There seems to be a lot of emphasis on self-esteem these days. Parents want to bring up their children with a healthy self-esteem; psychologists want to impart it to their patients. Having low self-esteem is said to negatively affect our creativity, integrity, and stability. It makes one overly critical, socially awkward, and generally unconfident; all of this because we don’t feel good about ourselves. As followers of Jesus, we should immediately see the trap in this way of thinking. All the focus is on the self; it’s on the child or the individual. We’re looking for reasons why we don’t feel we measure up to the rest of the world. To quote an old song, “we’re looking for love in all the wrong places”.
