self-less
This is the definition of "love" laid out in the Bible:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. (John 3:16)
"Kenosis" is the term theologians use. It means "self-emptying." It comes from a passage in Philippians which reads, in translation (emphasis mine):
Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, Who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5-8)
Biblical love is sacrifice. It is self-giving, self-erasure. It finds its epitome in the cross, where Jesus gave up his life to give humans a chance at heaven.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. (John 15:12-13)
This is what Christians are called to emulate. This is what is glorified, what is held up as the highest form of love: To become self-less. That is, to give of yourself, until nothing is left of you. That is, to die. To kill yourself in service to others. To become a martyr.
The modern Christian is asked to give up their "idols"—their interests, their desires, their individuality—in faith. To bow down to power, to give up their income, their self-sovereignty, their critical thinking. Especially in conservative denominations, women in particular are called to give of themselves, to become obedient wives and mothers, to have no personality, no sexuality, no desires, no wants or needs besides the joyful care for others. Men are called to be "servant-leaders" in Christ's image who take on the role of guiding their families in obedience to God while prioritizing all others above themselves. All are expected to give their unquestioning obedience to authority, to the church.
I don't have space to fully break down all the harms that this commandment does to people, but allow me to briefly name some of them: The call to self-emptying denies our rich diversity and enforces conformity to empty, rigid roles. It encourages people to neglect themselves, to pour from an empty cup. It inspires suicidal ideation. It enables abuse.
Self-lessness should not be glorified. It should not stand as our ideal, our pinnacle picture of love. The point of our lives is not to die. It is to live! Together! Gloriously and abundantly and alongside one another.
Okay, I have more time and I want to dig a little into the various ways this teaching causes harm.
The Role-Self
The call to self-emptying requires that you hide or destroy yourself, especially the parts of you that don't align with self-giving. The parts of you that want, the parts of you that are selfish, hungry, tired, angry. It requires you to take on a role: that of the perfect, joyful giver. You must silence the parts of you that want to receive care back from other people. (Everything you need is supposed to come from God.)
This separation from your own desires dissociates you from yourself, from the core of you that knows who you are, what you want, your honest emotions and your body and your needs. The Role-Self is hollow, unable to connect with others to create real intimacy, because real intimacy requires honesty, requires letting the loved one see your authentic emotions and desires. Individually is erased in favor of conformity. People are turned into empty husks waiting to be filled by the Lord. And they will stay empty, because you cannot accept care, connection, fulfillment from the world around you if you've hidden away the genuine, messy, dirty parts of yourself that want it.
Self-Neglect
Self-care is the devil in certain Christian communities, and self-neglect very much the norm. Christians are asked to give, never to seek to receive. To understand, not seek to be understood. To love, not seek to be loved. This practice creates people who are constantly operating on an energy deficit, if they are able to keep functioning at all. It creates burnout and unnecessary suffering, physical and spiritual starvation, exhaustion, and chronic stress.
People who are self-neglectful are not good givers. They're absent, resentful, needy, guilty. They manipulate others to get the things they can't ask for, or they resent others for gaining the things they want but can't have. They run out of patience, energy, time, ability to give. They're tired and ineffectual.
What people who are self-neglectful are, is easy to control. Christians are told to starve themselves of the care, the joy that exists everywhere all around them, then told that they are only allowed to seek those things through the Church. People who are starving, exhausted, burned out are easy to coral with promises of care and rest, and they don't fight back when you assert your authority over them. The command to be self-effacing creates isolation from other human beings and the nourishing things in the rest of the world, and it creates toxic dependence on the Church as the sole caretaker of those unmet needs that the Church itself has created.
Suicidality
There are consequences to holding up death as the ultimate expression of humanity, of human life, of human love. Much of Christian thinking is at least passively, if not actively (the accounts of the martyrs) suicidal. Forms of ritualized self-harm, like mortifications and fasting, are held up as holy—especially in early and medieval Christianity, but continuing today especially in the Catholic church, in practices around Lent, "spiritual cleanses," and viral 40-day fasting challenges.
Christianity teaches that love is suicide, that holiness is self-harm, that the point of life is in death and getting to heaven. This obscures the meaning, the importance, the love and joy and health and happiness that come from living in the world, making mutual connections with others, loving abundantly and openly and playfully and enjoying the one life that is the only one that any of us can be 100% sure we are definitely going to get. It encourages people to waste this chance at life by hurting themselves, depriving themselves, by looking forward to the end of it.
Abuse
People who are told to give of themselves, even unto death, don't leave when their spouses start hitting them. People who are trained to care, even at their own expense—they stay, to care for their kids, to care for their spouse, to care for their parents, to care for their community. People who are trained to give of themselves freely without regard for their own desires don't say no to sex, even when they don't want it. Christians are trained to stay in situations that are uncomfortable, unwanted, even dangerous, to ignore or forget their own boundaries, to give of themselves indefinitely, even if it kills them. There is no point where "obedience unto death, even death on a cross" taps out. Christian "love" is enabling. (And because of this teaching, many Christians still, in the year of our Lord 2026, are not allowed by their churches to get divorced or to say no to marital rape or abort even a pregnancy that is going to kill them.)
Liberating Potential?
There are some who argue that the Christian teaching of self-emptying love is Liberating, Actually because it involves God, who is All-Powerful, giving up his power and humbling himself, or perhaps taking the side of those who are humbled, in a model for humans to give up their own power to the powerless. To this I answer, well, why is it that we don't see (hardly any) Christian leaders living out that humility, then? In practice, what we see is this teaching being used to keep the relatively powerless In Their Place in a patriarchal fantasy, where men give their bodies to work for the interests of those in power and women give their bodies to men's pleasure, to bearing children. Meanwhile the powerful go on taking advantage of the powerless, with no indication that they feel compelled to give up anything at all, and no one (because all are busy denying their own needs and being shamed for having them) can hold the powerful accountable or ask for more. And that's awfully convenient for the forces in power.
