God-Esteem

Have you ever looked in the mirror and thought, "wow am I good looking" or "no wonder Saturday night is the loneliest night of the week for me"? I have probably said both of those to myself at some point. There are some people who seem to be a member of the "beautiful people" club from birth and then there is the rest of us. Unfortunately our world and our society have put a significant amount of value on beauty. What does God say about beauty and self-esteem?

For some the first verse they want to point to when the topic of self-esteem arises is Mt. 22:39. this verse tells us to love others as we love ourselves. This sounds good, but in reality it doesn't really fit. Those who struggle loving themselves will struggle loving others. What does that accomplish?

There is another approach to this problem that I think will help. Simply put it is this love yourself as Christ has loved you. I wish there was a verse that said this exact thing, but there is not. There is no one self-esteem verse. Instead there is a steady diet of love coming from Jesus towards us. There are passages like Ephesians 5 (especially verse 2) that speak of the great sacrifice Jesus gave for us and then there is the words of Jesus that proclaim, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends". Considering the fact that Jesus later gave His life up willingly and without complaint for us, perhaps we can assume that Jesus had the greatest kind of love for us. When we consider the issue of self-esteem we must take this one step further. If God created us and loves us that much wouldn't it honor God to love ourselves and wouldn't it dishonor God to hate ourselves?

This is easy to say and hard to do. It has taken me years to come to the point where I can love myself simply because God loves me. Even now I still struggle with loving myself because I keep trying to measure my worth by what I can accomplish or how good of a person I am. The problem is I am not that good and I often fail. What am I left with? The love of God!!

I strive to please God out of worship and love for Him, but I know that when I fail, God's love expressed in the cross which satisfied His anger and justice lifts me up to be righteous in His eyes.