The Fallacy of Self-esteem

When I was in middle school, we had assemblies on "creating good self-esteem". We would get worksheets where we listed what we liked about ourselves. They would send us home with handouts for the parents that listed things to say to your children like "You're terrific!" and "Great job!". It was all an effort to make us feel good about ourselves. Despite these assemblies and handouts, I had peers committing suicide, getting pregnant in high school, and abusing drugs. I remember talking to my mom about having low self-esteem and she SHOCKED me by basically saying that self-esteem wasn't important...She said that as far as she could tell, it was CONTRARY to God's plan that we have good self-esteem.

She didn't mean we shouldn't love ourselves or anything like that. I have thought about this a lot and she was SO RIGHT! Christ teaches us that the first commandment is to love God and the second is to love our fellow man. Never does he mention self-esteem except to say that we should love others as ourselves. Oh how tricky is Satan and his philosophies of men. While we were all trying to develop good self-esteem, we were neglecting higher priorities like service to others and obedience to God's commandments. Things that naturally lead to good self-esteem...because we then understand that we are God's children and that we can do all things in Christ. We were being taught that self-esteem can be created through pretty words and that EVERYONE was "thumb-body". Everyone is valued, but we need to live our lives with PURPOSE. We have work to do. And that work will bring value and confidence to ourselves and our children.

Now that my daughter is in middle school, I find myself worrying about her self-esteem...but I shouldn't. I should worry about how she esteems God and others. If she esteems them as high or higher than herself, she will NATURALLY have good self-esteem. She will know that she is a daughter of God and she will work hard because of the love she feels for Him and her fellow man. And it won't matter that someone in class teased her or she doesn't have the right shoes or the designer blue jeans.

What do you think? Does self-esteem seem contrary to happiness?

I just found this very interesting post on a similar train of thought here. Interestingly, it was written about a week after I first penned my post...Great minds think alike. Ha ha. J/K. That was just my narcissism talking from all those years of self-esteem training.