Self-Esteem

This morning I was in a conference call/seminar where we were learning about resiliency in the workplace. It was all about how to prepare yourself, or to put your self in the best position, to respond to stresses and crises in the workplace. As I teach a course on how to care for yourself so that you will have energy to care for others, naturally, I was interested. One of the things that struck me that was presented was the need for self-confidence, self-esteem and a self-concept. The idea was that if you had an accurate Idea of who you were, and what you were capable of, you would be better equipped to respond to challenges. The seminar was not presented from a Christian or even a spiritual perspective. One of their points was that we need our self-concept to not be attached to our role or title because these things can change. They said we need to have an understanding of who we are which is rooted outside of our situation. As a Christian of course I agree. I am not a stand alone entity. I am a child of God.

For Canadian Christians I think self-esteem is a tough topic because we have had it drilled into our heads by the church or by our parents that pride is a sin, which it is.

Haughty eyes, a proud heart, and evil actions are all sin. Proverbs 21:4 (NLT)

On the other hand we have the world telling us that pride is a virtue. It would say that we should take pride in our work and ourselves.

Is it wrong to be proud of who we are and what we accomplish? Is it wrong to be proud of the people we serve for their accomplishments? Well, that all depends on how we define pride.

Here are some quotes on pride taken from bible study material written by Bob Fukumoto based on sermons by Sundar Krishnan and in part on Tony Campolo's book on the 7 deadly sins.

“an unreasonable conceit of superiority... an overweening opinion of one’s own qualities.” - The Oxford dictionary

“Pride is the fundamental violation and disordering of love because it puts the love of the human self before the love of God. It begins by breaking the first great commandment, “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength,” and it inevitably goes on to break the second, “you shall love your neighbour as yourself”.” - Os Guiness

Pride is the one sin “of which no man in the world is free.... which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else... which we are more unconscious of in ourselves... And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others”. C.S. Lewis

“If you think not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.” C.S. Lewis

“Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person” - Mark Twain

Pride is thinking more of ourselves than we ought. Well, the bible tells us we are useless sinners:

10 As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; 11 there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. 12 All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one." Romans 3:10-12 (NIV)

This is a pretty depressing thought but it is the biblical view that humans are in and of themselves nothing but worthless sinners. That is not all though, the bible also tells us that though we are useless sinners God loves us and thinks we are, each and every one of us, worth dying for.

So which is it? Are we worth nothing or are we worth the very life of God? The answer is both.

The Christian worldview is exactly what the seminar was trying to say about self-esteem. We have no worth in our position, skills, morality, or possessions. Our only worth comes form the God who created us, sustains us and died for us. With Him we can do mighty things. He is constant, and strong. No wonder the church has been so resilient over the last 2000 years.

“Little ones to Him belong. They are weak but he is strong.”

In the next two blogs I will look at what happens if we stray from this idea either to say that we are worth more than we are (pride) or that He can’t use us (a denial of His power in us).

Mark Wallace