Self-esteem

             But I trust in you, Lord; I say, “You are my God.” (Psalm 31:14)

          One of my friends on Facebook posted a meme asking about building self-esteem. This subject is fraught with landmines that center on the question of what’s meant by “self-esteem.” We seem to be living in an era in which we see anything less than being idolized as harming our self-esteem, with the idolators being both ourselves and everyone else. At the same time, we’re often told that our self-esteem should never be such that it leads to our interfering with someone else’s self-esteem. And the problem is that even if this weren’t a no-win scenario, it would still be a no-win scenario because even if you find a good balance with one person, there are thousands of other people with whom you may interact.

          Even if we develop some standard of etiquette so that we don’t damage someone else’s self-esteem in certain ways or don’t cross a specific line, it won’t ultimately help because too often, etiquette is an alternative to interaction.

          Years ago, someone told me that you become a product of the company you keep and the books that you read, and this was the basis of what I suggested to my friend.  Your self-esteem is likely to improve if you spend time with people you respect and who accept you. If you think you’re garbage, chances are you either spend time with people who think you’re garbage, or you think they’re garbage so what would they know? Their opinion of you might be that you’re better than they are, but that doesn’t take much.

          And this is where today’s verse comes in. Some people like to claim God is “crazy about us,” but that’s too “over the top.” It shows disrespect for God, so it can do nothing for us. But the fact that God is our God, that He loves us not only enough to sacrifice His Son for us, but enough to be associated with us should mean something to us if we respect God. It’s not that belonging to God means we’re better than everyone else. In a sense, it’s that belonging to God means we don’t need everyone else for us to feel valued.

          The problem is, we don’t trust God, and so we think we must look  elsewhere to find our value. But there’s a paradox involved. If we go into relationships in order to  feel valued or to prove our value, we’ve reduced the other person to nothing more than a means to an end, and we’ve lost all respect for the other. So in addition to our self-esteem being connected to how people you respect respond to you, but how they respond to you is an outcome of your respecting them.

          So our respect of God as God will, over time, lead to a proper self-esteem – not that we are grand and glorious and deserve adulation, but that we are loved and valued. The next step is ours.