Hello, my dear community, my entry to the contest @sirknight, DailyCelestialChallenge-LoveBeautyFreedom.
Loving oneself is a mandate from God
A Bible in Mark 12: 30-31 says: "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. This is the main commandment. And the second is similar to this: You will love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these".
Loving oneself is a mandate from God, therefore it is a mistake to confuse it with selfishness. The selfish person is insensitive to the needs of others, everything is done according to their own convenience, is always prioritizing their good over others, in short, is unable to give what they do not have, love.
And how is the love that we should practice with ourselves and with others? For us, the clearest and most precise definition of love, the apostle Paul writes in 1st. Corinthians 13: 4-7: "Love is patient, it is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or proud. He does not behave rudely, he is not selfish, he does not get angry easily, he does not hold a grudge. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. Everything he excuses, he believes everything, he expects everything, he endures everything ". One of the immediate benefits that self-love provides is a change, for good, in the self-esteem of the person.
Friend, friend, self love has nothing to do with selfishness, on the contrary, as a mandate from God, has a double purpose: on the one hand it serves as an armor to protect us from abuses and psychic, verbal and physical aggressions of those who do not they know love; and on the other hand equips us to love without conditions our loved ones in particular, and our neighbor in general.
Love, invitation to live in freedom
Christ has guaranteed our salvation has not been to subject man to another type of law as slavery, but to grant them the freedom that characterizes the children of God (cf. Rm 8, 15ff.) The second instruction tries to clarify the good discernment and use of Christian freedom. He tells them that they must leave the vices or works of the flesh and put before them, the law of love. (Gal 5,13). And also the possibility of being heirs of the fruits of the Spirit.
The preached freedom of Paul was a call in which God proposes his divine plan, taking into account that this freedom could not be realized without surrender on the part of Christ.
Like the Galatians, we are invited to rethink life: What do we want to do with our freedom? And "discern", taking into account that any decision must take responsibility and in the freedom of the Sons of God, to understand that in that "freedom", we play our lives in fullness. The slogan for our present would be: Christ has freed us from the sin that enslaves us and proposes us to overcome any type of "slavery" with the service given only and exclusively by love.
The beauty
Having a balanced attitude about beauty can make the difference between being happy or unhappy.
Why beauty attracts us?
The ability of the human being to perceive beauty is still a mystery. Although the Bible does not explain what happens in our brain, it does say why we have a sense of the aesthetic: God created us with the same qualities (Genesis 1:27, Ecclesiastes 3:11). He also designed the complex human body, with its surprising shapes and functions. For this reason, a composer of antiquity sang to God: "I will praise you because in a way that inspires fear [or admiration] I am wonderfully made" (Psalm 139: 14).
However, nowadays, excessive importance is given to physical beauty, a trend driven by the fashion industry and the media. According to the book Body Image, several studies conducted in Western countries indicate that many people consider that their appearance is the only thing that makes them valuable. But such a narrow opinion may not take into account what is most important: the heart, that is, inner beauty (1 Samuel 16: 7).
For more information, check his blog:
https://steemit.com/celestialchallenge/@sirknight/sirknight-s-daily-celestial-challenge-new-for-all-steemians
Note: @sirknight started a contest and its daily topics are:
Sunday-light
Monday-darkness
Tuesday - animal kingdom
Wednesday-Structures
Thursday-ForcesNature
Friday-AmorBeautyFreedom
Saturday-Agriculture