When I was growing up there was a big cultural push to build up kids’ self-esteem. The rationale was that if young people felt better about themselves, they’d behave better, perform better, interact with others better. And for the last twenty-five or so years, that whole notion of cultivating self-esteem has been the foundation for countless parenting and self-help books.
These days we still hear about self-esteem (which, in my opinion, greatly pales in comparison to the importance of understanding our identity in Christ) and the perils of the lack of it, but there’s a much bigger issue in play. I didn’t even have words for this particular problem until a few days ago when my friend Amy mentioned it. But I’m convinced that, if left unchecked, it’s going to damage relationships, hurt families, and continue to hold countless young women in its grip.
That sounds pretty dramatic, doesn’t it? Well, it should. Because it’s dangerous. And what is it, you wonder?
Self-worship. It is absolutely, one hundred percent a real thing.
Just think about the vast amounts of time young women can spend looking at themselves in the mirror, taking selfies, adding filters, and editing pictures. Then there are the seemingly endless ways people try to tweak and manage their own stinkin’ image, and while some of that is because of too much focus on perceived faults, mostly it’s for the glory of me, myself, and I.
And although we could sit here and point fingers at this celebrity and that reality star and some other social media phenomenon as the causes, we’d be better off taking time to carefully examine how self-worship is affecting our own lives. Consider how tempting it is to see our lives as something to be curated as opposed to just lived, and it’s easy to see how we’ve gotten off-track. Everybody is potentially the star in his or her own reality show—broadcast courtesy of Instagram or Snapchat or the platform of your choice—and being a star is a lot of work. There’s a reputation to build and protect, after all, so how a person presents her life becomes strategic. She needs to look a certain way, dress a certain way, smile a certain way, and she also needs to be seen with the right people. Her followers would expect no less, right?
To be clear, I get it. And I realize that most of us aren’t deliberately crafting a social media presence. Even still, the bent toward self-worship lurks behind the scenes in our heads and our hearts. That’s why we have to be brutally honest with ourselves and brutally honest before the Lord as we answer some key questions.
- Am I living to glorify myself?
- Am I more concerned with myself than anything else?
- Am I spending my days trying to build and further my own reputation?
- Do I filter my life to make it look like something it isn’t?
- Do I present my life as a brand or my body as a product?
- Do I live like the queen of my own tiny kingdom?
And listen. I don’t want to be an alarmist. It can be fun to have a following. It can be a neat experience when younger girls look up to you, or when other girls think you’d be a trustworthy friend. But if you’re intentionally creating that, buying into that, or believing your own press, so to speak, you’d be wise to shut it down sooner as opposed to later.
Bottom line: if nothing is more important to you than you, consider the possibility that you’ve elevated yourself to a place where you were never meant to be. You are a beautiful, blood-bought child of the Most High God, and I say this in all love: the Lord is the only One who is worthy of our worship and adoration. We’re not built for it, we can’t handle it, and we’re foolish to think that we have any claim to sit on His throne.
1. What are some specific ways you see the prevalence of self-worship in our culture?
2. Do you edit or enhance pictures of yourself before you post them online?
3. Have you ever fallen into the trap of prioritizing yourself above your relationship with the Lord? How’d that work out?
4. Look at the six questions you read earlier. Are you concerned about or convicted by any of your answers?
Today’s Prayer