Self-Esteem: Three Kinds of People

I have been listening to Tim Keller's lectures on self-esteem, and his insight is helpful, especially as it is in contrast to the way the world views the subject.

In response to the question, "Why talk about self-esteem when the Bible seems to downplay that idea? That is, Paul consistently says to think lowly of oneself. How do you square that?" Keller says that there are three types of people.

The Self-Confident

The self-confident who are people who are preeminently successful. That is, they have succeeded in life in such a way that the things they think they need in life, they have gotten. Money, success, sex. But this produces arrogance, not humility, because they have attained these things on their own merit. And, in truth, they are living life on a bubble.

The Self-Conscious

These are people who are preeminently unsuccessful. They are low in spirit and esteem because they have set up for themselves idols in their lives--things they think they need--and have not gotten them. So this makes them not humble but self-loathing.

The Self-Forgetful

These are people who put their trust not in themselves, but in Christ. And this makes them preeminently humble, because (1) it doesn't matter where they have succeeded in life because everything is a gift from God anyway and it all could be taken away at any moment, and (2) it doesn't matter if you haven't succeeded in life because the God of the universe (the only person that matters) has accepted you as you are. And the outwork of this is that people who trust in Christ and his merit for everything think of themselves less. Or, as Keller wrote in The Reason for God, p. 181:

The Christian gospel is that I am so flawed that Jesus had to die for me, yet I am so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. It undermines both swaggering and sniveling. I cannot feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone. I do not think more of myself nor less of myself. Instead, I think of myself less.