When God created us, He designed us to be in 4 relationships. We are designed to be in relationship with God, ourselves, other people, and with creation. But things aren't as God intended them to be anymore because humanity, starting all the way back with Adam and Eve, has made choices that has led to brokenness in ourselves, and brokenness in these 4 key relationships. Previously we have looked at some of the ways our relationship with God has been broken.
Now this relationship with God, with our Creator, is the most important, the most defining relationship we are in. And so when it gets out of whack, when we got off track there, all of our other relationships derail as well.
Today we are going to explore our relationship with self, some of the ways it's gotten off track, and then we're going to move towards a more healthy view of self, rooted in Scripture. So, that's where we're going...we're going to do some self-reflection.
We're going to begin by diving right into our Scripture, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - and not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:1-10)
I want to ask a question and I want you to think about it for a minute. How do you primarily see yourself, as a saint or a sinner? If you had to pic just one, what would you say? That you are more of a saint? Or a sinner?
Well, this dichotomy shows up in Paul's words in Ephesians 2. Paul, a Pharisee of Pharisees, one of the elite believers, is a Jewish Christian. He has an impeccable pedigree. And, Paul is writing to blue collar Christians in the industrial port city of Ephesus. He's writing to Gentile Christians, converts from a variety of different Hellenistic religions, people who had practiced magic and astrology. This is a different breed he's writing to. And this is what he says, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world. (Ephesians 2:1-2a) You could read these words with such disdain, with disgust at the lives people used to live. And if anyone had the right to look down their nose at someone, it would have been Saint Paul. But when we keep reading, this is what we see, All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following the desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. (Ephesians 2:3) Suddenly the language is uncomfortably us when he uses "us" instead of "them." Paul doesn't get more than a sentence in to describing the Gentiles' sinfulness before he's lumping himself, the Jews, and all of us right in there too. We are all, by nature, children of wrath. We are fallen; we are all sinners. We are all in the same boat.
But here's the problem, often we don't live this way. We don't live as if we are all on an equal playing field, all of equal worth. Most of us have a tendency to have either too high, or too low a view of ourselves. This tendency, this evidence of brokenness, has its roots all the way back in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God.
So why does this matter? What does my view of myself have to do with Embracing Justice? Well, a faulty view of self is a sickness that takes root down underneath the surface and then has the potential down the road to manifest itself as injustice.
The authors of When Helping Hurts say, Until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work to alleviate injustice is likely to do far more harm than good. It's important that we take the time to recognize our own brokenness in how we view ourselves so as we move towards a place of living justly, we come from a place of humility where we can honestly say, "I am not okay, you are not okay, but Jesus can fix us both."
Let's look at a couple of these inaccurate views of ourselves. But as we enter this time of self-reflection I want us all to hear a word of encouragement...there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. No view of ourselves can put us outside of God's ability to redeem and to use for His plans and His purpose.
The God Complex
The first inaccurate view of self we may struggle with is having too high a view. The authors of When Helping Hurts call this having a 'God Complex.'
Is this something you struggle with? If you're not sure, here's a little test. In interactions with others are you often accused of not listening? If so, you may struggle with this.
Now there are any number of reasons we are susceptible to this tendency to have to high a view of ourselves.
- We grew up in an environment where we were taught, either implicitly or explicitly that God blesses those He loves so since I am blessed, He must love me more.
- Maybe you've been told or led to believe that we are where we are because we are smarter, or more morally upstanding, or have made better choices than those people over there who don't have the things we have
- We've bought into the lie that our success is a result of our efforts rather than evidence of God's unearned favor and so our view of ourselves begins to increase.
But no matter how we arrive at this place of having too high a view of ourselves, attempting to embrace justice while also holding a faulty, overly elevated view of self is dangerous because it puts us at risk of hurting the very people we want to help. Either we will engage in types of charity that foster dependency rather than independence (because this makes us feel powerful and needed), or we will be prone to rush in with solutions without taking the time to listen, to value the input of those we seek to help.
Another risk is that those with overly high views of themselves, those with unexamined lives, may unintentionally (or intentionally) dominate over or victimize others out of a sense of entitlement or on a quest to get what they want or deserve.
America's sense of entitlement to whatever we want, whenever we want it (nice clothes, electronics, fresh fruit in December), has it's cost. Our killer deals at Safeway, H&M, or Ross are made possible because somebody else, far away with much less voice than we have, is paying the price through low wages, bad working conditions, etc. It's a hard reality but it's true. And having too high a view of ourselves enables us to turn a blind eye.
House building in Mexico is a popular spring break mission trip for youth groups across the states and as a seminary intern I helped lead my church's spring break youth group mission trip down to Juarez to build houses. As you look around in Juarez, there are entire neighborhoods, huge hillsides of row after row of these houses, you can pick them out because they're all the same 12x24 plan. Hundreds of churches go down each year, build a house or 12 and go home feeling good about themselves and the work they did. But here's a window into my trip.
Now the first day, you have to get the foundation framed and poured or you won't have time to get the rest of the house done. Mark has led a dozen of these trips down to Mexico when he was on staff at University Pres and so before I went he gave me all sorts of tips. He told me that often, at the end of the first day, no matter how late the team left, the father of the family who the house was for, would be out, in the dark, smoothing the cement with a trowel and water until is was so smooth it looked like glass because many of the men in those neighborhoods are construction workers. That's what they do for a living.
Well, I remembered that story when I got to Mexico and I was determined to have a perfect floor so the day my kids poured the foundation, I made sure I was one of the ones smoothing the cement. You see, you build the frame and then you begin filling it with cement at one end and you level it by dragging a 2x4 across the surface of it, resting it on the fame on either side to make sure the floor is level. Then 1 or 2 people will be out in front of the 2x4 where you haven't poured cement yet with water and a trowel, carefully smoothing the cement so that by the end you should have a level, smooth floor. Well, I was the one out front with my trowel, smoothing that cement like Mark had showed me, and man it was a beauty by the end of the day and I went home proud of the work I had done.
Well, I'm sure you can guess that something went wrong. We showed up the next morning and I saw in the daylight what I hadn't noticed in the dark. As our team had dragged that 2x4 along, pushing that pile of cement level...every time we'd pause so I could smooth with my trowel, that pile of cement in front of the board would harden just a bit more so that when the kids started dragging the board again it would bump over that pile a bit before it started smoothing again. The result? A floor with a surface as smooth as glass that rolled like a wave on the ocean. It was horrible. And to make matters worse, one of the kids thought it would be cute to push a glass marble into the foundation right in front of the door...which of course broke before we finished the house.
I got mixed up on that trip and began to think that our time down there, the work we produced in 5 days, was somehow going to change those family's lives. I never asked for help, offered to let them work with us to make their house what they wanted it to be. It never occurred to me. Because I was the ex-Air Force project manager. I could do this and my overly high view of myself made it so I couldn't see the people I had come to serve.
Low Self-Esteem
Okay, now the second inaccurate view of self we struggle with is having to low a view of ourselves. Here's a test to help you figure out if this is something you are susceptible to: in interactions with others are you often accused of not speaking up? If so, you may struggle with this...or...you may just be an introvert.
There are many reasons we may struggle with too low a view of ourselves.
- Perhaps we grew up in a community where we were never good enough, where our sinfulness rather than God's grace was the focus.
- Maybe we were the victim of physical or emotional abuse that led us to believe we aren't valuable or resulted in our feeling broken or impure.
- Or perhaps our gifts have simply never been appreciated. Maybe you're an artist and grew up in a family of engineers or vice versa and your unique gifts were discouraged rather than encouraged.
There are many reasons why we might see ourselves as less valuable than we really are, but what happens when we view ourselves in this way? There are a couple of possibilities. We may fail to act on the behalf of others because we don't think we have anything to offer. Perhaps we succumb to the "when I" syndrome, where we believe we'll do something, we'll help, "when I get a job, finish school, get a handle on my finances" but that day never comes and so we never reach out to lend a helping hand.
Another possibility when we have too low a view of ourselves is that we might become the victim of injustice ourselves. When we don't value ourselves, then likely we don't expect others to value us either. We aren't likely to stand up for ourselves because we don't believe we deserve any better.
Too high a view, too low a view...both can negatively affect our ability to embrace justice.
What Do We Do About It?
So what do we do about it? How do we begin to find a middle ground, to find a healthy view of ourselves?
The answer may be a little counter intuitive because the most important step towards righting our view of self has nothing to do with changing 'me." The key to righting our view of ourselves is righting our relationship with God. The key is re-orienting ourselves. It's changing our perspective so that Jesus is our focus, our relationship with him rather than ourselves or our problem. The key to having a healthy view of ourselves is re-orienting ourselves so that Christ is at the center rather than ourselves or our problems.
Ephesians 2 offers several truths that can help us refocus, that can help us maintain a healthy view of ourselves.
Truths To Transform Us
The first thing Ephesians 2 tells us is that God loves us. In verse 4 Paul says, Because of His great love for us, God,...made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. Even when we are our most sinful God loves us. And because God loves us, we are valuable.
Second, in verse 10 Paul tells us that we are God's handiwork. The word here is poiema and it means work of art. We are God's masterpiece. He created us and He delights in us just as Michelangelo must have delighted in his statue of David. Just like Michelangelo must have delighted when he first stepped back and gazed at the finished ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. God delights in us. This is true. Nothing anyone says or does can change this fact. God made us and therefore, we are valuable.
Third, in verse 5 Paul reminds us that we are saved by God's grace not by our ingenuity, hard work, or good luck. Paul is clear that it is God who is responsible for picking us up out of the muck of this life, for making us alive, and for raising us with Jesus rather than leaving us here mired in the muck. If we are great, it is God who has made us great. If we are strong, it is God's strength in us. If we are pure, it is God who has washed us clean. None of this is our accomplishment.
And finally, God didn't make a mistake with you. Now I've been know to leave an ingredient out of a recipe and to end up with a royal mess, but God didn't leave anything out when He made you. He didn't leave you on the burner too long. You are exactly as God intended you to be, and He has prepared you, just as you are, to do good work in His name.
There's an African saying that goes, "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night in a closed room with a mosquito." None of us is too small to make a difference. David, the youngest brother, a mere pip-squeak, killed a giant and became a king. Mary, an unwed teenage girl, gave birth to the Messiah, and Peter, a lowly fisherman, established the church and changed the world. There is no one too small to make a difference.
Conclusion
These truths have the power to transform us if we let them. They can help pull us towards the center if we've gotten off kilter in ourselves. But if you are like me you need a little help to keep these truths front and center and so I want to remind us all of the value of community and worship in helping us remain healthy.
People close to you often have a more accurate view of you than you have of yourself. If you struggle with low self-esteem or is you wrestle with pride, invite someone you trust, or a few someones to help you make an honest assessment of your strengths and to point out areas where perhaps you need greater humility.
And challenge yourself to devote a few minutes of each day to some self-refection and self-examination. Whether you do it during times of silence, singing, or prayer, this is a space set aside for that exact purpose. Re-orienting ourselves. This is a place we come to take ourselves down off the throne, and to put Christ back on it, to be reminded of your value in God's eyes and so allow yourself some time to do that.
