us from serving others.
First, it’s true—and it’s always going to be true—that you might not have anything to give in a certain situation. There are some people who take and take without benefiting from any of it, and while they probably do need help (in a rather different way than most), it’s very rare to be in a position to bestow it. There will be other times when someone’s need just isn’t something you can meet. And, of course, there will be moments when you truly don’t have enough energy or resources for whatever someone requires. God is constantly reminding us of our value in His eyes, of how we—and everyone else—should be respected and cared for as humans made in His image. But the key in situations where you have nothing to give is that when you’re resting, you should still be resting to serve others (OR to repair your relationship with God). That doesn’t mean resting how other people tell you to rest, or resting for only as long as they think necessary. It means resting (or accepting help) for the purpose of being able to serve better in the future. My untested theory is that you should put other people’s small needs above your small needs, other people’s big needs above your small needs, and other people’s big needs over your big needs—but never put their small (or small in comparison) needs above your big needs. I mentioned that Jesus died for us. That’s true. But He died (on this day—Good Friday!) to save us from a fate just as bad as the one He took. We were dead in our sin and He gave His life for ours. If the problem had been smaller, it would’ve made no sense for Jesus to die. Don’t die for someone unless you have to do the equivalent of pushing them out of the way of a moving car. There are times to give everything to others, and times to hold back. That doesn’t mean you should always feel 100 percent before helping others—that’s impossible. But if you give without helping yourself or letting other people support you, eventually you’ll end up drained.
And yet, Christianity calls for an intense attitude of self-sacrifice that can hardly be found in other places in our culture. The Bible makes it clear that no matter what you’re struggling with or how you view self-care, the most important thing is to put God first. And Jesus said that loving your neighbor as yourself was the next most important, as well as emphasizing that whatever we do for those in need, we do for Him. If we’re to do that, and to “count others more significant than ourselves”, there’s no way to argue that we should put ourselves first (at least in terms of value…not always chronology). This isn’t up for debate. It doesn’t change once we start suffering real hardship. Jesus, as I mentioned, suffered and died for us—and nobody told Him He should learn to put Himself first for once. There’s obviously a lot we should do for others at great cost to ourselves—if it’s necessary. Most importantly, we are called to sacrifice to those placed under our responsibility. This includes, most obviously, those under our authority in some way. Children, younger siblings, and the like. We also have responsibilities to our family and friends. And, I would argue, we have some amount of responsibility to everyone around us as fellow humans—as neighbors. Jesus claimed that everyone is our neighbor. That doesn’t mean everyone is our brother, and it doesn’t mean everyone is our child, whom we must protect at all costs. But it means everyone is someone we’re connected to as fellow image-bearers, someone we’re supposed to love. Someone we’re supposed to serve.
I think the problem with our view of self care today is that we forget the absoluteness of the Bible’s urgings to put others first. It means to always put others first. To always value their well-being above our own. Once we do that, we can move on to understanding that we can’t help everyone, that we’re not always the person in a position to help everyone, and that sometimes it’s better for us and them to be strategic rather than throwing all our possessions and all our energy out into random places when it could be better used elsewhere. Put others above yourself—that’s the most important thing—but give only from what you have. And yeah, that might leave you with nothing left over (like the widow who gave her last mite in the New Testament), but God (and your friends, if you surround yourself with supportive people) will provide. Just don’t try to give from nothing. You can’t help anyone that way, and you will end up taking from others. Not when you’re supposed to be giving as much as you can—after all, whatever we do for the least of these, we do for God.
