Editorial
From the Newsletter of Revesby Presbyterian Church
May 2010
Rev Dr Peter Barnes
These days one tends to read the Sydney Morning Herald to make sure one’s blood pressure does not fall dangerously low rather than to glean much wisdom from it. Yet on page one of the 2-4 April 2010 edition there was a report containing a frontal assault on the notion of self-esteem. Dr Rod Kefford of Barker College was quoted as saying that ‘In some ways it has been the most damaging educational concept that has ever been conceived.’ Children have not been taught how to handle failure, so they enter the workforce with an unrealistic sense of entitlement. A steady diet of ‘you are special’ and ‘you can be anything you want to be’ is supposed to raise the youngster’s self-esteem, but that seems to be code for ‘pander to his ego’. It is common to hear any problem diagnosed in a youngster portrayed in terms of a lack of self-esteem.
This translates into scaling marks in the Higher School Certificate so that, unless there is nothing written on the paper at all, one begins with 50% or even 75%. In sport, football games for those under twelve years of age are supposed to yield no result. No scores are kept, and the players live with the fiction that they are playing football simply for the joy of running around a paddock. No one learns how to cope with victory or with defeat because everybody is a winner. Because lunatic propositions still manage to have some overlap with truth – and it is difficult even for educationalists to get it 100% wrong – one needs to point out three truths first.
First, human beings are created with great dignity in that we are made a little lower than the angels (Ps.8:5). This is why the lowliest of human beings is far above the highest in the animal kingdom. To kill a human being, in the image of God, is therefore most serious indeed (Gen.9:5-6). Secondly, we could all use some encouragement in life. Barnabas was a ‘son of encouragement’, and lived up to his name in a number of situations (see Acts 4:36; 9:26-27; 11:25-26; 15:36-39). Thirdly, we are called to assess our gifts with sober judgment (Rom.12:3). If Charles Spurgeon had some notion that he was called by God to preach, and that he had some ability to do so, that was not egotism but realistic judgment.
For all that, the self-esteem movement has been all-encompassing in modern Western culture, and its influence has been disastrous. Robert Schuller thinks that self-esteem is ‘the single greatest need facing the human race today’. Strangely enough, the apostle Paul considered that those who were ‘lovers of self’ would add to the distress of the last days (2 Tim.3:2). When we are told to love our neighbour as ourselves (Matt. 22:39), the assumption is that we will love ourselves, the command is that we must love our neighbour. Paul tells us that ‘no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it’ (Eph.5:29).
In Ezekiel 36 God promises that He will put His Spirit within His people (Ezek.36:26-27). This does not necessarily inflate their sense of self-worth: ‘Then you will remember your evil ways, and your deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your iniquities and your abominations’ (Ezek.36:31). Job too despised himself and repented in dust and ashes (Job 42:6). What the self-esteem counsellor regards as a sad problem, God regards as proof of the work of the Spirit. Horatius Bonar says that ‘In all unbelief there are two things – a good opinion of self and a bad opinion of God.’ With faith, that is in essence reversed.
Scripture does not tell us that we are wonderful and that we need to fulfil our potential. It tells us that we must deny ourselves and lose our lives in order to find them (Matt.16:24-25). Everywhere the Bible assumes that the main problem in humanity is its inflated view of itself. ‘If anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself’ (Gal.6:3). It is too early to announce the funeral of the self-esteem movement, but reality may be having some effect. As Ralph Venning put it: ‘God made you “little lower than the angels”; “sin has made you little better than the devils”.’
With warmest regards in Christ,
Peter Barnes