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THE
BIBLE
Can we trust a book written 2000 years ago?
EYEWITNESS
Did the writers of the New Testament get their picture of Jesus right?
GOD
- MAN
Is Jesus really God?
RESURRECTION
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
RELIGIONS
With so many religions, why Christianity?
SUFFERING
If there is a God, why is there so much suffering?
TRINITY
Understanding the Trinity.
SCIENCE
The complementary nature of Science & Christianity.
FORGIVENESS
What it is and why it matters?
GUIDANCE
How does God guide?
REPENTANCE
What it is and why you can't get to heaven without it.
BORN
AGAIN
What does it mean to be converted and born again?
SAVING
FAITH
The kind of faith that will get you to heaven
ASSURANCE
Can I know for sure that I am going to heaven?
TRUTH
What is truth and does it matter?
MORALITY
Does it matter how we live? A Christian view of morality.
THE
CHURCH
God's vision for his family, the Church. A call to the churches of the
new millennium.
PURPOSE
How
can I find a great purpose for living?
IDENTITY
Who am I; Finding my true identity as a human being and as a child of
God.
SELF-ESTEEM
How
can I feel good about my self? The Christian basis for proper sel-esteem.
LIFE AFTER DEATHChristianity's Hope & Challenge.
THE CROSS
Why did Jesus Die? What the Bible says about the Cross.
Grace
The importance of grace in the New Testament.
Part 2 - The basics of proper Self-esteem
The creation of a loving God
According to Paul Vitz, the distinguished author of Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-worship, self-esteem is "primarily an emotional response to what we have done, and to what others have done to us." If self-esteem is primarily an emotional response, how can we find a view of ourselves that can help us to rise above all the negative influences that life may have dished up to us?" The place to begin is to grasp some understanding of who we really are and our true place in this universe.
The starting point for a Christian view of the value of all human beings is the doctrine of creation. We were thought up and brought into being by a loving God who created us "in his own image" (Genesis 1:27). Though we are not divine as some New Age religions suggest, we nevertheless have divine characteristics that give us a value way beyond the rest of creation. God created us with the ability to live in a loving relationship with himself, a relationship that can extend through all the endless ages of eternity. This means that we have great potential to grow and develop all the unique qualities that have been given to each of us. The Psalmist catches something of the wonder of this as he contemplates the vastness of God's creation:
When
I consider your heavens,
the
work of your fingers,
the
son of man that you care for him?
(Psalm 8:3-6, 9).
Of
course, this gives us a much greater value than other views of human beings
that are common today, such as the view that we are nothing but a programmed
machine (behaviourists) or an absurdity (existentialists) or a naked ape
(humanistic evolutionists).
I don't think I have come across a better statement of the Christian view of the value of humans than one given by Ron Sider in an article in Christianity Today. He says:
Every part of God's creation is very good and very special because it results from the loving design of Almighty God...As persons created in the divine image we are very special. The dignity and worth of every human being flows from the divine decree, not human decision. Our essential dignity does not come from government fiat, social usefulness, or self-actualisation. It comes from the Creator of the galaxies who selected human beings alone out of the almost infinite multitudes of the created order to bear the divine image. No matter how poor and defenceless, old and weak, crippled and deformed, young and helpless, human beings enjoy a God-given worth and dignity that sets them apart from the rest of creation.
Or, to make it a little more personal, as Paul Murrell put it in Decision Magazine:
I
am in awe.
God
thought of
thunder, wind, oceans,
eclipses, auroras,
continents, ice caps,
stars, moons,
the universe,
and me.
As one young victim of prejudice insisted, "I'm me and I'm good 'cause God don't make junk."
History gives ample evidence that it is this truth more than anything else, wherever the gospel of God's love and grace has taken root in human communities, that has enabled men and women to find the dignity to rise above their oppressive environment, to fight for justice and to work for the betterment of society.
And because God loves diversity, as we see all around us on this amazing planet earth, he created us in such a way that each of us would be unique. He designed the human DNA with its 3.1 billion sub-units, those bits that determine our personal characteristics, in such a way that there is no chance that two of us could be the same. There is one chance in 64 billion that someone will have the same fingerprint as you. There are many people who will be much more talented than you in many areas of life, but there is no-one on this planet that has the unique combination of qualities that you have. In One of a Kind, Blaine Smith writes about his experience of going to seminary. He was proud of his intellectual ability and his musical talents. But when he got to seminary, he realised that those talents were not as exceptional as he had thought. There he found people who were both better students and better musicians. He realised that it wasn't any one particular talent but his unique combination of traits which made him who he was.
John Cooney, in one of his Grapevine newsletters, captures this brilliantly with an item he found and rewrote many years ago (original author unknown):
YOU'RE REALLY SPECIAL! You really are! In all the world there's no one like you. Never has been. Never will be.
No one has your eyes, your nose, your hair, your hands, your voice, your smile. You're special!
No one anywhere has exactly your handwriting, exactly your finger-prints, exactly your tastes in food or music or TV. Since the beginning of time, there's been no one who laughs like you, no one who cries like you, no one who sees things just the way you do. You're special.
Look, you're the only one on this planet who's got your set of abilities. Sure there'll always be someone who's better at some of the things you're good at—but no one in the entire universe has your unique combination of talents and skills, dreams and feelings.
No one else through all eternity will ever look, talk, walk, think or do the way you do. You're special. You're rare. And like anything that's rare, you're valuable.
That's why you don't need to copy your friends. You can accept—yeah, you can celebrate—your differences! You can risk being yourself.
Hey,
you're no ACCIDENT. God made you special for a very special purpose.
He's got a job for you that no one else can do as well. Out of all the
billions of applicants, only one is qualified. Only one has what it
takes.
That one is YOU...because you're special!
I may be a little odd, but that's no hassle, for God loves odd things. Walter Trobisch, in his book Love Yourself, tells how many of his African friends find it easier to accept themselves as they are than many westerners. He says:
I am reminded of one of my best friends, an African man, who is rather short. A well-meaning person once suggested to him that he wear shoes with higher heels in order to appear taller.
This was almost an offence to my friend. Hadn't God made him short? Why should he seek to change what God had created. He had accepted himself as he was, and loved himself with his height. I am sure that this complete self-acceptance is one of the reasons he can be such a good friend to me.
I am reminded of a delightful story told of the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd George. He was introduced by the chairman of a meeting who said jokingly, "I had expected to find Mr. Lloyd George a big man in every sense, but you see for yourselves he is quite small in stature." Lloyd George replied, "In North Wales we measure a man from his chin up. You evidently measure from his chin down." We must learn to play the hand we have been dealt, not the one we think we should have been dealt.
George MacDonald once said:
"I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking."
David caught something of the wonder of this in one of his Psalms:
You
created my inmost being;
you
knit me together in my mother's womb.
before
one of them came to be.
(Psalm 139:13-17)
Shakespeare got it right when he wrote: "Who can say more than this rich praise, that you alone are you?" You are a divine original, not a cheap copy. When God had made you he broke the mould.
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PART 2 - The basis of a proper self-esteem; The creation of a loving God
Worth a great deal, though unworthy
