05 Feb What Does It Mean to Have a Good Self Image?
I grew up with a terrible self-image. My family was poor, I was skinny, I had dyslexia and other learning challenges. As a result, I felt insecure, incompetent and inadequate. It has taken a lifetime to moderate those initial childhood self-evaluations.
As a result, I know first-hand the importance of having a good self-image. However, that does not mean believing things that are not true, or exaggerating personal abilities or inflating personal accomplishments.
Rather, having a good self-image means seeing ourselves as God sees us. No more, no less.
This is important because we all tend to act consistently with how we see ourselves. If we do not see ourselves as God sees us, it will take us off course in life. We will not become the person God wants us to be and we will not do the things God wants us to do.
So how does God see us?
- God created us in His image
Genesis 1:27 says, “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
You have, perhaps, heard the story of the child who was in a drawing class. As the teacher walked around the class, surveying the various projects that the children were working on, she asked one child what he was drawing. He said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” The teacher said, “But no one knows what God looks like.” And the little boy said, “they will in a minute.”
This is cute, and we can admire his self-confidence, but it is not accurate. John 4:24 says, “God is spirit,” so he exists without a body. So what does it mean to be created in God’s image?
It includes that we are created in God’s spiritual, mental, moral, and social image.
Spiritual image
Being created in God’s spiritual image means that we have a spirit that will live forever. Our body dies, but our spirit lives forever.
Mental image
Being created in God’s mental image means that we have intellect, emotion, and will. We think, just as God does. We feel, just as God does. And we choose, just as God does.
Moral image
Being created in God’s moral image means that we were created to have a concept of right and wrong, good and bad, true and false. And, we were created to live for that which is right, good, and true.
Social image
We were created to live in fellowship and harmony with God and others.
It is important to understand this so that we realize that we are different from, and higher than, any other part of God’s creation.
- God loves us
Because God created us in His image, He loves us. He does not love us the way a composer loves the music he composed, or an artist loves a picture he painted, or an architect loves a monument he created. He loves us the way a parent loves a child.
Psalm 103:13 tells us, “Just as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him.”
I have written recently of the evidences of God’s love:
- God hurts when we hurt (John 11:35)
- God will cause all things to work together for good in our lives (Romans 8:58).
- God will use trials to transform us into powerful and joyful children (James 1:2-4).
- God will transform our trials into ministry to others (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)
- God will reward us disproportionately for our pain (Romans 8:18)
What magnificent gestures of love!
A child is born in the image of his parents, but the family dog is not. And just as a child is infinitely more valuable to his parents than the family dog, so we are infinitely more valuable to God than anything else in His creation – even angels.
- God has entrusted us with important things to do
Keying off the above comment, we are not God’s pets. He does not keep us around merely for amusement or company. He wants us to enter into His life, into His work. He wants to fellowship with us (1 John 1:3). He wants us to help oversee His creation (Genesis 1:26-28) and further His kingdom on earth (Matthew 28:19-20).
Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
Before we were ever born, God prepared things that He would honor us by asking us to do.
We are like a son or daughter working in the family business. We have important things to do, and we have been gifted by God to do them (1 Peter 4:10). He does not ask anything of us that He has not equipped us to do. We are way more important to God than many of us realize.
Conclusion
C. S. Lewis once wrote, “ God seems to do nothing himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do, slowly and blunderingly, what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye. This is how (no light matter) God makes something – indeed makes gods – out of nothing.”
Elsewhere, Lewis wrote, “It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.”
Indeed!
Notice that Lewis spelled “gods” with a small “g.” He meant that God is making us into something so spectacular that, to our present human perception, if we were to see ourselves as we will one day be, we would seem like greater than mere humans… more like Greek “gods.”
So, while we may still struggle with, and have to grow out of, childhood impressions and experiences which may have lead us to an inaccurate self-image, the starting point is seeing ourselves as God sees us. If we come to deeply believe what God thinks of us, it will overcome anything we have been telling ourselves that is not true.
When we begin to see ourselves as God sees us, we have the potential to become all that God wants us to become, and to do all that God wants us to do, giving us greater joy and meaning in life than anything else could possibly give us.
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