Self-Esteem, Self-Regard, Self-Worth

"And he said unto them, Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts: for that which is highly esteemed among me is abomination in the sight of God" (Luke 16:5).

"So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do" (Luke 17:10).

"For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith" (Romans 12:3).

"Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves" (Philippians 2:3).

Self-Interest

"Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others" (Philippians 2:4).

Loving Self

"This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away" (2 Timothy 3:1-5).

Loving God

"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength" (Mark 12:30).

Loving Others

"Thou shalt love they neighbour as thyself" (Mark 12:31).

"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise" (Luke 6:31).

"...For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it" (Ephesians 5:29).

Denying Self / Dying to Self

"Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.  For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it" (Matthew 16:24).

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