Humble yourself that he may lift you up

After my recent-ish post about self esteem, one of my friends explained that when he gets to work he feels constrained to work within the prevailing worldview, as if to challenge the notion that we are good and improved self esteem is all we need to overcome would kill rapport and leave him looking uncaring. This was my reply:

I think part of the trick is to yourself remember that increasing someone's self-esteem isn't actually the most helpful thing you can do for them - it would actually be more helpful to get them to see that they have some responsibility for how things have turned out and to encourage them to sort things out/seek forgiveness/change themselves.* I think it may be possible to do this with gentleness and without ruining rapport. And this approach also demonstrates a greater respect for them than pretending they are better than they are - and hopefully they will sense this.

You can do all this while 100% affirming their value as a person (even if you're not affirming their goodness). This is the sort of self-esteem that we are totally for.

What do you think? Is this workable in actual day-to-day practice?


* Of course even this is of limited usefulness, as we know that no-one will never really be able to sort things out or change themselves (though they may be forgiven by another). But it is still a step in the right direction - in acknowledging a) your sin and b) your inability to fix yourself and c) turning to God for forgiveness and change.