While a broad range of mental health professionals
insist that we must believe in ourselves and have a high self-esteem to be mentally
healthy, the Biblical revelation takes us in an entirely different direction.
We are instructed to trust exclusively in God and reject self-trust (Phil 3:2; Jer. 17:5-7; Psalm 62). In
contrast, the idea of believing in oneself is so deeply entrenched in American
society that people are genuinely surprised when this accepted “truth” is
questioned.
However, there
are a lot of sound reasons to question this iconic assumption. For one thing, learning
to trust in ourselves requires us to have an unrealistically high estimation of
ourselves. We cannot trust in ourselves if we do not esteem ourselves capable
of delivering on that trust. We cannot trust that we will get an “A” unless we
esteem ourselves capable of getting the “A.”
However,
building self-esteem is not the same thing as self-acceptance; it is
the opposite. If self-acceptance represents the willingness to see ourselves as
we truly are, self-esteem represents its unwillingness. Although it feels temporarily
better to regard ourselves more highly than we ought, it is a rejection of who
we are and a mask which separates us from others.
While the building of self-esteem has been identified as
the panacea for all sorts of personal failures, according to Wikipedia, many
psychologists have joined in condemning the practice of building self-esteem:
·
“Perhaps one of the strongest theoretical and operational
critiques of the concept of
self-esteem has come from American psychologist Albert Ellis who on numerous occasions criticized the philosophy as essentially
self-defeating and ultimately destructive…unrealistic, illogical and self- and
socially destructive – often doing more harm than good…The healthier
alternative to self-esteem according to him is unconditional self-acceptance and unconditional
other-acceptance…”
Indeed, self-acceptance is antithetical to building high self-esteem.
While self-trust and self-esteem attempt to unrealistically inflate our
estimation of ourselves, self-acceptance reflects a willingness to regard and
to accept the truth about ourselves, however uncomfortable this might be. Many
advocates of self-esteem recognize that promoting it is not the same as
promoting truth and accuracy, but instead argue that high self-esteem has many
beneficial effects.
In contrast to this, it is argued that adaptive
decision-making depends upon accurate data, in this case, a sober assessment of
our true performance and abilities. This requires the acceptance of reality the
way it is. In support of this, it is obvious that whatever we manage well, we
must first see clearly and understand. When I drive my car, the thousands of
decisions I make every minute depend upon accurate visual feedback. If the data
is distorted, my decisions will be disastrous. The same is true about managing
our own lives. We have to be willing to accept and confront the truth about
ourselves if we are going to experience positive adaptive adjustments.
Is Ellis correct that building self-esteem is
“self-defeating and ultimately destructive…unrealistic, illogical and self- and
socially destructive?” Does trusting in oneself produce good results other than
feeling good about oneself? Research gives a resounding “no!”
·
“Recent research indicates that inflating students'
self-esteem in and of itself has no positive effect on grades. One study has
shown that inflating self-esteem by itself can actually decrease grades.” (These five quotes are taken from Wikipedia.)
·
“Some of the most interesting results of recent studies
center on the relationships between bullying, violence, and self-esteem. People used to
assume that bullies acted violently towards others because they suffered from
low self-esteem…”
·
“In contrast to old beliefs, later research indicates
that violence is often linked to high self-esteem.”
·
“Violent criminals often describe themselves as superior
to others - as special, elite persons who deserve preferential treatment. Many
murders and assaults are committed in response to blows to self-esteem such as insults and humiliation.” —Rajbir Singh, Psychology
of Wellbeing, 2007
·
“Self-esteem can also lead to superiority complexes,
wherein arrogant individuals feel no qualms about abusing someone they consider
inferior. This, Baumeister argues, is the case with psychopaths or has been the
case with groups such as the Nazis.”
The evidence seems to be a consistent thumbs-down for
self-esteem. High self-esteem seems to enable us to justify abusing others.
After all, we are the ones who are “good” and “right.” Also, we are the ones
who have been wronged. Abusers reconstruct their biographies to justify their
retaliations against society. Believing in themselves, they are convinced that
it is they who are the real victims!
Richard Lee Colvin (LA Times, 1/25/99, “Losing Faith in the Self-Esteem Movement”)
writes:
·
“Having high self-esteem certainly feels good,
psychologists say. But contrary to intuition, it doesn’t necessarily pay off in
greater academic achievement, less drug abuse, less crime or much of anything
else. Or, if it does pay off, 10,000 or more research studies have yet to find
proof.”
The findings are uniform. Erica Goode (NYT, 10/1/02,
“Deflating Self-Esteem’s Role in Society’s Ills”) writes:
·
“’D’ students…think as highly of themselves as
valedictorians, and serial rapists are no more likely to ooze with insecurities
than doctors or bank managers…In an extensive review of the studies, Nicholas
Emler…found no clear link between low self-esteem and delinquency, violence
against others, teenage smoking, drug use or racism…High self-esteem, on the other
hand, was positively correlated with racist attitudes, drunken driving and
other risky behaviors.”
·
[Psychologist Jennifer Crocker concluded:] “The pursuit
of self-esteem has short-term benefits but long term costs…ultimately diverting
people from fulfilling their fundamental human needs for competence,
relatedness and autonomy and leading to poor self-regulation and mental and
physical health.”
Reviewing two new studies regarding positive self-talk,
Wray Herbert reports on some perplexing results. Those subjects who were primed
to perform a certain task with self-trust statements (“I will” do….) performed
worse than those without this priming. (“Will Power Paradox,” Scientific America Mind, July/August 2010,
66-67)
Why such negative findings for something – self-esteem
and self-trust – that feels so positive? For one thing, the pursuit of
self-trust inevitably produces self-delusion and denial. This should be
obvious. To trust in ourselves, we suppress those things that would argue against
self-trust and feed ourselves only upon those thoughts that would serve to
promote self-trust and esteem. Nurtured on this diet, any anti-social act can
be justified. Sadly, many mental health practitioners are ready to affirm these
delusions. They blindly assume that their clients suffer from low self-esteem,
and that healing means feeling good about self.
Consistent with this, I have never seen a psychotherapist
advertise, “Come to me and learn the truth about yourself.” No one would come.
Instead, they assert, “Come to me to reduce your painful symptomology.”
Instead, self-esteem training makes it harder for the
client to work out his interpersonal problems. After all, how can he if he has
been trained to only see the “positive!”
Truth has become the casualty of our pursuit of the
feel-good life, and research has reaffirmed this fact repeatedly. In fact,
self-delusion is all too “normal.” Shelley Taylor is a psychologist who
believes that a little self-delusion is necessary to get you out of bed in the
morning. Nevertheless, she unequivocally affirms,
·
“Normal people
exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not.
Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people
are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show
enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the
future, depressed people fail to show the same biases.” (Positive Illusions, 214)
Self-delusions characterize the “normal” life, as a
wealth of studies have found. In one study, 25% percent of the college students
asserted that they were in the top 1% in terms of their ability to get along
with others. In a study of nearly a million high school seniors,
·
“70 percent said they had ‘above average leadership
skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership skills were below average.
(ABC.go.com, 11/9/05, “Self-Images Often
Erroneously Inflated”)
Costs abound. If we have duped ourselves into believing
that we are great leaders, we will make some foolish decisions.
But perhaps self-delusion and self-trust are healthy,
especially when we compare them with their opposite – depression? If denial and
delusion enable us to pursue our goals, perhaps a little dab of this poison is
just what the doctor would prescribe? Perhaps there is too much of a
preoccupation on the idea of truth? Instead, it seems that the poison – this flight
from reality into a comforting fantasy world – is lethal, although the psychological
dying process might remain imperceptible.
I know something about this kind of psychological death.
As a youth, I felt unbelievably bad about myself and struggled with shame, but
I found a “remedy.” I compensated for my bad feelings with “good,” inflated
thoughts. As a 15-year-old, I’d look in the mirror and flex my muscles and tell
myself how wonderful I was and how the girls secretly loved me. After a while,
I began to believe it. I got a “high,” and confidently strutted towards the previously
threatening classroom. However, once there, reality assaulted me. I saw that
the girls didn’t love me. They seemed to prefer the athletes, class clowns, and
even the bad boys. I went home crushed and returned to my mirror. However, in
order to restore my confidence, I had to now tell myself more grandiose
distortions and to also believe them. Nevertheless, I could never achieve the
original high – my drug failed to confront the underlying problems – but
instead I became addicted to the drug of self-delusion.
There are many costs to this addiction. For one thing,
with every “fix,” I became more alienated from reality and from myself. I
couldn’t make sound decisions because I was unable to see myself accurately. I
didn’t want to! I had opted to feel good about myself at the cost of thinking
accurately.
For another thing, I was building my life on the
foundation of self. I had to believe in myself, and I had to be able to
shoulder all of life’s challenges. Some were too big to bear, but I convinced
myself that I could do it. However, I became more and more self-conscious. If
the foundation of my life is me, then I had doomed myself to obsessively
scrutinize that foundation of self to assure myself whether it could bear the
weight of my life.
It gets worse. My positive affirmations inevitably failed
to deal with the real problem – the underlying guilt and shame that always
seemed to bubble to the surface despite my most strenuous efforts to keep them
submerged. This necessitated more positive affirmations, but I was becoming
increasingly alienated from myself – a self I couldn’t bear to face, which I
tried unsuccessfully to keep at bay with a web of self-deceptions.
When depression would come – and it came as a regular
visitor – it would thrust me into an entirely different reality, a reality of
shame and self-contempt. During such visitations, my drug of positive affirmations
failed to help, no matter how many doses I took. Nothing worked, but as a dead
body bobbing up and down in the waves, I would eventually come up for a brief
reprieve and some fresh air. However, the “deep” would reclaim me for
increasingly long periods.
The more I built my self-esteem, the more I separated
myself from the real “me” Consequently, I saw two separate selves, but I
couldn’t tell which was the real one – the superior being that I had created
and nurtured, or the depressed, ugly, helpless version? Not only was I obsessed with myself and the
endless battle to try to prove myself, but I was also obsessed with negative
comparisons with others.
Self-trust always comes at great price. How do we know
that we are decent and superior human beings? By comparing ourselves to others!
Jesus told a parable about someone who trusted in his own goodness and looked
down on others (Luke 18:9-14). The two things – self-trust and the disdain of
others – go together. Self-trust seems to always require comparisons with
others. It gives me little satisfaction to score “A” on my papers if everyone
else is scoring “A+!”
Here is the basis of the human dilemma. We all need to
believe that we are good and worthwhile people, but we have a conscience that,
if still operative, informs us that we fall far short of our standards and then
beats us up with feelings of guilt and shame. “Normal” people can convince
themselves that they’re OK despite these unpleasant internal messages.
Depressed people can’t and eventually succumb to this reality. The struggle to
suppress these unwanted messages just becomes too much to bear, but both groups
struggle at the expense of inner peace.
However, the “normal” succumb to an equally bad set of
demons – a greater confidence in their delusions, arrogance, stagnation, shallowness,
superficiality, contempt for others, bigotry, and even criminality, as the
research reveals. Chauvinism is a variation of the theme – my group or
ethnicity is better than yours – and produces bloody results.
Everyone is trapped in an endless cycle to prove
themselves, either by their accomplishments, power, popularity, or belonging to
the right group or ethnicity. We do
whatever it takes to feel good about ourselves! To establish our significance,
we fight wars, subjugate peoples, refuse to speak their inferior languages, and
become ethnocentric. Ironically, what had once been regarded as pathological –
self-esteem – is now regarded as essential to mental health. (In an interesting
variation of this theme, instead of degrading others, we promote them, all the
while thinking, “Look how good a person I am!”)
However, we never arrive at any rest from this endless
struggle to achieve significance and to prove that we are worthy of believing
in ourselves. John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in the world at that time,
was asked, “How much more money will you need to be happy.” He wisely answered,
“Always a little bit more.”
Even he had not arrived! We convince ourselves, “If I
only had that house, job, promotion, or woman, I’d be happy.” The promotion
might suffice for a week or two until we hear of a co-worker who received a
more significant promotion.
How can we account for this very human phenomenon? Clearly,
the answer is not to be found in all our strivings to establish the self. The
more we attempt to reassure ourselves of our worth, the more we become addicted
to this drug. In contrast, the right
drug deals directly with the problem. When we scrape our arm, we apply
antiseptic to kill the invading germs. We might also take aspirin for the pain,
but aspirin cannot address the problem, only the symptoms. However, if we
continue to rely on aspirins, we will develop side affects, some of which will
remain undetected.
Building self-esteem, like taking aspirin, fails to
address the real issue. This is shown by the fact that we require increasingly
higher doses and never attain any healing. Instead, self-esteem merely helps us
to live with our bad feelings about self, but the side-effects are deadly.
The thrust to build self-esteem and self-trust not only
alienates us from ourselves and reality, it alienates us also from others.
Relationship builds upon the turf of a mutually shared reality. It’s hard to
have a relationship with a delusional person. Many terminally ill people are
very delusional and in denial about their impending death, according to the
late psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck. He laments the fact that, although this
urgent reality could provide opportunities for interpersonal reconciliation and
healing, often, it drives people apart. How do you relate to the dying person who
promises that once he’s out of the hospital, he’s going to take you on many
joyous vacations? You cannot. Your two perspectives are so different that you
want to run away.
This is the case with all self-delusion. Relationship is
only possible if two people share the same delusion. Both have to believe that
the terminally ill person will fully recover. If one party believes he’s
Napoleon, both must believe this to experience interpersonal harmony. However,
self-delusion rarely allows for this.
An interesting study conducted in 1986 and then repeated
20 years later in 2006, found that in 1986, 10% of the interviewees admitted
that they lacked a confidant. However, by 2006, this significant index rose to
25%! I wonder if the growing self-esteem culture is responsible for this trend.
There are other significant interpersonal issues. If
building self-esteem makes us receptive to good messages and causes us to
reject the negative messages about ourselves, then it should not surprise us
that this tendency will serve to undermine relational problem-solving. When I
was still operating out of my own delusional paradigm, I had convinced myself
that I was always right. I had learned to see the good about myself and to deny
the bad. Whenever my wife and I would argue, I was sure that I was right and
she was equally sure that she was right. Consequently, there was never any
reconciliation. The argument would only cease after we both became exhausted,
but the problem remained, and hope fled away.
Besides, if we have succeeded in convincing ourselves
that we are worthy people, then we will eventually regard our partners as
unworthy in comparison. In accord with
the grandiose self-image we have come to nurture, we might convince ourselves
that we are seeing our partners as they truly are—hopelessly inferior to us! Dissatisfaction with our partner will be our
inheritance. It is so much better to regard ourselves as “unworthy” of our
partners. How grateful we will then be!
*****
It is argued that we need to have an inflated sense of
self to get out of bed in the morning and to confront life’s challenges. Yes,
we need to hope and to trust, but must we deceive ourselves to have an adequate
hope?
My orientation has changed dramatically from one of
self-trust to God-trust, from a belief in my worthiness to the knowledge of my
unworthiness apart from Christ. For one thing, I can now see and admit my
wrongdoing. As I have become convinced of His love and acceptance of me, I
could begin to accept myself -- warts and all. I usually do not like what I see
in myself – reality can be brutal – but I am far better off despite the
discomfort. Before, I had to trust in myself to get me through. Now I know that my God holds my hand, working
everything out for good. I know that I am perfectly cared for, and I can begin
to laugh at myself. Before, when the foundation for my life was myself, I took myself
all too seriously. I could not dream of laughing when everything depended on
me. However, now I know that it all depends upon my Savior, and I truly exult
in this. I no longer have to inflate my self-esteem to get out of bed in the
morning. I need only think about how God esteems me. Yes, I do need to feel
good about myself, but I don’t have to achieve this by denying the truth about
myself. I just have to look to the One who loves me more than mind can
comprehend (Ephesians 3:16-19) and bask in His reassuring estimation of me, in spite
of my many failures.
My wife and I recently returned from Cambodia where we visited the Genocide Museum
in Phnom Penh.
We had enjoyed the lovely, gentle Cambodian people so much that we struggled to
reconcile our experience with the reality of the killing fields. What could have transformed such wonderful people
into Pol Pots?
For one thing, the Khmer Rouge (Cambodian communists) had
succeeded in convincing themselves of their own ethnic superiority. They also saw
themselves as liberators from oppression, and regarded their opponents as
capitalist vermin and parasites, worthy of extermination for the greater cause.
Many communists would like to distance themselves from
the Khmer Rouge (Reds) by claiming that they followed a different form of communism.
However, I could not detect any real differences between the two in my
readings. Indeed, the Khmer Rouge national anthem, however chilling, reflected the
basics of communist thinking:
·
“Glittering red blood which blankets the towns and
countryside of the Kampuchean Motherland! Blood of our splendid workers and
peasants. Blood of our revolutionary youth! Blood that was transformed into
fury, anger and victorious struggle…Blood that liberated us from slavery…We
united together to build up Kampuchea
and a glorious society, democratic, egalitarian, and just…”
The wonder of communism is that its adherents believed
that a little bloodshed mixed with their communist philosophy could transform
society into a utopian paradise. Idealistic, indeed! But their self-trust and
denial of the counter-evidence deceived them.
The Khmer Rouge seemed to have differed from other
Communists in one way. They mixed a deadly form of nationalism into their Marxist
doctrine. They had been raised on the idea that the Khmers were a superior
race. Indeed, from the 9th to the 14th centuries, the Khmers
did have a great empire! They had been
taught to believe in themselves, and this they continued to do despite all the
counter-evidence – the murder of one-fourth of their own nation!
There is great peace in trusting our Savior. The inner
struggle to prove ourselves diminishes as Christ grows within. I no longer must
wage war against all of the unwanted and disparaging thoughts which bubble up
from within. I know I have been forgiven and cleansed (Hebrews 10:19-22).
In contrast, those who remain in the world of self-trust must
learn to practice self-forgiveness. This is because we are aware that something
is wrong inside. We experience guilt, shame, and the terrifying sense of
unworthiness and judgment (Rom. 1:32: Hebrews 10:27; 2:15) and must deal with
these unsettling feelings. Traditional societies perceived more clearly that
there is an underlying relational problem – the gods had been offended – and
consequently made offerings to appease these angry deities. Modern man attempts
to achieve the same thing through his accomplishments, affiliations, and by
consulting the modern therapeutic shaman who counsels him to forgive himself.
Self-forgiveness is a companion of self-trust, but does
it work? It is just more of the same – positive affirmations, a bandage to
cover up the real relational problem. Our God has been offended, and as a
result, we experience guilt, shame, and anxiety. If I cheat on my wife and
merely forgive myself, I have not addressed the problem or even my wife’s
feelings.
This is the essential nature of self-trust –
self-justification and self-righteousness. It is a refusal to deal with
reality. There is only one way that I can deal with reality. Our Savior has
convinced us that if we confess our sins, He is faithful to forgive and to
cleanse us (1 John 1:9). He has therefore won over my heart and mind. I no
longer need to trust in myself, since He has become my strength and assurance. I
no longer must artificially esteem myself because He esteems me!
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