Self-Esteem

Recently overheard from a mother talking about her young son to another mother: "Spanking isn't working. I'm going to try a different approach. When he does something wrong, I'll ask him what toy he doesn't want to play with for awhile and then I'll take it away from him. I don't want it to be too negative. It will damage his self-esteem."

The term "self-esteem" seems self-explanatory. We know what "self" means and "esteem" simply means to place a value on something or someone. Now, in our normal usage, "esteem" is typically thought of as placing a high value on something or someone, so "self-esteem" would mean "placing a high value on myself". Psychology today is pretty sure that something around 90% of us suffer from poor self-esteem. We don't place a high enough value on ourselves. And, in the words of the wise and beneficent George Benson (1977) and Whitney Houston (1986), "Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all."

Funny thing though ... I don't find that in my Bible. When Jesus gave His famous statement about the greatest commandment and its follow-on, He said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself." Odd, isn't it? I mean, it would seem that Jesus assumed that we love ourselves because that was the standard He used for loving our neighbors. Paul did something similar when he told husbands, "Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it." Again, the standard for a husband loving his wife is the way he loves himself. Self-love is assumed.

The world assures us that self-esteem is important ... and lacking. It is fragile and needs to be encouraged and nurtured. If we're not careful, we could damage or even destroy it. It seems to me both from simple observation and from Scripture that human self-esteem is alive and well and practically impervious to any assaults. It is natural for humans to be self-centered. That means that, without any effort or training, we see ourselves as the center of the universe. The world revolves around us. And that, my friends, is self-esteem to the utmost. That mother's little boy wasn't suffering from low self-esteem. He was quite sure that he was of ultimate importance and anyone who violated his own personal wishes was in violation of his supreme being. He didn't need his self-esteem coddled and protected. He needed it corrected.

I know, I know. Lots of people have poor self-image. (Note that "self-image" references how we view ourselves, while "self-esteem" talks about how we value ourselves.) A poor self-image is an improper view of what we are. Most people lie to themselves about their capabilities and character. Sometimes it's a positive lie -- "I think I'm much better than I really am." More often it's a negative lie -- "I downplay what I can really do." But no one suffers from poor self-esteem. It is part of human nature to be self-centered, something that Christians need to fight off all the time. That's why Paul did not say, "I say to everyone among you not to think too poorly of himself than he ought to think", but "I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment." Whether we are denying our true abilities or over-inflating them, we are still over-valuing ourselves. In one case -- arrogance -- it's quite obvious. In the other we are telling God, "Why did You make me this way?!" Neither case is true, and we are substituting our "truth" for God's truth because, after all, we are each the center of the universe ... right?

Poor self-esteem is not the problem. We all suffer from an over-valuing of ourselves. Trying to get a God's-eye-view on our true worth is difficult because we tend to start with ... ourselves. Wrong approach. When we begin to see ourselves as God's creations, vessels that He has made for His own purposes -- some for honorable use and some for dishonorable use -- we might begin to start seeing the truth. We are only as valuable as God intends us to be as far as we serve His purposes. To illustrate that, remember Aesop's story of the crow and the pitcher. Needing to get water from a pitcher, the clever crow dropped pebbles into the pitcher until the water was high enough for him to drink. Now, ask yourself ... how valuable were those pebbles? Not very ... except as far as they met the crow's purpose. Our value is set by God, and it is certainly far below "the center of the universe". Training a child (or myself) otherwise is not a service to the child.