Conference yukon::christian_v7

I believe that self image is important.  

When our lives have been thrown out of balance by sin/shame everything changes 
and that which appears lucid becomes tainted, like looking through a dirty 
window.  What you see behind, is still the *same* thing, but the view is dirty 
from the stains on the window.

I see shame producing different results, as it affects our self image and 
ability to have a loving relationship with Christ:

1. shame - guilt - humility - salvation
2. shame - guilt - humility/humiliation - salvation
3. shame - guilt - humiliation - lost

Shame leads to guilt, and that guilt can lead to humility and eventually to 
salvation.  For others, the shame leads to guilt, humiliation and a sense of 
being completely and unreachably lost.

While I agree with you wholeheartedly that Christ needs to be the center of our 
lives, I propose to you that the process in getting there (based on childhood 
experiences), can be a long, difficult haul for the child that suffers from 
humiliation.

Our self image or mirror comes from:

    Parents / Authorities

In the Old Testament, God ordained by the law that if a man is caught 
breaking a law that the sons would bear the humiliation for generations and 
oftimes the consequences. (Cain banished and his people would be marked.)
Exodus 34:6-7

Children mirror their image in their parents.  If a parent is neglectful, 
unstable, deceitful, physically or sexually abusing, then the child has the 
"God-given shame" to know that is wrong, but the wounded child takes the 
parent's shame or sin and applies it to themselves.  When one of these 
children (it could be an adult who comes from this environment) accepts 
Christ as Savior, their salvation spawns hope beyond measure.  

The disconnect is that they are still carrying the sin/attitude of the 
parents.  Yes, God forgave them of their sin, and that is a miracle on its 
own merit.  But the wounded child cannot be forgiven for their father's 
(lineage) sins.  So once again that image can be tainted by sin (that which 
is not their own).

However, if salvation occurs while the child is still under the direct 
influence of their parents, who are abusive or dysfunctional, the child can 
grow into an adult who rarely has victory in their Christian walk.  They will 
become active in the church for a while, then temptation comes and due to the 
shame of their inability to overcome their father's sin, they abandon 
Christianity.  But, like a see-saw the desire to "do right" will bring them 
back and forth through churches, temporarily serving God, but never 
victorious for consistent Christian service.  

The condemnation of their self image creates an aura of "I'm not good enough 
to serve God."  Negative self criticisms like, "I don't deserve a place of 
service for God" or "I'll never be enough for God" mirrors and the image 
becomes distorted as to how God views his children.

Granted *we* never are enough.  But there comes a point in ones life when 
acceptance of *never* being enough is balanced by the grace and mercy of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, and not the knot deep within the pit of our stomachs that 
reeks havoc in the heart.  (Romans 7 & 8)

With this in mind, really assert that a person's self image is important to 
    the very vitality of Christianity.

Nancy




    
    
    

Listen to her, she knows.  :-)  There are so many who have to struggle
through the barriers of shame to believe that the Lord could really love
them.  Thank you Nancy, for your willingness to speak of what you've learned.

Self esteem can be a problem in the other direction, too.  There's such a
thing as too much self esteem.  My childhood was (miraculously) very
affirming and secure.  My self-image was, for the most part, great.  I just
assumed that I was lovable.  :-)  And because I was so secure in that
expectation, it took me *YEARS* to come to the realization that I really did
need Jesus.  For many years, even as a believer in Christ, I never really
took sin seriously.  I was just so sure that God loved me and would forgive
me and love me despite my sin, that there was no urgency to change for His
sake.  "God loves me anyway, so why bother changing to eliminate sin from my
life?"  I also had all sorts of trouble with the concept of the necessity of
Christ's atonement, because I didn't think I really needed it. "God loves me
anyway, so what's the point of atonement?"

It took a pattern of sin that I just couldn't break to convince me that I
really DID need Jesus to save me.  That His grace and atonement really WAS
necessary.  My 'self-esteem' needed to be broken to leave room for Jesus.

Even as I'm writing this, another thought occurs, let me try it on.  Nancy's
experience and mine are mirror images of the same problem.  And that problem
is that we both made our own evaluation of ourselves, based on our life
experiences, and then projected that evaluation onto how God must evaluate
us.  From the experiences of an abusive and unloving childhood, a person's
self-evaluation is usually an evaluation that they are not worthy of love. 
The natural thing for anyone to do is to project that self-evaluation onto
God, so they then believe that God can't love them either, and have a
tremendously hard time accepting God's love.  Their self-evaluation needs to
be broken to allow God's evaluation to become real to them.

From the experiences of my childhood, my self-evaluation was that I was
pretty lovable, despite my faults.  The natural thing for anyone to do is to
project that self-evaluation onto God, so I I believed God must love me to
and didn't really mind my faults, so I had a tremendously hard time accepting
God's judgement of my sin.  My self-evaluation needed to be broken to allow
God's evaluation to become real to me.

What we all need is not to have a positive, self-generated evaluation of our
selves, but to accept, internalize, and project onto ourselves God's
evaluation of us.  That evaluation has two parts, both of which are essential:

1) We are unspeakably precious to God.  This is staggering, and if ever
   fully grasped would blow us away.  I don't believe that I've fully grasped
   this yet.  The infinite I AM, the one who created everything, from stars
   to starfish, with a word, has declared *YOU* to be unspeakably precious.
   He would do anything for you, and has in fact done everything for you.
   The very creator of all that is was willing to subject Himself to
   humiliation, rejection, and horrible death *JUST SO ***YOU*** WOULD BE
   WITH HIM FOREVER*.  *YOU*, yes **YOU** are unspeakably precious to the 
   infinite creator.  No other evaluation, by you or by anyone else, can 
   negate or diminsh the fact that you are *DEFINED AS PRECIOUS* by the 
   infinite I AM.

2) That infinite I AM, when He created you, had a very specific idea in mind
   of who He created you to be.  And because of this fallen world and our 
   fallen natures, you are not attaining that perfect image of who He created 
   you to be.  Because He loves you so much, He is deeply grieved by the ways 
   in which you reject Him and turn from becoming the person He created you
   to be.  Because He loves you so much, He will never rest until He has
   formed you into that perfect image.  He will do the transformation, but
   you must turn and ask Him to, you must desire to be crafted into His
   image.

I think I believe (like I said, I'm just trying this on), that we will only
have a truly healthy self image when we scrap our self-evaluation and
self-esteem completely, and accept for ourselves God's evaluation and God's
esteem.

Paul

    I have read that our images of God are formed within the first two
    years of our life and our based on our interaction with our parents.  A
    sense of spiritual bankrupcy is one of the symptoms of persons growing
    up in dysfunctional homes.
    
    John Bradshaw, the foremost pop psychologist of the family, identifies
    toxic shame as different from normal shame and guilt.  I believe that
    normal shame and guilt are part of the incarnation of God in each one
    of us.  We instinctively know when we have done something wrong and
    feel guilty about it.  This leads to repentance and right behavoir.
    
    I believe that this instinctual knowledge is made stronger and more
    powerful when we recognize it as Christ within us, and commit ourselves
    to allowing Christ within us to lead and guide us.  The shame and guilt
    we feel is based on our feeling that we  have done something that is
    wrong.
    
    The Toxic shame which is similiar to what Nancy describes is not a
    sense of having done something wrong, but of being wrong.  It hinders
    ever aspect of our lifes include our spiritual life.   A person
    suffering from toxic shame never learned real love and doesn't fully
    know how to love.  
    
    I have been personally helped by the twelve step programs and have seen
    numerous other people helped.  Salvation begins when a person with
    toxic shame, recognizes that their life is meaningless and turns their
    life over to God as they understand God.  From that point the magic
    begins.  Once a person recognized that they are loved by God, then they
    can learn how to let other humans love them and to love other humans. 
    There is a spiritual regeneration that little by little becomes more
    important.
    
    When one opens their heart to the Lord and let's the Lord live within,
    then self esteem issues gradually go away.
    
    Another point that I have learned about self esteem issues is that
    there are two different issues.  One the overdeveloped ego, which is
    what I believe that Paul was talking about that requires a sense of
    humility, and the other the sense of toxic shame, which requires the
    building of a strong, viable ego.  I believe that more men suffer from
    the first and more women suffer from the lack of self esteem.  There
    are two different emphasis from scripture that each need.  The person
    with the overdeveloped ego needs to understand that s/he is no better
    than anyone else before God, and the s/he needs to treat every other
    person with dignity and as an equal before God.  The person with the
    lack of self esteem needs to hear the message of God's love.  That they
    are loved.  That they are enough.  That they stand before God as an
    equal to every other human.
    
                                 Patricia

    >building of a strong, viable ego.  I believe that more men suffer from
    >the first and more women suffer from the lack of self esteem. 
    
    I don't know about women, because I've never been one 8^) (although I
    do know my wife had poor a self image before she understood her identity in
    Christ).  Many women have a bad self image because they don't fit the
    Madison Ave. image of what a woman should be (perfect figure, etc).
    
    I also know many, many, many men who have a poor self esteem.  Some try
    to cover it up with the macho exterior.  This isn't necessarily a
    male/female thing.  I think it has a lot to do with the signals you
    receive while growing up.  If you grow up as a great athelete or
    cheerleader - then you may have an inflated opinion of yourself.  If
    you grow up in a home where you're always called stupid and told you
    can't do anything right, you'll probably grow up believing it.
    
    Bill Gilham in his book "Lifetime Guarantee" deals with this in depth. 
    He talks about three kinds of flesh.  There is the yucky flesh, the
    inflated flesh (can't remember his term right off the bat), and the
    vanilla flesh.  The thing is that its ALL flesh (techiniques and
    patterns to meet my own needs).  We have to learn to depend on the
    Spirit, rather than the flesh.  We need to abide in Christ, allowing
    Him to meet our needs, rather than seeking to meet our own.  It's not a
    "good" self image we need, but a "proper" image of ourselves - of
    understanding that it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives
    through me.
    
    In Christ,
    
    Bing
    

    >We have to learn to depend on the Spirit, rather than the flesh.  We
    >need to abide in Christ, allowing Him to meet our needs, rather than
    >seeking to meet our own. 
    
    I am moved by the second half of that quote although it is often
    overlooked.  "If we abide in Christ, then Christ will abide in us."
    
    >It's not a "good" self image we need, but a >"proper" image of
    >ourselves - of understanding that it is no longer I >who live, but
    >Christ who lives through me.
    
    I equate a good self image with a proper self image.  I like to think
    that it is I who live because Christ lives within me.
    
                                Patricia
    
    

    I just have to give God the glory for how He is working in my life:
    
    As most of you know my testimony, my shame and guilt was 
    embedded deep within me by a father who molested me.
    My father died when I was 4 months pregnant with Clayton.
    With my father's death, He released me from the chains of shame,
    guilt and self-destruction by:
    
    1. By acknowledging my value lies in Him, not next to another Human
       (whether it be parent, brother, sister, friend, etc)
    
    2. Ownership awareness, taking inventory of my life and purging
    
    3. Separating from my parent... this is complicated.  The shame
       of what my father did, I blamed myself for, took on his sin
       as a defect in me.  Had to break that cord.  I couldn't 
       see what he did was wrong and get angry about it, cause I
       was the one to blame (I was 2 years old when it started)
       
    4. Seeing God as the loving Father, not the Critical parent
       I think this is self explanatory
    
    5. Victory in forgiveness
       I should keep my Bible here, but there is a scripture in the
       new testament, I think I or II Timothy, that says, to forgive 
       lest it should destroy you. If anyone wants that scripture
       I can look it up and send it to you.
    
       Yes, I had to forgive my father and my mother.

How could I forgive them?

God gave me a fresh vision that my father and my mother was loved before 
the foundation of the world, that the "so loved" included them.  And 
that He is their judge.  And only through believing that God is 
righteous and just can I forgive them, which is in essence handing them 
over to God for judgement.  Most abused children confuse forgiveness 
with absolution.  This is the crux of unforgiveness.  Once they realize 
that forgiveness is merely realizing they are not God and haven't the 
power to proclaim sentencing can they truly let God take control of 
every part of their lives.


    
    6. Renewing of your Mind
       Romans 12 "But be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind"
       Phil 4:8  "Whatsover things are true, noble, right, pure, lovely,
                  ...therefore think on these things"
	There needs to be a *purification* process... as was an old
	Jewish practice [details can be provided].
    
    I am not going into great detail as to how God worked this in my life,
    but I can attest that He did it, not man.
    
    I went to a Christian counselor for under 12 sessions.  She was amazed at 
    how God had done so much healing in my life without any assistance from 
    anyone.    He does do miracles!
    
    God Bless,
    Nancy
    

I'm very uncomfortable with the phrase 'Self Esteem'.  It's too much of a mix.
It tastes of the world's values, rather than of heaven's.  It sounds like 
the seed for pride, which is sin, and damaging to the soul.

That's not to say 'we should all have low self esteem'; rather that we need 
to distinguish exactly what we mean by the phrase.  There's an area of self 
esteem we certainly should have, and an are we certainly shouldn't!  I 
would rather find different names for them.

The world generally only acknowledges human / physical sources of
personality - inherited, experiential, will power, etc.


For Christians - we know that the best we can do in human strength is not
specially merit-worthy, and certainly cannot earn us anything in the
eternal dimension.  And nothing less is ultimately of significance. 

Our self-earned virtue / spiritual credit rating is nil.  Zero.

It takes this realisation to move us to the foot of the cross, to accept 
Jesus' work on our behalf; the salvation He offers.  And hence - His 
valuation of us as immensely precious, by His design and investment.

This frees us from striving to make ourselves perfect, into letting us 
[begin to] express Him Who is perfection.

It is the outworking of the awareness that we dont' do good works to make
us righteous [stuck on the outside, and peeling off if we're not careful] -
we do good works because we *are* righteous, by the free gift of grace 
[working on our heart {nucleus} nature, to show through the result of 
what's within, not always showing as it should, but it's the reality].

ie - it's only when we come fully to terms with our 'total depravity' 
(affecting us in every area, so we're incapable of taking the undeserved 
glory) that we can be the emptied vessels able to receive imputed glory.

Until then, we judge our acceptableness by the response of other people, 
who are (probably) struggling with self-image in a competitive and 
destructive manner.

The true perspective sees 'self' through the LORD's eyes, and sees that 
'sin' and 'pride' just do not belong.  Sure, they occur, but they are not 
welcome, and are dissmissed as soon as recognised.

We should not be proud of confident in _us_, 
	but we *should* be proud and confident in Him.

    "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me."
							Philippians 4:13 

wrt Exodus 34:6-7, remember Ezekiel 18:14-18.

Having to quit on this one - no time for more...

								Andrew

    Firstly,

    thankyou all for your input. Indeed, at least one 'read-only' has sent
    me mail - thankyou!

    Nancy, once again I am humbled and awed as I read more of your
    testimony. Andrew, you've covered a lot in your -.1

    The reason I called this topic 'Esteem' was that I too am uncomfortable
    with the term 'Self Esteem'.

    It's a tough call - especially for parents of young children (e.g.
    Karen and myself). We need to affirm that our children are good (well,
    some of the time :') and precious to us. That they have value as human
    beings, and that they should have a good opinion of themselves.

    But we need too, to not go so far overboard that they think that the
    world revolves around them (which they do anyway) for their benefit.
    Otherwise, they may be of the opinion that they are so good that they
    don't need Jesus in their lives.

    I know that Steve McConnell used to continually talk about 'balance'.
    And this is definitely a case for 'balance'. I don;t think it is
    "critical" in the sense that if our boys grow up thinking they are
    pretty terrific that they will never accept Jesus. But if they grow up
    thinking they are 'gods' and can do no wrong, then we may have a minor
    difficulty here.

    On the other hand (what three hands already?), we don't want them
    growing up like their father who has a self image (in the world) so low
    that I have to look up to see the belly of a worm.

    My esteem comes from my position in Christ. My self-esteem is
    approaches zero asymptotically.

    Harry

    Bing touched on something very interesting,

>         ...  Many women have a bad self image because they don't fit the
>    Madison Ave. image of what a woman should be (perfect figure, etc).

    *How* many times have I come across this - even *here*! In this very
    conference? Well, at least, some of the participants in this
    conference! Yes, there are perfectly good "health" reasons for losing a
    few kilos - hey I know I sure could do to lose some ;')

    But so many women here are 'hung up' on the great 'Murikan Cosmetic
    Fixation. My dear Sisters, I want to be able to preach release for you
    from these shackles that bind you!

    And yet... your husbands probably tell you 'you're not as thin as you
    once were' - let's ignore that you've got 2 or 3 kids, and that the
    body has been knocked around a bit by that ;')

    And those take-out meals because you just haven;t got time to cook -
    hey - hubby doesn;t make time to cook either ;') (I know, me too :(

    But, we turn on the great big glass eye in the corner and we get
    bombarded with all those 'perfect' bodies. The men, the women! Oy
    gevalt! Since *when* is this reality?

    Your esteem, your worth comes from the fact that Jesus died - for *you*
    _as_you_were_,_and_as_you_are_! Not as 'body beautiful'.

    But you - with the dimpled thighs, you with the roll of fat on the
    tummy, you with the body that wobbles when you giggle or laugh. Hey!
    I'm talking to me to here!

    Perhaps we have sinned by our gluttony. And we need to repent of that,
    we need to correct that. But that is the reason we should 'improve' our
    body, not because some twerp on Mad.Av. tells us that it is shique to
    be seen in a dress/shirt/trousers that is really only fit for a
    scarecrow.

    Look into your hearts - God loves you now. He loves you as you are. I
    look at so many of my Sisters here - and I see such beautiful
    creatures. I mean, Lord God, they shine with Your radience so brightly
    that I can't *see* their bodies!

    Lord God, let others see Your light shine through them, and blind those
    others to the body, and let them see the bright shining Glory of Your
    Precious SPirit shine through!

    That is the Source of our Esteem

    
    Good note Harry.  One nit on the use of these two words seemingly 
    used interchangably.
    
    My dictionary (_friend_) gives the following definitions:
    
    	self-esteem: Pride in oneself
    
    	self-image:  One's concept of oneself or one's status
    
    These are different things although hard to distinguish at times. 
    Someone may indeed have very high self-esteem, but could be struggling
    with their perception of who they are and how they fit into things.
    Actually, I think this is often the case.  Madison Ave. bombards us
    with an image of what we are supposed to look like.  Somewhere in 
    ourselves we know they are jerks, but at times we lose sight of that
    and struggle with trying to conform to their image because something or
    someone makes us think it's the only acceptable image.  However, I 
    don't think this negates having pride in oneself.  There are people who 
    behave like they don't have pride in oneself, but I think that's
    usually pretty obvious based on how they act (ie...letting others use
    them and stuff like that).  
    
    Jill