Letters sometimes come to me from people who are “working on” their self-esteem. Usually this means they are doing their best to feel good about themselves. It is an exercise in futility.
Several years ago (if I remember correctly) tests were given to American and Korean students. The Koreans scored far higher academically than the Americans, but when asked to grade their self-esteem were bewildered by the question. The American students on the other hand, well-versed from kindergarten, gave themselves high marks in self-esteem but did poorly academically. We might say they “felt good” about “doing bad.”
Jesus warns us not to seek the approval of men. Must we rise in the world, be “upwardly mobile,” aimat fulfillment, self-satisfaction, distinction? Remember the word in 1 John 2:17—“The world and all its passionate desires will one day disappear, but the man who is following God’s will is part of the Permanent and cannot die” (J.B. Phillips).
Amy Carmichael, when offered a royal reward for her service in India, graciously declined. She could not bear the thought of being honored in ways which her Lord Jesus avoided. If one truly wants to be His disciple he must first give up his right to himself (a total abandonment), take up the Cross (which must mean, sooner or later and in many forms, suffering), and finally follow—a daily obedience.
Gerald Vann speaks of “the disease of self-culture. ”To have peace one must forget himself. To forget him-self one must walk in truth. To walk in truth one must love God and his neighbor. When self-esteem is high, self-knowledge is very small.
Oswald Chambers wrote, “If we ever get a glimpse of what we are in the sight of God we will never say, ‘Oh, I am so unworthy,’ because we shall know we are, beyond the possibility of stating it.” Self-esteem leads to rash judgments of others, as in the case of the Pharisee who “stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’” Jesus made it clear that the man who was justified before God was the one who had acknowledged himself a sinner. (Lord, have mercy upon us!)
“We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare them-selves with themselves, they are not wise” (2 Cor10:12, NIV).
In the process of trying to convince ourselves that we are worthy, we may notice that some people whom we thought unworthy appear now actually to be better than we. This unsettling observation tempts us then to investigate further. The Tempter will gladly cooperate, impressing on our minds others’ small failings which we are happy to magnify. Thus we justify ourselves and build our self-esteem. We begin, like the publican, to thank God we are not like those others. But when were we given the office of judge? An examination of our own hearts before God will show us more and more plainly how much work we have to do in ourselves. Little time will be left to pay much attention to the defects of others.
While I disparage the exercise of “building one’s self-esteem” I indulge in it every time I imagine myself free from the defects I perceive in someone else. I am, in effect, thanking God that I am not like him or her. “O wretched [woman] that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” (Romans 7:24).
We have an adversary called the Devil. He’s a malicious serpent, bent on destroying us, and he has quite a bag of tricks, beginning of course in the Garden of Eden when he convinced Eve that God meant to deprive her of the one thing she was determined to have. He whispered a delectable thought: Hath God said? thus persuading the woman that obedience was not required. She could have what she chose, and be the better for it. Thus the ruinous and all-pervasive sin of pride was born.
“To preserve thyself from this danger, choose for thy battle-field the safe and level ground of a true and deep conviction of thy own nothingness,” wrote Lorenzo Scupoli. Think about the time before we were born. Throughout all that abyss of eternity we were nothing and could have done nothing whatever to bring our-selves into existence. Consider next that we received our being solely because God willed it and sustains us every moment of our lives. Of ourselves we are nothing. “What good or meritorious deed could thy nature perform by itself if deprived of divine assistance?”
J.I. Packer, in Rediscovering Holiness, says, “Sin is an … allergic reaction to God’s law, an irrational anti-God syndrome that drives us to exalt ourselves and steels our hearts against devotion and obedience to our Maker.”
And another word from C.S. Lewis: “The more we get what we call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take over, the more truly our-selves we become. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. It is no good trying to ‘be myself’ without Him. The more I resist Him and try to live on my own, the more I become dominated by my own heredity and upbringing and surroundings and natural desires. I am not, in my natural state, nearly so much of a person as I like to believe: Most of what I call ‘me’ can be very easily explained. It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own. “But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about, you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to for getabout the self altogether. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your body—in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in” (from Beyond Personality).