“Any voice that promises total exemption from suffering and failure is most certainly not God’s voice. In recent years innumerable spokespeople for God have offered ways we can use God and his Bible as guarantees of health, success and wealth. The Bible is treated as a how-to book, a manual for the successful life in the way of the Western world, which if followed will ensure that you will prosper financially, that you will not get cancer of even a cold and that your church will never split or lack a successful minister and program”–Dallas Willard, Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God, 180.
Of course we will experience temptation, “our Adversary, after all, is both corrupt in ambition and cunning in strategy”–Tom Elliff, A Passion for Prayer, 207.
“No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13 ESV).
“If Paul could sing in prison, you can at least whistle a few measures wherever you are.”
“Men invent means and methods of coming at God’s love, they learn rules and set up devices to remind them of that love, and it seems like a world of trouble to bring oneself into the consciousness of God’s presence. Yet it might be so simple. Is it not quicker and easier just to do our common business wholly for the love of him?”–Brother Lawrence.
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One Response
Dr. Bailey, thank you! I offer this quote for consideration and support of your effort.
John K. Rosemond, syndicated family psychologist, was recently asked a question: I recently heard you speak in San Diego and need some clarification. While I understand that researches have found that high self esteem is not what it was cracked up to be, I want my kids to approach the challenges of life with confidence in their abilities. There’s got to be a reconciliation point here. What is it?
He answers: Excellent question! First, researches have indeed found that high self-esteem doesn’t live up to its hype. In fact, it’s not a desirable characteristic at all. The general finding has been that people with high regard for themselves have equally low regard for others. Yes, they feel really good about themselves (the sales pitch), but they tend to be seriously lacking in sensitivity to anyone else.
The desirable attribute is humility. That was know thousands of years ago, proving once again that there is nothing new under the sun. Humble people pay attention to others, look for opportunities to serve, and are modest when it comes to their accomplishments. People with high self-esteem want attention, expect others to do things for them, and tend to crow about their achievements.
Where confidence is concerned, there is no evidence to suggest that humble and confidence are incompatible. By all accounts, George Washington was a very humble man who was more than a tad uncomfortable in the spotlight he’d been thrust into. Yet with the unwavering confidence he brought to his mission, the United States of America might not exist.
Researchers have discovered that people with high self-esteem tend to overestimate their abilities. If anything, they are over-confident. As a result, they don’t cope well when life deals them a bad hand or their performance doesn’t live up to their self -expectations. For those reasons, they are highly prone to depression. Because they believe anything they do is deserving of reward, they also tend to underperform. Ironic, since high self-esteem was promoted as the key to happiness and academic success.
As has been known for millennia, the key to a sense of personal satisfaction (not the same as happiness, by the way) and feeling that one has made and is making an important contribution (not the same as the contemporary concept of success, by the way) is hard work and a solid platform of good values – the centerpiece of which is high regard for others. Note that the primary beneficiary in that equation is one’s fellow traveler, not oneself. In short, the key to the good life is putting others first. Call that the Good Neighbor Principle.
Society is strengthened and culture is moved forward by the efforts of people who think of others before they think of themselves, not by people who think they are the cats’s meow. In that regard, one of the most foreboding things about contemporary American culture is that today’s young people regard the narcissistic, self-promoting celebrity as more of a role model than George Washington or Abraham Lincoln.
That, in fact, may be our ultimate undoing.
I have made the argument before that timing in life has much to do with the approach for making an argument. Consequently, since it seems the majority of people relate better to material success found in money or accomplishments the linkage is necessary for the message to be received. The Apostle Paul drew upon that linkage multiple times in an effort to get his audience to pay attention to the Truth he sent. He knew his days were numbered as do I.
By the way, while I do not agree with the assessment of George Washington or Lincoln regarding their hubris in the beginning of their careers. I do agree that both were shaped by the Hand of God to bring them to humility in Dependence on the Lord of All. It is that mold-ability into Dependence that has allowed me to write to you today.