We live in a world that places how we “feel” about ourselves over the nature of our true character. Sadly, often our view of ourselves is elevated above what is reality. We can never improve when we already think we are perfect and must never be challenged.
Since the 1970’s we have had the concept of self-esteem taught and propagated throughout our schools and even churches, which based most of their instruction on loving one’s self above all others. There was a lie that was told in nearly every venue, that lie was that we cannot love anyone else if we didn’t first work at loving ourselves. This was the opposite of what God said.
God said that we are born loving ourselves too much. He said that if we loved our neighbor as much as we love ourselves we would be very kind to our neighbor. He also said no one hates his own body.
Ephesians 5:29 “29 Indeed, no one ever hated his own body, but he nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church.”
Dave Hunt once expressed it this way; if a boy looks in the mirror and says “I hate the way I look, I hate myself”, most of the culture would say he hated himself. The truth is that the boy loved himself so much that he believed he deserved to look the way he wanted to look. He did not hate himself, he believed he deserved better than what God gave him.
Those who are shy have too much of a self-focus, worrying about what others think of us, remaining aloof and silent is a way of protecting ourselves.
It’s a form of self-worship, placing ourselves and our desires above God and everyone else too. Very few people realize this concept comes from paganism and Darwinism. Psychology has taught this false doctrine of loving one’s self is necessary to have confidence.
We have praised children for trying without regard to whether or not they did a good job. This has caused the expectation of praise for everything all the time. Praise and feelings are addictive, the more we experience it the more we want.
Our marriages have been destroyed as well as the confidence people used to have from failing and moving on to do a better job. A correction has become anathema to many in the younger generation.
Since feelings are more important than a job well done many raised in the 1970’s “feel” as though they have been personally attacked when they are told they need to do a better job, or that they needed to redo something. Feelings are deeply hurt when a prideful person is corrected, the feelings become the focus rather than a message for improvement.
When we were first married I didn’t think like the rest of the people around me. Because of this I was constantly mocked, negated, and ignored among family and even churchgoers. I was convinced that self-esteem was a bad thing, creating arrogance in those who have been trained to build themselves up superficially through self-praise.
I would make statements that self-esteem was not good and other statements that couples should stay together for the sake of the children. I was told that it was better to separate and divorce than to fight in front of the children. My answer to this was; “why doesn’t one of you stop fighting, a person cannot fight with themselves.”
Self-esteem builds pride, not confidence. Confidence comes from working, failing, learning from our failures, and the ability to admit when change is needed. We are more talented at something that we had to learn through failure than from superficial praise that does nothing productive. Giving prizes for trying is counter-productive, leaving a rational child feeling empty inside knowing they did not deserve what they got. It also builds the expectation that they should be elevated with praise when they did nothing at all worthy of that praise.
Pride causes the fall of marriages, communities, and nations. There are two kinds of pride, destructive pride that causes a person to believe their wonderful and above everyone else. And, Biblical pride which is the enjoyment of a job well done.
Proverbs 16:18 (the kind of pride the elevates self above what is warranted)
18 Pride goes before destruction,
And a haughty spirit before stumbling.
Galatians 6:4 “But each one must examine his own work, and then he will have a reason for boasting, but to himself alone, and not to another.“
Because of the self-esteem teachings for the past 50 years, we have adult children who are disrespectful to their parents, grandchildren who treat their grandparents as equals rather than revering and respecting them.
Because of self-esteem teaching we have fewer young people who do jobs well with diligence just to know they did what was right is not enough, they must obtain praise from others.
Marriages are dissolving daily as the children from these unions are devastated and ruined. They are being raised that they can just throw away people who do not do as they wish. They are being raised that if you cannot win in a disagreement then you delete the person who has a need or desires something from them.
There is no sense of noble and sacrificial actions that have a greater purpose than pleasure and feelings of euphoria. The adult children act as though they will not tolerate any correction, instruction, or disagreement on any level. Their constant companions must be those who praise them, elevating them to godlike status continually.
God’s teachings tell us that the less we think of ourselves the more confident we are and the more productive. He said we do take care of ourselves but that we should not stop there, we need to care for others as much as we already care for ourselves, then we would be loving them a great deal.
Philippians 2:3 “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility consider one another as more important than yourselves;”
Our culture has destroyed families through divorce and remarriage, through abortion, through disrespect for others by shacking up without commitment as well as demeaning the young people through praise that was not merited.
“Feelings” are the shallowest part of our being” as Adrian Rogers once said. They are reactionary often lying to us. We feel bad when someone chews us out for being lazy, but the act of chewing us out is the way that motivates us to improve. The chewing out was good for us even though it felt bad to us.
The day we learn to ignore our feelings in favor of following the principles of the Bible is the day we begin our own success stories. Success is not based on accomplishments outwardly, but rather on the character building that occurs from failures and resolving the failures.
There can be no success in character without trials, rebukes, correction, and encouragement to go the right way, these are what build character and holiness, and the feelings are irrelevant.
Romans 5:3-5 “3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Our marriages are dissolving, sin is growing and children are far more sensitive and weak than we have ever seen. This is producing adults who can have few successes because they desire praise rather than challenges that grow them. Words are more important in our day than reality.
As long as someone says words they count themselves as having what they say. This is irrational, words mean nothing, and they can be said by anyone about anything without substance. Our children’s generation is living in a fantasy world created between their ears in their minds. This is growing because we are living in the “perilous” times the Lord spoke of in 2 Timothy 3. “Perilous” meaning “ragingly insane.|
When a culture bases all they do on fantasy everything becomes “ragingly insane.”
