When Jesus was asked the big question of life by the Pharisees and Scribes one day during His ministry on earth, He didn't hesitate a second but proclaimed that "To love the Lord thy God with all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul and with all your strength" was the greatest commandment of them all. But He also went on immediately to say that the second greatest commandment was this "To love your neighbour as yourself".

'Loving your neighbour as you love yourself' is a simple concept, and yet not always easy to attain to in everyday life. Often the reason why we as men 'struggle to love our neighbour' is because we haven't yet learnt how to 'love ourselves'.

Self loathing is widespread throughout all mankind, especially among men who reach out for something better in life and desire to be the best they can be. We can't love our fellow man effectively, because we are always focussed upon our own failures and shortcomings. The core problem that many men face is that they don't 'love themselves' and therefore are restricted from 'loving our neighbour'.

The closest 'neighbours' we have are the members of our own family, our wife and children. These are the primary focus of many of our desires and dreams as men and fathers, and these are also those that have the greatest need of our love. Often we as men are restricted from demonstrating the great love we have for our families, by an inability to function in love by firstly loving ourselves.

How often do we come home tired from work, carrying the weight of the world upon our shoulders and miss a wonderful opportunity to pour out our love upon our family? Our attention is still focussed upon the challenges of work or life in general, and we find ourselves unable emotionally to release the love to our families that we know we should.

This often just adds to our sense of self loathing and failure and binds us up further, rather than motivate us to break through into love. I believe that focus is the initial problem we must solve if we are to truly fulfil the commandment to 'love our neighbour as ourselves'.

Focus has its foundation primarily in 'belief', if we believe we are able to overcome any problem that comes our way, then we can be free emotionally to focus upon the areas we choose, such as loving our family. But if we believe the problem is too big for us to conquer then we are hamstrung emotionally and often unable to focus effectively upon the things that really matter in life= our family.

Jesus taught us that the first commandment is based upon getting our heavenly books in order, and learning not only to fear God our creator but also to love Him and know His love in our lives daily. This wonderful key of life that Jesus gave us can open up a whole new world for every man who seeks it with all his heart. If we can just stop long enough, regularly enough, to accept and to sense God's great love for us as men, then we will begin in a fresh way to love ourselves and find the ability we need to love our neighbour, our family.

(Mark 12 v 29-31)
²⁹Jesus answered him, "The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.'This is the first commandment. ³¹And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' "There is no other commandment greater than these."