“Egg-Shell Christians”

“When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, ³⁵ and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶ “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” ³⁷ 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.’ ³⁸ This is the greatest and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Matthew 22:34-40

“You have sometimes heard it said of people that “they have to be handled like eggs”; eggs must be handled carefully, or you are likely to break them. Some people are super-sensitive: you have to be very careful what you do or say, or they will be hurt or offended…Sometimes people can bear to hear others ridiculed or talked about in a gossiping way, or see them slighted, and think nothing of it or even be amused; but when they themselves become the target for such things, it almost kills them, or at least they feel almost killed. What makes this great difference in their feelings? Why do they feel for themselves so much more than they do for others? Trace the feeling back to its origin, and you will find that their self-love is the thing that has been hurt. If they loved others as they love themselves, they would feel just as much hurt by that which was directed against the other as by that which was directed at themselves. It is self-love that makes people easily offended and easily wounded; and the more self-love they have, the easier they are hurt and the quicker their resentment is aroused. Self-love begets vanity; it quivers in keenest anguish at a sneer or a scornful smile; it is distressed by even a fancied slight. Self-love throws the nerves of sensation all out to the surface and makes them hyper-sensitive, and so the person feels everything keenly. He is constantly smarting under a sense of injustice. He feels he is constantly being mistreated. Oh, this self-love! How many pains it brings! how many slights it sees! how often it is offended! Reader, are you a victim of self-love? If you are so sensitive, always being wounded and offended, self-love is what is the trouble. If you will get rid of this self-love, you will be rid of that morbid sensitiveness; that is, you will get rid of that morbid sensitiveness that makes people have to be so careful with you.” (C.W. Naylor, “Heart Talks”, p. 46)

If we are looking for slights by other people we shall see plenty of them—even where none were intended. If we are expecting to be wounded by someone’s words, we shall receive them even when no one intends to wound us. Self-love, or better said “self-sensitivity” has a great imagination. It can see a great many evils, it can hear a great many slights, and it can be offended by many a comment where none existed and none was intended. It is like a petulant and spoiled child. They are truly “lovers of their own selves.” Paul said, “When I became a man, I put away childish things.” It is high time that we, as Christians, start doing the same thing. Suppose Christ had been as sensitive as so many people are today, would he have saved the world? If Paul had been an “egg-shell”, would he have endured the persecution and dangers and tribulations and misrepresentations that he bore to carry the gospel to the world?

Look, we are to learn to love ourselves if we are to love others. However, loving ourselves is not supposed to lead us to being so sensitive. We should look for opportunities to serve others, not to spend our lives looking for slights. We are called to love G-d and others with the intensity that we love ourselves – but not allow self-love to mire us in negative emotions. The secret is to love G-d with all our heart, mind and strength, and to love the others in our lives just as Christ loved others more than he loved himself; therefore he could endure all things for the sake of the world, so that all people might be saved.

Pastor Dave