Self and Selfism

Redefining Hate: From Diabolical Anti-Love to Any Criticism of the Fragile Self  (14 July 2017)

"I remember my first encounter when bring taught Rogerian counselling techniques ... There were two core elements: unconditional positive regard, and self-actualisation. ... Self-actualisation, which overlaps with Jung's promotion of something very similar which he called 'individuation', replaced any external criteria of expectation (God for example) with the trust that the internal needs of the person would make themselves known and, in the right affirming environment, grow and flourish. The highest levels of self-regard were crucial to this process..."

Christ-Like Love  (19 September 2010)

"Jesus gave His disciples a new commandment just before He went to the cross. They were to love one another as He had loved them (John 13:34). It is this last phrase that makes Jesus' command impossible to fulfill without God's grace..."

A Biblical View of Self-Esteem: An Explanation of Key Verses  (October 1998)

"The attached Bible verse explanations detail how God views us and how we should view ourselves. Taken in proper context, [they] clearly indicate that there is no biblical basis for self-esteem, self-love, self-acceptance, self-confidence, self-forgiveness, self-assertion, 'proper' self-image, self-actualization, or any of the other selfisms advocated by the worldly system of psychology. The Bible's answer for our emotional 'problems' [is to] turn from self to Christ and His all-sufficient Word..."

The Biblical View of Self-Esteem versus the Extreme 'Wrong' & the Extreme 'Right'  (October 1998)

"Low self-esteem... No self-esteem... High self-esteem..."

James Dobson's Gospel of Self-Esteem and Psychology  (July-August 1998)

"We are aware that there are pluses to Dobson's ministry. However, after all the pluses and minuses are added together, we conclude that Focus on the Family is an organization that too often honors man and his opinions over God and His Word. While there are times when Dobson presents biblical ideas in a sound manner, too much of what he espouses and teaches is based on unproven notions from secular psychology..."

How Do I Love Me? Let Me Count the Ways...  (December 1997)

"The world around us is teaching self-love and self-esteem. Self-esteem is a popularised aspect of humanistic psychology, which is based on the belief that all are born good and that society is the culprit. The system places man as the measure of all things..."

Self-Esteem for Christians?  (March-April/May-June 1996)

"Do children and adults really need self-esteem? Does low self-esteem lead to serious life problems? Should parents attempt to build self-esteem in their children? Does the Bible encourage self-esteem? Many Christians have assumptions about self-esteem. But, what does the Bible say? What does research say?..."

The Fallacy of Self-Worth  (May 1995)

"Many teach today that we are of great value to God. But where does it say that in the Bible?..."

Blasphemy of the Self-Esteem Teachers  (29 November 1992)

"What blasphemy is being promoted from within the church today! That people find a way to say, 'You want to know how valuable I am? You want to know how much worth I have? You want to know what gives me self-esteem? God thought I was valuable enough to die for.'  That's blasphemy. That's robbing God of that which is His alone..."

The Roots and Fruits of Selfism  (1987)

"The prohibition against taking from or adding to God's Word is consistently implied throughout Scripture, and at times it is stated explicitly ... Unfortunately, the tendency to disregard God's clearly stated commands lurks in every heart and lies at the root of most human problems. It began in the Garden of Eden..."

The Myth of Self-Hate  (1985)

"Jesus summed up the law and the prophets in what has become known as the Golden Rule: 'And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise' (Luke 6:31). Without complete confidence that every human already loves himself, Jesus could never have made such a statement..."

Self-Idolatry  (1985)

"The idea of man's innate goodness - of the innocent child that resides within us all - is the cornerstone of psychology. Under that sponsorship, evangelical tradition is being replaced by a new humanistic view of man, which ridicules as 'worm theology' the former emphasis upon conviction of sin, repentance, and humanity's unworthiness. The new gospel of self-esteem has even been embraced by earnest Christian leaders..."

What Does the Bible Say About Self-Love, Loving Self?  (No Date)

"Love as described in the Bible is quite different from the love as espoused by the world. Biblical love is selfless and unconditional, whereas the world's love is characterised by selfishness. In the following passages we see that love does not exist apart from God..."

How Should a Christian View Self-Esteem?  (No Date)

"Many define self-esteem as 'feelings of worth based on their skills, accomplishments, status, financial resources, or appearance. This kind of self-esteem can lead a person to feel independent and prideful and to indulge in self-worship, which dulls our desire for God..."

What Does the Bible Say About Shyness/Being Shy?  (No Date)

"Webster's dictionary defines shyness as 'the state of being timid, easily frightened, reserved, bashful, and shrinking from contact with others'. For the Christian, shyness can be overcome by relying on the Holy Spirit..."

What Does the Bible Say About Narcissism?  (No Date)

"Narcissism is the term used in psychology to describe a preoccupation with self. It is a Greek term taken from the name of the mythological Narcissus, who fell in love with his image and was doomed to die because he would not turn away from it. A narcissist is a person who displays a high level of selfishness, vanity, and pride. He sees everything from a 'how does this affect me?' perspective..."

What Does the Bible Say About Self-Hatred?  (No Date)

"Although self-hatred is not godly, Christians may experience something like it when they harbour unconfessed sin and feel the conviction of the Holy Spirit. However, both unbelievers ... and believers may fall victim to feelings of self-hatred to the degree that they submit to the world's values regarding beauty, success, and similar 'markers of value'..."

Dying to Self  (No Date)

"When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught and you don't sting and hurt with the insult but your heart is happy being counted worthy to suffer from Christ... that is dying to self..."

Characteristics of the Self Life  (No Date)

"A secret spirit of pride... Love of human praise... The stirrings of anger or impatience... Self-will... Carnal fear... A jealous disposition... A dishonest and deceitful disposition... Unbelief... Formality and deadness... Selfishness..."

Sensitivity

Series: Healing Emotional Wounds: How to Heal Hurt Feelings

Part One: So What Are 'Hurt Feelings' Anyway?  (14 October 2002)

"To begin with, let's note that there is much evil in this world and that from time to time some of it is directed toward you and me. When you are on the receiving end of evil it hurts. It is not a sin to be momentarily hurt by harsh and unkind words, or acts of betrayal. If that is the case, then when does being 'hurt' become sin?..."

Part Two: What is the Solution to Hurt Feelings?  (14 October 2002)

"What pattern does Christ set for us? You are, as a Christian, to be like Christ. In having been sinned against, did Christ complain of 'hurt feelings'?..."

Part Three: But I Have Needs  (14 October 2002)

"How many times have you heard that? How many times have you said that? But are they needs, or demands; needs, or desires of the flesh for self-grandiosity? How many needs do you really have?..."

Part Four: I See 'The What' But Where's 'The How'?  (14 October 2002)

"In healing emotional wounds, change is the operative word. Without a plan of action to generate change, you will put this down and continue to be what you have always been. A desire to 'try harder' will not be enough. Let's lay out a plan that will make selflessness a reality in your life, a plan that will know no more 'hurt feelings'.  The problem is love..."

Books, CDs, DVDs, etc

The books listed below should be available from either the publisher or usedbooksearch

The Biblical View of Self-Esteem, Self-Love, Self-Image  (1986, Harvest House Publishers, Oregon 97402, USA)

"'Who am I?, Why am I here?. Where am I going?'.  Familiar questions in our day and age. But has our search for answers led us too far in the wrong direction: away from our true position in Christ and toward a dangerous emphasis on self? The last [few decades have] seen the rise of a powerful and influential movement within the church. Easily identified by labels such as 'self-image', 'self-esteem', 'self-worth', and 'self-love', this movement has one common denominator - the emphasis on self. Regardless of religious persuasion, everyone seems to be fighting what they perceive to be a shared enemy: low self-esteem.  Now [this] well known biblical counselor and noted author ... brings much-needed clarification to the area of self-esteem and offers the church and every believer a truly biblical view of self."

Websites

PsychoHeresy Awareness Ministries

"The present-day church as strained at many theological gnats but swallowed the camel of psychotherapy to such an extent that the sufficiency of Scripture for the issues of life has been overlooked and replaced with 'profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called' (1 Timothy 6:20)..."

The Children of the Culture of Limitless Self-Regard

The following is an extended extract from the article Redefining Hate: From Diabolical Anti-Love to Any Criticism of the Fragile Self

"I remember my first encounter when being taught Rogerian counselling techniques ... There were two core elements: unconditional positive regard, and self-actualisation.  The implications of this non-directional counselling approach were that the client would flourish if provided with limitless affirmation and minimal direction, criticism or moral interference.

"Self-actualisation, which overlaps with Jung's promotion of something very similar which he called 'individuation', replaced any external criteria of expectation (God for example) with the trust that the internal needs of the person would make themselves known, and, in the right affirming environment, grow and flourish. The highest levels of self-regard were crucial to this process.

"Rogers was born into a faithful Pentecostal family and, as a bright young man, became an atheist. He exchanged an anthropology which saw humanity as flawed by sin for one which saw it flawed only by external and internal criticism.

"Jung's idea of individuation - wholly untested and empirically evasive - also looked for the goal of self-development as the main aim of the human journey. He looked to the opposite poles of good and evil, male and female, rationality and feeling, and prescribed a route of integration of opposites as the fuel for the full development of the inner god-like potential of the Self.  His theory of the Self was that it replaced any external God with an innate sense of the inner divine. We did not need to be transformed by a God out there - because we had the inner god of the Self, in here.

"These wholly un-Christian maps of the psyche and mind required unlimited self-regard, and replaced external moral agency with internal self-serving. They challenged, undermined and replaced the old Christian world view and language.  In this new world of uncritical affirmation, 'love' took on a new meaning. It became the insistence on accepting someone 'as they are', with no preconditions and no criticism. What, then, does criticism of the demanding and emerging ego constitute? Why, the opposite: 'hate'.

"In Christian vocabulary, 'hate' is a very terrible thing indeed. It is anti-God; the disposition of all evil. But in the psychotherapeutic landscape of neo-ethics, where the goal is the ego and emerging self, 'hate' is anything that is anti the self.  Imagine the scenario where there are external moral demands from an external ethical source that challenged the ego's agenda and perceived sense of need. Why, this would be anti-love; it would be hate.

"And suddenly it all falls into place. If, in the name of an external morality, a Christian voice were to challenge the demands [that] the therapised ego insisted made it happy or actualised, this Christian, or the Bible whose words the Christian was calling upon, would become 'hate speech'. ...

"We discover that to the narcissist and his or her culture, all criticism is hate.

"As we place these two worlds in contrast with each other, the world of Christian revelation on the one hand and the world of self-revelation on the other, key words, whose meaning we thought that we thought we all agreed upon, begin to signify very different values and meanings:

• God becomes not Yahweh, or the Holy Trinity, but the primacy of the Self;
• Holiness morphs slowly into wholeness ...;
• Love becomes not unending mercy, charity or forgiveness, but uncritical regard of the other, or of the Self;
• Hate becomes not a diabolical anti-love, but any criticism of the Self's proclaimed agenda of uncritical self-regard. ...

"The Culture of Limitless Self-Regard has mined its memory and unconscious to release its anger and harnesses it as hate, which it directs towards any agency that suggests stoic or Christian restraint. It identifies any refusal to accept its demands for self-realisation or self-satisfaction on its own terms as hate.

"The struggle in the Church is not one of compassion versus hate: it is one of revelation versus narcissism. ... Authentic orthodox Christianity will continue to challenge this shallow heresy of self-regard and self-indulgence, not in the name of hate, but quite the opposite - in the name of the holiness and mercy of the God who came in the chaste person of His Son to set us free from the tyranny of the self and wash us clean from self-preoccupation.

"The reason heresy matters, and must be fought with passion and intellectual clarity, is because heresy does not tell the truth about God or the self. And only the Truth can set us free."

[End]

Thus saith the LORD,
Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way,
and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls
(Jeremiah 6:16)

© Bayith Ministries     http://www.bayith.org     bayith@blueyonder.co.uk