Replacing Biblical commands with outright legalism, evangelicals often argue for the avoidance or demonizing of innocent things, or even of good things, out of a fear that if they do not, they will wind up engaging in some sin. In hopes of avoiding arrogance or selfishness, some may even treat self-love as a reprehensible thing that must be purged from all human hearts. But is this a Biblical position? Not at all. In fact, defending such nonsense is itself sinful.
Ignoring the obvious Biblical command of self-love (Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 22:37-40 [1]), these fallacious legalists stupidly leap into eisegesis, hypocrisy, and illogicality in their war against love of self. They mistake self-love for selfishness and pride, when these things are quite distinct. One claim of theirs is that loving oneself is sinful because we are sinful creatures. The inconsistencies start to show themselves quickly: the very core of Christian redemption is denied by such an asinine claim. It would follow by necessity that if self-love is immoral because we are sinful beings, then not only is love for other humans sinful, but God's love for sinful beings is morally questionable at best and evil at worst.
But this would mean that God himself sins, and yet his moral nature is the one metaphysical anchor point for morality that is logically possible. Either God has no moral nature and as a result there is no morality whatsoever, or God's moral nature is the standard of morality (there is an uncaused cause, so logic proves the veracity of simple theism either way). Evangelicals who condemn self-love, if they honestly analyzed what follows from their unbiblical premises, would find themselves arguing against the very basis for the gospel that they revere. After all, God's love for fallen humans is the motivation behind the death of Christ, as evidenced by John 3:16 and Romans 5:8.
If loving sinful beings is itself sinful, then God's own love for humanity would be heinous! Likewise, the inverse is true: if God, whose nature is the very reference point for ethics in Christian theology, loves sinful beings, then our love of sinful beings cannot be morally wrong, and this includes love of ourselves. These conclusions follow from their premises, and it is blatantly clear which of these foundational premises is stated repeatedly throughout the Bible and which is denied.
God cannot sin (James 1:13). One could probably get the most stubborn legalistic evangelical to admit this much. But what this means is that love for beings that are morally imperfect is not only not sinful, but it is also morally obligatory, since humans are to imitate God (Ephesians 5:1). We should love other humans because humans possess inherent value as bearer's of God's image (Genesis 1:26-27). The worst outgrowths of sin cannot erase this value--even if people come to believe that they are utterly worthless, they are not. People can diminish their value by comparison to that of another person by relentlessly aligning themselves with evil [2], but even this can never extinguish their value, only lessen it.
If I have an obligation to love others because of their metaphysical natures, then I must also have an obligation to love myself in the same way, since I share their metaphysical nature as a fellow bearer of God's image. This conclusion is exactly what reason and Scripture establish about the matter, despite the idiotic objections by some. How ironic it is that some Christians will deny one Biblical teaching in an effort to affirm another!
[1]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-biblical-command-of-self-love.html
[2]. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/people-are-not-morally-equal.html
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