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| My daughter's self-portrait. |
A few weeks ago, there was an outrage in the Christian community about a quote by Victoria Olsteen. I'm not a fan of the Olsteens per say (the one time I watched it, Joel had his Bible out but never read from it. Not too impressed. Watered-down Christianity isn't my thing.)
But it begged the question for me:
What should the role be for personal development (aka self-help) in the church?
Too many have insisted there is no place, we are worthless unto ourselves, and must rely solely on God for any worth. Others, like the Olsteen followers, have replaced the need for truth (all truth, not just the prosperity kind), for easy words that go down smoothly.
I feel that I learned too much, too early, how worthless I was without God. I think I just kept the first part of that, and dropped the latter half., not recognizing that my very existence is from God, and is therefore valuable. It wasn't until, as an adult, I started reading personal development books and listening to audio training that I feel like I started getting healthy again. Emotionally healthy. And maybe spiritually healthy too.
While we humans might not be able to much without God ... By God's grace we can learn to love ourselves, just as we learn to love others, right?
What do you think? Where is the balance? And how did you learn to view yourself growing up in the church?
I'm probably not the best person to answer this having not grown up in the church. Nor attended as an adult. But it raises an interesting question in terms of all religious institutions.
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