Do people suffer from low self-esteem? Is high self-esteem the cure to man’s problem? This article explains that the theory of self-esteem is one which the church should not embrace. 

Source: Christian Renewal, 1998. 4 pages.

The Dying of the Self-Esteem Fad

self-love

Twenty years ago the self-esteem fad took off in the USA and like every popular trend the evangelical world seized it and baptised it into Christianity. The major source of problems of behaviour, emotions and relationships, it announced, was lack of self-esteem. The solution for life's problems was therefore to devel­op a good self-image. "You can't love others until you love yourself first," its advocates said. "Self-love", "self-esteem", and "self-image" were the means of attaining personal fulfilment, effectiveness on the job, a happy marriage, success in rearing children, freedom from drugs and alcohol, and keeping the prison popu­lation from growing.

Much of the evangeli­cal church is a stranger to historic Christianity. It does not know of Augustine's abundant warnings of self-love in his great book City of God, or of John Calvin's in his Institutes. All it knows of Jonathan Edwards is that he preached with a candle in his hand, reading his sermons from manuscripts and even so his "crusades" were very success­ful (none of which is true). What would they make of Edwards' own self-evalua­tion? "Often I have had very affecting views of my own sin­fulness and vileness; very fre­quently to such a degree as to hold me in a kind of loud weeping, sometimes for a considerable time together, so that I have often been forced to shut myself up. I have had a vastly greater sense of my own wickedness and the bad­ness of my heart, than ever I had before my conversion. My wickedness, as I am in myself, as long appeared to me perfectly unspeakable, swallowing up all thought and imagination. I know not how to express better what my sins appear to me to be than by heaping infinite upon infinite, and multiplying infinite by infinite. When I look into my heart and take a view of my wickedness, it looks like an abyss infinitely deeper than hell. And yet it seems to me that my conviction of sin is exceedingly small and faint; it is enough to amaze that I have no more sense of sin. I have greatly longed of late for a broken heart, and to lie low before God."

What would they think of William Carey's epitaph: "Born August 17, 1761. Died June 9, 1834. A wretched poor and helpless worm. On Thy kind arms I fall"? Do they acknowledge what they are singing when they join with a congregation in such hymns as, "Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me" and "Come ye sinners, poor and needy, Weak and wounded, sick and sore"; "Vile and full of sin I am, thou art full of truth and grace"; "I need Thee, precious Jesus, For I am full of sin"; "And from my smitten heart with tears, Two wonders I confess: The won­ders of His glorious love, And my own worthlessness."

There are hundreds more hymns like that, all of which have to be destroyed to fit in with the self-esteem move­ment.

The Scripture appealed to in support of this heresy is the command to love your neigh­bour as yourself (Matt. 22:39; Lev. 19:18). Its purported to be a biblical endorsement for self-love. However, there are three problems with that assertion:

  1. It is not a command. The passage doesn't instruct any­one to love him or herself.

  2. It assumes that people already love themselves. This sentiment is echoed in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, "For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it" (Eph. 5:29). Certainly Christ would not command us to love our neighbour as ourselves if peo­ple were ignorant of self-love.

  3. The type of love in view in this passage is not the type described by psychologists. The word "love" in Matthew 22 emphasises the humbling serving love of Jesus Christ for rebel sinners. But the modern psychologist is encouraging feeling good, or liking yourself. It is man that self-esteem preachers are exalting, not the Lord. They promote a self-centred view of life rather than a God-cen­tred one. They encourage us to think more highly of our­selves than we ought to and always to expect the best, on the ground that we are worth it! If the self-esteem philoso­phy is obviously wrong, why is it widely espoused by Christian leaders, and readily accepted by members of the church? Simply stated, it appeals to our sinful nature.

Fifteen years ago psycholo­gist David Myers wrote in his book The Inflated Self that our real problems are not rooted in a low view of our­selves, but an egotistical over­confidence in our own right­eousness. We are more likely to accept credit than blame; we deny our responsibility for what we have done wrong; we habitually see ourselves as above average; and, without exception, we are certain that others have wronged us more than we have wronged others. Our problem isn't lack of self-esteem. We've got barrels of the stuff. Our problem is self-deception. The Pauline prophecy has been fulfilled, "Realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self" (2 Tim. 3:1 & 2).

Ten years ago the Daily Telegraph did a survey of British university students (Oct. 10 1988). It asked them, "How happy are you?" 52% said "Very Happy" and 42% said "Quite Happy." Only 4% respond­ed, "Not Very Happy." The paper concluded, "On the whole British students have very high self-esteem." In other words they are essen­tially narcissistic. Students accept self-centredness as a way of life. Though they would deny it, deep down in their psyches they really believe they are the centre of the universe. They preface everything in their lives with the question, What am I going to get out of this? What's in it for me?

little girl wanting to be tall

This attitude is positively encouraged by students health officers. A popular modern distinction is made between what is called the "inner-directed person" and the "other-directed person". It is confidently claimed that the "inner-directed person" is the better of the two, and that the healthy "inner-directed person" will then go on to care for others. If you can believe that you can believe anything.

What has been the result of the spread of self-esteem teaching? The chief conse­quence has been self-decep­tion. In a column in the U.S. News & World Report (May 18, 1998) John Leo writes, "The self-esteem movement is one of the marvels of our time. It goes on and on, even though its assumptions are wrong and its basic premises have been discredited by a great deal of research. Like a monster in the last ten min­utes of a horror movie, it has enough fatal wounds to stop a platoon. But it keeps stumbling on, seeming not to notice."

Will it ever expire? Apparently so. A long article in the New York Times sounded very much like an obituary. To be fair, the article contained a brief disclaimer ('Self-esteem is by no means dead'), but most of the text suggested other­wise, A subhead stated, 'An idea whose time has come ... and gone?' Since the New York Times caters to, and usually speaks for, the educational elite that has kept the movement afloat, we are sure­ly entitled to detect some significance here.

Since 1989 the research on self-esteem has been devastating. When psychologists   Harold Stevenson and James Stigler tested the academic skills of elementary school students in the United States, China, Japan and Taiwan, the Asian students outperformed the Americans, but the U.S. stu­dents felt better about them­selves and their work. They had managed to combine high self-esteem with poor work. The researchers found the American schools worry more about sensitivity and how students view themselves than about actual academic performance. Instead of bringing performance up, the pop-therapeutic approach was helping to dumb it down. For more than 40 years, low self-esteem has been widely cited as a serious obstacle to black success in school and the workplace. The theory is that a racist society holds blacks back by imposing a low sense of self-worth. But researchers have repeatedly found that the self-esteem of blacks is no lower than that of whites, and often quite high­er.

Another argument from self-esteem theory — that low self-esteem is the cause of vio­lence, hate crimes, and many other antisocial acts — has also been discredited. As the Times mentions, studies of gang members and criminals show that their self-esteem is as high as that of overachiev­ers. In fact, one influential study concluded that violence is often the work of people with unrealistically high self-esteem, attacking others who challenge their self-image. Another study disproved the familiar theory that welfare mothers became pregnant to boost their self-esteem.

I recently saw a cartoon portraying a patient lying on a psychiatrist's couch. The psychiatrist says, "Sure, robbery and rape and murder are evil. You've done some bad things, but that doesn't make you a bad person." The Bible takes a realistic approach when it says that all men and women do bad things because they are bad people by nature. The mis­sion of the church is not to give people self-esteem. What have Christians achieved if they make people feel better about themselves? Imagine two sinners in hell and the one agreeing with the other, "Yes, this is a terrible place, but I still feel good about myself." People do not need self-esteem, they need the new self that God provides through the Lord Jesus Christ.

A professor at Westminster Theological Seminary was telling me about the applica­tion forms which entering stu­dents fill in. They are asked to assess their own academic skills, their ability to get on with others, their devotional lives, their preaching ability, etc. However cautious they are in some of those cate­gories they will inevitably give themselves 9 out of 10 or even 10 out of 10 in their assessment of their own gift­edness as preachers. No doubt they have lacked stan­dards by which to evaluate preaching, but how much of that self-delusion has been due to unwise encourage­ments? How short-sighted is such a commitment by a con­gregation to unalleviated appreciation for anything done in the church by young people.

praise a child

A preacher stroking the affections of a congregation in order to make them think well of themselves is not only offensive, it is counterproduc­tive. Even children know, researchers have learned, the difference between praise designed to make them feel good, and real praise. In fact feel-good praise tends to make people feel bad. One of the ways that teachers unin­tentionally communicate to children that they have low ability is by praising them extremely for minor tasks. In an experiment devised by Dr. Sandra Graham, a professor of educational psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, school-age chil­dren watched a videotape of two students working on mathematics problems. One child was praised lavishly, the other simply told he'd done a good job. "When we asked the children who saw the videotape which child is less intelligent, they told us it was the one who got all the praise," Graham said. "They see it as a sign that the teacher doesn't think highly of that child."

We are not suggesting that people should have a bad self-image. There are not two options, high self-esteem or low self-esteem. Both are self-centred philosophies.

Therefore they are assuming all approaches to life are essentially self-centred. That is truly a grim view of reality. We thank God through Jesus Christ that we are given another option, a life focused on our status in the grace of God and in the service of oth­ers. Our desire to serve God directs us to our neighbours and their needs. We have learned that it is more blessed to give than to receive, to be a blessing than to be blessed. Only as we exercise loving service through the power of the Holy Spirit do we become the people whom God made us to be and find fulfilment (John 10:10). Only when we discover our high position in Christ can we take pride in that (James 1:9).

The self-esteem move­ment is dying in the world. It is the tragedy of the evangelical church that it unthinkingly adopts the world's counselling, and then hangs on to it long after it has been discredited by human­ists. Let it die in the church too. Let's kill it with the sword of the Spirit. There are many anti-self-love verses in the Scriptures.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness.Matt. 6:33

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.Matt. 16:24

He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.John 12:25

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