"God-esteem"

The nature of self-esteem is an interesting notion. It is a common term used among people today and it is often a goal of many people to increase others self-esteem. With this increased emphasis in our society today on self-esteem I felt the desire to look further into this topic. The dictionary would describe self-esteem as "The esteem or good opinion of oneself; vanity". I also looked up the word esteem and found it to say, "to set a value on; to regard with respect."

From here I thought of two examples in the Bible where people seemed to be suffering from low self-esteem.

The first example I thought of was Elijah in 1 Kings 19.

After his showdown with the people of baal and the example of God's mighty power Jezebel became angry with Elijah and threatened to kill him. Elijah, the mighty prophet of God, reacted in the following way,

"3Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4while he himself went a day s journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. I have had enough, LORD, he said. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors. 5Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep." It is interesting to see Elijah's reaction of fear after being used by God in such a mighty way. Yet I believe it is clear that Elijah was suffering from low self-esteem. He did not have a "good opinion" of himself. I was particularly interested in the way God dealt with Elijah. In verse 9 God comes to Elijah and asks him what he is doing here (note that God never needs an answer to a question). Elijah rattles off a very eloquent speech about his woes and God goes and tells Elijah that He is about to pass by. After passing by, God again asks Elijah what he is doing there. Elijah gives the same speech he gave earlier (isn't it odd how Elijah would try the same speech twice). This time God told Elijah to go do a number of things for Him. Elijah quickly got up and went and followed the Lord's directions.

The second person I thought of that suffered from poor self-esteem was Moses.
In the 3rd and 4th chapters of Exodus we read of Moses' encounter with God at the burning bush. In these chapters we find that Moses tried to think of every excuse he could think of not to go back to Egypt. I feel it is safe to say his self-esteem was not very high. Yet look at God's response after Moses continued to make excuses,

"14Then the LORD S anger burned against Moses "

After looking at these two incidents I was surprised by God's response to each of them. God did not sit down with either of them and explain why they should feel good about themselves. Instead God simply gave Elijah instructions on what he should go do and God "burned with anger towards Moses" and then told him to go anyway with the help of Aaron. I was struck with the question of why God did not seem to have more sympathy for these two struggling individuals? This question led me to look at the word I was studying. The word is "self-esteem". Did you catch the problem with this word? I'll type it again, "self-esteem". Notice the first word "self". I have never noticed it before in my life but I believe this could be a powerful word that leads to many problems. What does the word "self" mean? It basically means me, myself, and I. Let me ask this question, when does God ever tell us to get our "esteem" from ourselves? Am I supposed to look at myself from my own perspective to find my self worth?

I feel that we are to look towards God to find our own self worth. My value does not and should not consist of the value I place on myself but rather on the value God places on me. I do not feel at this time I need to go into how much God values me. Knowing that He gave His son to die for me though I didn't deserve anything from Him tells me enough about how God must view me. If "esteem" means to place a value on than I am amazed at the esteem God must have for me.

Therefore, maybe we shouldn't be talking about "self-esteem" but rather "God's-esteem".

Elijah and Moses had low self-esteem because they weren't seeking God's opinion of themselves but rather their own. They wanted to be able and worthy in their own eyes. Maybe I'm going too far here, but is this attitude really that far from the sin of pride? Isn't it pride to look towards ourselves for anything instead of leaning upon God for everything (including our self-worth and value)? If we try to have our self-esteem high by our own merit then that would mean every time I fail or don't measure up my self-esteem would suffer. Rather if I look to God for high "God-esteem" then this will never alter because God's love for me will never fade or diminish. So maybe it isn't self-esteem that we should be seeking but rather "God-esteem".


Well, anyway, there's a recent subject on my mind. It's something I gotta work on too.