Self-Care Is Not What Jesus Meant

Justin and I joke about our “when our ship comes in” list.  All of the things, big and small, that we would love to splurge on. In the top three of my list, it sits: a pedicure. The warm footbath, the careful attention, an hour where someone tends to me, and I do not have to tend to anyone else. I rarely spend the money on them, but man, do I love them.

Self-care. There is nothing wrong with it. But notice what the word has come to mean. Self-care, in the cultural sense, is something you arrange, and sometimes purchase, for yourself. A small, curated reprieve. You are the one being served, and you are also the one footing the bill.

Now, picture a different scene with feet in it.

It is the night before Jesus dies, and He knows it. John tells us that Jesus, knowing the Father had given all things into His hands, got up from the table, took off His outer robe, wrapped a towel around His waist, poured water into a basin, and began to wash His disciples' feet (John 13:3-5). The Lord of everything, down on the floor, with the dirt of the road in His hands. It is also about feet. It is also about care. And it could not be further from a pedicure.

Most of us read that scene as a lesson in serving others, and it is. Jesus says so Himself. He has given them an example that they should wash one another's feet (John 13:14-15). If we stopped there, the contrast would be tidy. Pampering yourself is the counterfeit, serving others is the real thing. Self-care is out, foot-washing in.

But the passage will not let us stop there, because of Peter.

When Jesus comes to him, Peter pulls back. "Lord, do you wash my feet?" And then, more firmly, "You shall never wash my feet" (John 13:6, 8). It sounds like humility. It sounds like the right instinct, even, the same instinct a lot of us have about being cared for. I should be the one serving. I should not need this. Surely it is more faithful to give than to receive.

Jesus does not praise it. He says, "If I do not wash you, you have no share with me" (John 13:8).

That is a startling thing to say over a grimy foot. But it tells us what Peter's refusal actually was. It was not humility. It was a refusal to receive. And Jesus treats it as serious, because you cannot follow Him on your own terms, washing others while never letting yourself be washed. Peter hears it and swings straight to the other extreme. Then all of me, he says, hands and head too (John 13:9). He still does not quite understand. But he stops refusing.

So what did Jesus mean?

Not the pedicure. The self He is describing is not a self you pamper as a reward for surviving the week. But not self-neglect either. The whole scene is built on letting yourself be tended. Jesus kneels and washes the actual body of a person, the unglamorous part, the part Peter wanted Him to skip. He insists on it. And then, from there, He sends them out to wash one another.

That is the order, and it is the whole point. You are washed first. You serve from there.

This is what loving yourself rightly actually looks like, and it is almost the opposite of the cultural version. It is not arranging comfort for yourself. It is receiving the care God is already extending, including the parts of you that you would rather He not look at too closely, the parts you would rather wash yourself and hand over already clean. Letting yourself be tended by God is neither selfish nor weak. Refusing it is not humility. It is, if we are honest, a quiet way of staying in control.

And here is what receiving makes possible. A person who has let themselves be washed has something to give. A person who still insists they do not need it eventually runs dry, and you cannot wash another person's feet from an empty basin.

So the question underneath all of this is not whether you have earned a little self-care. It is quieter and harder than that. Where are you still saying never to God? What part of you have you decided to keep tending on your own, rather than let Him near it?

If the honest answer is that some part of you feels too unwashed to hand over, that is worth paying attention to rather than pushing past. The Forgiveness Pathway is a free place to begin.

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Scripture quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).