God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
Pastors of many growing churches preach almost weekly about healthy self-esteem, as if it were taught on every page of Scripture. Too many Christians never see that self-love comes out of a culture that prizes the individual over the community and then reads that basic principle into the pages of Scripture. The Bible, however, rightly understood, asks the question, “Why are you so concerned about yourself?” Furthermore, it indicates that our culture’s proposed cure – increased self-love – is actually the disease. If we fail to recognize the reality and depth of our sin problem, God will become less important, and people will become more important.
Though we cannot read hearts, we all have this insidious tendency based upon limited information to judge people as to what drives them internally and then jump to oftentimes the worst conclusions possible. In a nutshell, we draw an opinion about the intent of a person’s heart (oftentimes without ever even speaking to the individual) and then act upon that opinion as if our assumptions are infallible.
