The Vitamin Z blog has recently posted a couple of quotes from Ed Welch’s book “When People are Big and God is Small.” This book is a classic on reorienting our perspective and battling the fear of man. Enjoy these nuggets.
Regarding other people, our problem is that we need them (for ourselves) more than we love them (for the glory of God). The task God sets for us is to need them less and love them more. Instead of looking for ways to manipulate others, we will ask God what out duty is toward them. This perspective does not come naturally to any of us, and many of us need to look at this truth from several angles before we can see it. But the conviction of this book is that this truth is another of Scripture’s divine paradoxes – the path of service is the road to freedom. (p. 19)
That’s the paradox of self-esteem: Low self-esteem usually means that I think too highly of myself. I’m to self-involved, I feel I deserve better than what I have. The reason I feel bad about myself is that I aspire to something more. I want just a few minutes of greatness. I am a peasant who wants to be king. When you are in the grips of low self-esteem, it’s painful, and it certainly doesn’t feel like pride. But I believe that this is the dark, quieter side of pride – thwarted pride. (p. 32)
Doesn’t the teaching on self-esteem and its emphasis on self seem to make the problem worse? That certainly was my experience. When I tried to raise my own self-esteem, it just led to painful self-consciousness and further individualism. Even from a secular perspective, the self-esteem teaching seems suspect…
But even with all the crazy ways that popular books try to inflate our self-esteem, there is a biblical message in it all. The massive interest in self-esteem and self-worth exists because it is trying to help us with a real problem. The problem is that we really are not okay. There is no reason why we should feel great about ourselves. We truly are deficient. The meager props of the self-esteem teaching will eventually collapse and people will realize that their problem is much deeper. The problem is, in part, our nakedness before God. (p. 28-29)