Self

I love getting comments and emails, even the occasional angry, nasty ones (which, by the way, almost always seem to come from the intellectually “enlightened” atheists among us).

But I received the following comment on a recent post and I just wanted to clear up a couple things quick. Here is most of the comment:

“I respectively disagree with your statement that reads, “Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self”. You can look like you have knowledge of God if you are following someones lead and you are mimicking what they are doing. You do not know why or what they are doing, but everyone else is copying them, you feel that you are just going along with everyone so that you will belong or be part of the group.

But if you have knowledge of “self” you will understand and know who you are. You do not need the group you can stand alone and feel confident in knowing who you are, you are where you want to be no one is leading you. If you would like to learn more about “self” read the latest study on this subject, get a copy of The Power of Self Separation you will enjoy reading it….”

To begin with I just wanted to say that I did not write this, this is a quote from John Calvin written four hundred some years ago. I thought it was fairly clear and straight forward but maybe I was wrong.

What Calvin was saying in this statement is that we as human beings cannot know ourselves or understand ourselves as we really are until we have begun to see God as he really is as He has revealed Himself in the Scriptures. When we begin to perceive something of the holiness of God in all of His attributes then, and only then, will we begin to see that we are utterly unholy, unrighteous, undeserving of His goodness and patience and only deserving of His wrath for our self-centered rebellion against Him.

By nature we fallen human beings tend to love ourselves, think highly of ourselves, worry about ourselves and be centered on ourselves. Even those who commit suicide are thinking too much about themselves and not about how they can obey God, honor God and help those around them. Self is our greatest problem and we simply cannot see self properly until we begin to see God properly.

If you really want to understand the truth about self you would be much better off reading the Bible.

"...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