Because Who’s Worth It? My Problem With Self-Esteem

I told you yesterday that sometimes concepts and ideas for blog entries can come in like a flood.  So for example we have the family development series yet to be completed, and I started off something yesterday about reading and writing that I’ve yet to finish off.  Now for these two I already have it in mind how I’ll go about writing it, but leaving it for a while may actually allow me to re-shape it in ways I may not have appreciated before.

Yet once again another thunderbolt of a blog entry struck me from on high and I knew I couldn’t leave it for another time.  So here’s how it came about.

I’m walking from the train station to the library to drop off the book I informed you about yesterday which inspired the blog about keeping it pure. That reminds me as well, there’s something about purity that I’ve got to develop on.  In any case, as I’m walking up the road from the train station to the library – neat that, a library up the road from the train station, cool and convenient – I was thinking about worth.

I have a problem with people’s reference to self-esteem.  I have a problem with the solution of human interaction being left to consider someone’s self-esteem.  As I reached the busy junction to cross to get to the side where the library is located I thought again about how my worth is inextricably linked to God.  As my Creator, He and He alone determines my worth.  He is the measure of me and has the goods on who I am and what I’m worth.  He should do, He created me.

It’s similar to the fact that when I want to get to know a bit more about myself I like those very rare occasions when my dad and I talk and I ask him some probing questions about who he is and where he’s coming from.  The same deal could work with my mum, I guess, and I like talking to her too whenever I’m in her company.  (Remind me to tell you about my growing antipathy to telephone conversations.)  Just that my dad, as a man and as the originator of who I am is going to have the goods a lot more than my mum is.  That’s just a strong hunch, I’m happy to be wrong.  Something tells me I’m not.

So if in the immediate biological and psychological sense I refer to my dad who is the source of me, how much more am I going to refer to my Creator?!  Thus to consider my worth divorced, disconnected and distanced from my Creator is a very shallow and worthless exercise.  Now we enter tricky territory in our ongoing engagement with those that we come across.

I am in no way suggesting the approach that basically degrades humanity if they don’t acknowledge God.  I don’t suggest that for two reasons.  One, they’ve done a good job in doing that for themselves to a large extent.  It is not productive of me to point this out for their benefit … unless it is genuinely for their benefit.  Secondly as I understand the practice of Jesus and the early church, the focus was more on what happens when our eyes are aligned to the wonders, beauties and realities of God’s Kingdom.  It’s the similar process you do when having been suckered by the fake, you look at the genuine article.  It’s like having been abused for so long you are actually treated considerately with compassion and love.  The gospel is the light shining in a dark world – it declares clearly that the alternative is also the emerging and settling reality that reconfirms that which was from the beginning and before.

The Kingdom of God then is fundamentally based on the primacy and supremacy of God in and above all things.  How that relates to what I’m worth is that it then means that my perspective is not centred on me.  It must be centred on God.  What He has also done which is amazing and marvellous is that He has shown His way in the flesh in His Son Jesus Christ.  Through Jesus I am now able to be reconciled to my Father after drinking the fatal Self-Centred Kool-Aid and in Jesus I am accepted by God and as I love Jesus Christ more and learn about Him and the Father then I realise my worth.

Notice carefully, the root and source is not me – it’s God.  That’s why the deal isn’t about self-esteem – it’s about God-esteem, both in the sense of how I value the all glorious Creator of the universe and then how He values me.  If I am of any worth at all, it’s only because of Him, and because of Him I celebrate any worth He sees in thanksgiving and the perpetual life lived in the light of His love.

Knowing my worth in His light also stops me selling myself short.  It stops me cheapening myself, in relationships, in commitments, in projects, in all aspects of life.  I get to learn that I could be doing something, getting a lot of acclaim, admiration and financial benefit, but in actuality because it doesn’t reflect the worth that the Creator made in me, I’m selling myself short big time.  I’m cheapening myself hugely.

That is what I’ve recognised I’ve done to myself far too often in my past.  It’s as though I’ve been slow on the uptake of connecting my love for Jesus, His love for me and the implications for how I live my life.  It’s as though there’s been a big disconnect in my discipleship.  That’s not to mourn over the past.  On the contrary it’s to express gratitude to a patient loving Lord who waited as I bungled my way towards the realisation of another revelation of humility demonstrated in Jesus Christ.

That humility places everything on knowing who I am because of who God is – my Source, my Strength, my Creator and subsequently my Redeemer, my Sustainer and my Lord.

For His Name’s Sake

Shalom

dmcd