Some years ago, when I was a young mom, it seemed like self-concept was the topic of the times. There was no Internet then, but we heard about a biblical view of self from women’s meetings and magazines.
I believe one reason the topic was so prevalent was because the world was touting the need for good self-esteem. Though their motives may have been noble, the idea of feeling good about yourself just for the sake of feeling good about yourself fell short.
After not hearing about self-concept in a while, lately it has come up in a number of places–in a ladies meeting at church, in conversations with a couple of friends, and in an online article and comments.
Being a slow processor, some of these thoughts have percolated on the back burner for a few weeks. I thought I’d share a few things that have helped me over the years.
If self-concept is how we think of ourselves, there are two ways we can go wrong. One is to think too highly of ourselves. We’ve all known people who thought they were hot stuff, their ideas were the best, their ways of doing things were the only valid ones. The Bible has a lot to say about humility and esteeming others higher than ourselves.
But usually if someone says they’re struggling with their self-concept, they mean it the other direction. They don’t feel “good enough” in their looks, their personalities, their clothes, their homes, or their abilities.
Sometimes a negative self-image comes from things our parents, friends, or schoolmates said as we were growing up. Sometimes it comes from comparing ourselves to others.
A wrong view of ourselves can be crippling, creating anxiety and sadness, lowering our confidence, paralyzing us from extending ourselves. We might seek solace in self-destructive activities or isolate ourselves overmuch.
One verse that has helped me in this area is Romans 12:3: “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” A couple of translations say “sensibly” rather than “soberly.” According to Biblehub.com, the word means “To be of sound mind, be sober-minded, exercise self-control. From sophron; to be of sound mind, i.e. Sane, moderate.”
So how can we think about ourselves soundly?
I think, first of all, by remembering what the Bible says about us.
God made us in His image. That image has been marred by sin, yes. But each person has intrinsic value because God made them.
God sent His Son to die for us. God could have left mankind in sin. But He went to great pains to make a way that we might be forgiven through Jesus taking our sin on Himself on the cross.
God dearly loves us. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He didn’t wait for us to clean ourselves up first–we never could. Nothing can separate us from His love (Romans 8:37-38).
God accepts us. That God “made us accepted in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1:6, NKJV) was pivotal for me in my own thoughts about myself.
God rejoices over us. “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17).
We’re children of the King. “But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). John writes later in 1 John 3:1, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”
We’re still in a state of growth, or in the process of sanctification. If we’re saved, we’ve been made new and given a new heart. But we still have the old nature that fights against us. When we sin, we don’t despair. We confess our sins to the Lord. (1 John 1:9), ask for forgiveness and His grace to overcome. We gradually change to be more like Him by gazing at Him (2 Corinthians 3:18), renewing our minds with His truth (Romans 12:1-2), and putting off our old selves and putting on the new one “created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24).
God says we’re more valuable than the birds and flowers He cares for. Jesus told the disciples not to be anxious about their needs because God would take care of them. He pointed out the birds of the air and the flowers that “even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Matthew 6:25-33). He says, “Are you not of more value than they?”
God gives us something to do. Ephesians 2:10 tells us, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”
God equips us to do what He calls us to do. He gives spiritual gifts to each of His children. (Romans 12:6–8; 1 Corinthians 12:4–11; 1 Peter 4:10–11). He gives us “all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:3-4). He gives us His Holy Spirit to dwell within us and guide us.
We’re not enough, but God is. “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:4-5).
When old voices echo into our minds saying we’re not valuable or we’re “less than,” we need to correct our thinking with these and other truths from Scripture.
Secondly, we need to avoid comparisons.
Some of our biggest problems come in when we look at what other people have or do. Social media gets blamed for this, but, believe me, it was a problem long before.
The Bible tells us, “they, measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves among themselves, are not wise” (2 Corinthians 10:12, NKJV).
One experience in particular helped me with this. When my children were small, I had a friend at church who was about the same age with the same number of children spaced similarly apart. We traded baby-sitting for doctor’s appointments and such. Any time I was at her house, I noticed it was not only tidy and picked up, but it was nicely decorated. She sewed clothes for herself and her children, she sewed things for her home, and she sewed for other people. She was active in several ministries at church.
Meanwhile, I felt like I was barely keeping everyone fed and reasonably clean. I wondered many times why I couldn’t do all this woman did.
I finally had to realize that some people just had the capacity for more. If God passes out talents like the man in the parable, maybe she was a five-talent Christian and I was a two-talent Christian.
Some years later, this lady and her husband invited us to their home for dinner. Throughout the night, she kept getting up to start something or check on something or see about something. I thought, if this is the price for getting so much done, then maybe I’m okay with not doing so.
It’s not that either of us was right or wrong, worse or better: it was just a realization that God made us different, and that was okay.
Thirdly, we need to practice acceptance and contentment.
The disciples argued often about who would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. After Jesus’ death and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit to dwell within believers, that didn’t seem to be as much of a problem.
Not everyone was given Peter’s place as the leader or his and James’ and John’s experiences with the Lord. Some of the disciples seemed to minister in relative obscurity.
When Peter asked Jesus what was going to happen to John, Jesus said, “What is that to you? You follow me!”
Something else that helped me was the realization that, whatever my strengths and gifts were, there was always going to be someone who could do what I did better. It’s not a contest. God has a place and a ministry for each of us. Our part is to faithfully serve Him in whatever He calls us to.
If someone has more or better or different gifts than I have, I can appreciate them and learn from them, but I don’t have to strive to be just like them. This came home to me with another friend who was one of the most organized people on the planet. I used to wish I was more like her, until I got to know her better. Some of the ways she organized just would not have worked for me and seemed too restrictive. Again, it wasn’t a matter of right or wrong, but of the different bent God gave each of us. If I had an organizational question, she would have been the first person I asked. But I didn’t have to lament that I wasn’t like her.
It’s the same with any area of life–finances, houses, clothes, looks, family size, and everything else. If someone has more or better, we can rejoice with those who rejoice.
We also don’t need to idealize others. Of course people are going to post good news on social media. That doesn’t mean their lives are perfect. Everyone has flaws and problems.
Finally, we need to turn our focus away from ourselves and minister to others.
We don’t ignore or dismiss thoughts about ourselves: we think biblically about ourselves. We may need counsel to sort out how to think and feel and respond to what others have said about us. But If we’re constantly looking at what other people have or do and feeling we’re falling short, where is our focus? On ourselves.
One of the best ways I have found to battle discontent with myself is to forget about me and minister to others. Instead of turning everything we observe from others into an unfavorable comparison with ourselves, maybe we can ask for God’s help to say something encouraging or complimentary to them. Or we can seek out other people who need encouragement. A stanza from Anna Laetitia Waring’s hymn has helped me, especially the last line:
I ask Thee for a thoughtful love, through constant watching wise,
To meet the glad with joyful smiles, and to wipe the weeping eyes;
And a heart at leisure from itself, to soothe and sympathize.
Another quote that has helped me is this from Robert Murray M’Cheyne’s Memoirs and Remains. I was looking up the quote about looking at Christ ten times for every look at ourselves just now when I found it in context:
Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely. Such infinite majesty, and yet such meekness and grace, and all for sinners, even the chief. Live much in the smiles of God. Bask in His beams. Feel His all-seeing eye settled on you in love and repose in His almighty arms… Let your soul be filled with a heart-ravishing sense of the sweetness and excellency of Christ and all that is in Him.
And, finally, this longer quote from Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis sums it all up:
The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. . .
Give up your self, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.
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