"...why should he be esteemed?" Is. 2:22

I was preaching one Sunday morning at a large prison in the Midwest. There were upwards of 50 prisoners in attendance. I was trying to explain to them that we are enemies of God and justly condemned by Him for our sins when one of the prisoners jumped out of his seat and proceeded to tell me that I needed to be more sensitive or I would hurt their self-esteem.

The following week I spent a good part of the morning explaining from scripture that high self-esteem was the cause of our problems and not the solution. Again the same man interrupted and informed me that I needed to quit calling them sinners and start making them feel better about themselves and encourage them. I spent the rest of the morning explaining that there is no good news in scripture for those who won't accept the bad news of their condemnation first.

Later that night I received a call from the woman who was in charge of the prison's religious ministries. She proceeded to inform me that one of the prisoners had registered several complaints about my preaching and then began asking me a series of questions. After the questioning she told me that I needed to be more careful about what I said during my messages because many of the prisoners had low self-esteem and telling them that they're sinners would only cause them to have "guilt and shame cycles." (I'm not joking, this really happened.) "Be positive " she said, "encourage them and build them up."

I chuckled a little for just a moment as the absurdity of her words first struck me, but as she kept speaking I realized that she was being dead serious. I pictured myself, for just the slightest moment, in front of a large group of prisoners giving them a big thumbs up and telling them that they ought to be proud of themselves and not to give up.

No wonder there are so many people in our prison system (The Unjust Justice of Autonomous Man). Men sin because they are "lovers of self" (2 Tim. 3:2) and we, in our fallen wisdom, encourage them to love themselves more in order to stop them from sinning. Talk about throwing gasoline on the fire! Isn't it funny how twisted human logic is when it's not in submission to the Word of God!

"Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils;For why should he be esteemed?"
Isaiah 2: 22