Self Worth (June Hunt Hope for the Heart) (3 page)

C
ONCLUSION:
The Bible says,
“God is love”
(1 John 4:8). The essence of God is
agape
—a love that always seeks the highest and best on behalf of others. If we are truly godly—and we are told to be godly—then we will value what He values and love what He loves. We are to love the fact that He has a purpose for us. We are to love the fact that He values us. We are to love the fact that He has given us worth.

• You have godly
  agape
  for yourself when you do what God says is best for you, cooperating with His perfect plan for your life.
  
• And you have
  agape
  for those around you by doing what is consistent with God’s very best for them.
  

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Matthew 22:37–39)

In the throes of threatening circumstances, people react in one of three ways: fight, flight, or freeze—get even, get going, or get hurt. Those who fight can quickly become aggressive victimizers. Because she was beaten and abused, Dorie chose to become defiant, to clench her fists and dominate her peers by intimidation.

She would bully them into compliance, threatening to “get them in the yard” if they didn’t drink her buttermilk for her or let her go to the front of the bathing line. She forced her will on them and terrorized them by pinching or hitting them without provocation. According to her own words, “I was mean, mean, mean!”

Because Dorie
knew
that no one would ever love her, she took the offensive and gave them no reason to love her. She cried alone at night and made others cry during the day. No one would get the best of her, no one! She had no one, so she would need no one. That was her philosophy, at least until the day she met Jesus and opened her heart to His life-changing love. He gave her a new heart.
13
The Lord makes this offer to everyone:

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)

When Dorie went to grade school, she said, “Those of us from the orphanage could be easily identified by our shabby clothes and distinctive haircuts.” The harsh matron, Miss Gabriel, would place a bowl on their heads and snip off their hair with other children and parents staring. Dorie thought, “We’re all oddballs and besides, I’m ugly.” It’s as though she kept looking through distorted mirrors.
14

Think about going to a fair and walking through “The Fun House” with its warped mirrors. When you turn the corner, you suddenly see a distorted image of yourself that immediately makes you laugh. Your head looks like a huge oval egg with narrow slanted eyes. Meanwhile, your neck has disappeared. Your arms have become wavy tentacles and your hips the size of a blimp.

Unfortunately, people like Dorie walk around with mental images of themselves that are as warped as these distorted mirrors. Over time, their inner mirror has become warped by criticism, disapproval, and pain. Thank God He does not look at us from a warped perspective, but through the eyes of purest love. The closer we are to Him, the more we will be able to see ourselves through God’s eyes. The Bible says,
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”
(1 Corinthians 13:12).

Although Dorie was powerless to prevent unjustified beatings at the oppressive orphanage, she learned how to get power by overpowering the other children. This gave her the feeling of significance—a sense of self-worth.

“If I can be tough,” she reasoned, “I can survive. I bullied the other children. I was never subtle. I pushed and shoved. I hit. If another child wouldn’t let me see his toy, I would grab it. The others didn’t hit me, but I hit them and felt good about it.”
15

All of this false bravado merely served as a substitute for true self-worth—a quick fix that was really not a fix.

If you are suffering with low self-worth, you may be seeking ways to deny, disguise, or diminish your emotional pain. People cope with their woundedness in different ways; however, many of these ways do not offer a cure, but rather are a counterfeit, an adhesive bandage that only covers up the wound without healing it.

The problem with “self-worth substitutes” is that they do not deal with the cause of the pain—the wrong beliefs that fester in the heart and mind. The true solution to low self-worth is to apply the healing balm of truth to the wound in the soul in order that your mind will be transformed and your life changed. Therefore, beware of worldly substitutes that ultimately do not satisfy.

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” (1 John 2:15–17)

At the orphanage, Miss Gabriel believed that sickness was always a result of sin. Therefore, whenever Dorie became ill, the stern matron would snap, “It’s the Lord! He’s punishing you. If you weren’t so naughty, you wouldn’t be sick.” A harsh, punishing God was the only kind of heavenly Father Dorie ever heard about. She heard nothing about His love.
16

Those who have a warped view of themselves often have a warped view of God. When people feel unworthy of love, respect, and approval from others, often they feel even more unworthy of God’s love, respect, and approval. Their faulty beliefs lead them to draw faulty conclusions about God. These wrong beliefs about God serve only to sabotage their relationship with God and kill any hope of ever being valued or used by God.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)

Q
UESTION: “How could a loving God allow abuse?”

A
NSWER:
God did not create people to be puppets but to be free agents, able to make their own choices. In granting people that freedom, He knew people would choose to sin against Him and against one another. Make no mistake: God is not the abuser. He hates the evil of abuse and will one day repay those who do evil.

“I will punish the world for its evil, the wicked for their sins. I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty and will humble the pride of the ruthless.” (Isaiah 13:11)

For many reasons people fail to perceive themselves as having value or worth to God, to themselves, or to others. Generally, negative self-perceptions develop in people as a result of their being treated in ways that cause them to feel devalued by significant people in their lives. Unless these perceptions are changed, self-devaluation will worsen over time.

Negative perceptions that begin in childhood are difficult to replace with positive perceptions in adulthood. The best time to examine and evaluate self-worth is before self-perceptions become strong and solidified.

As in the case of Dorie, the more she was rejected, the more she rejected herself and those around her. Her greatest need was to have someone accept her and value her as a person, someone to heal her emotional wounds and to cause her to see her significance. That Someone turned out to be the true Healer of the brokenhearted.

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.” (Psalm 147:3)

When Dorie and her sister were left at the orphanage, her mother promised to visit them. And she did—twice over a span of seven years. At the first visit, Dorie, exuding immense excitement, immediately ran to her calling out, “Mother! Mother!” In her exhilaration, Dorie had forgotten she was to call her mother “Laura,” never “Mother.”
17