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Self-esteem, or the lack of it, is the modern catch-all of blame for nearly all human social and personal problems. Religious and Christian thinkers alike have bought into this viewpoint. Many Christians will even use the scriptures to teach that we must love ourselves before we can truly love any other. There are a few Bible teachers and preachers who cry out against this modern view and teach that death to self, produced by extreme self-sacrifice in imitation of Christ, is the true way for a godly person to live. Neither is truly the Biblical standard and can each lead to dependence upon our own pride and human pride produces only sin and sin produces only death.

Introspection is a good thing when the Word of God is the mirror we use to rightly gauge who we are. Introspection coupled with the illumination of the Holy Spirit can lead to enlightenment and godly change. Without God's standard however, we are open to all the deception that the world uses to make fools of us; for the deceptions of the world are conceived within the foolish human heart. When we blind ourselves to our weaknesses, short-comings, and propensity toward sin, paving the way toward self-love, we fall into great delusion. In this state, we don't even know our own heart and imagine ourselves to be more than we truly are and become highly vulnerable, weakened by our own lies. No relationship based upon lies is healthy and nothing can be more unhealthy than to be involved in a false relationship with Self.

Self-esteem is not the answer to the emotional pain and social decadence common to the human condition.

It is better to give than to receive but even if we give ourselves completely away to others, we can't fill our own need with the met needs of others. Certainly, we can't fill the need of all other persons in the world even if all other persons were also giving themselves away. If we spend our days living entirely for others, we will only be left empty and they will only cry out for more. We do need one another and all of us do have needs that can be met by relationship with other human beings but there is a basic need in all of us that can never find satisfaction in another. We all need relationship with God and there is within all of us a void that can be filled by nothing and no one else. We are designed for God in the same way that we are designed to need water and air. Apart from God, we have no lasting purpose and to be physically alive, yet spiritually dead to God is to live out life in deep loneliness, no matter how many persons we share our life with. It is only Jesus Who can open our hearts up to God and give us that for which our soul hungers; filling us with the Love of God that nurtures and strengthens our inner being in the same way that air and water sustains our physical bodies. Without air and water, our bodies will die. Without Jesus, our spirits remain dead to God and as a soul, we will die also.

Jesus gave Himself for us, all of Himself; but first, He gave Himself to God, His Father. No matter how much of ourselves we give in imitation of Jesus, we will never be able to obtain what He obtained, eternal life. Even He did not obtain that life by giving Himself to us but by giving Himself to His Father in the Love that produced perfect obedience. He Loved His Father for His Father Loved Him. Jesus now freely offers the eternal life that He won upon completion of His Father's work of Salvation through Him, to those of us who give ourselves to Him.

It is not in loving ourselves or in giving ourselves away that we will find fulfillment, our purpose. Our purpose can't be found in self at all but only in Christ. It is in Christ-esteem that our selves are brought into a realistic and proper balance. In Christ, we find the Love that fills our own emotional need and also empowers us to reach out in Love toward others. We die to self not in the giving away to others in self-sacrifice, as a cheap imitation of Christ, but in the daily giving of more of ourselves to Jesus. This does not leave us empty but is that which produces that fountain of living water that can never run dry and bubbles over into eternal life.

Father, help us set our eyes upon, Jesus! Not that we might become an imitation of Him. Rather let us Lovingly give ourselves to Him a little more each day so that our lives will actually BE Jesus upon the earth. Fill us with Your Spirit and may we all be filled with such Christ-esteem that tears, and sorrow, and mourning are known no more as our purpose is found in Your purpose. Jesus make us the instruments of Your Father's Will upon the earth. Come Lord Jesus! Amen.