For a long time a lot of people were aggressively pushing on me things that, as I later discovered, were totally wrong. These were “winners-and-losers,” “self-esteem” and personality psychology.
The problem with winners-and-losers is that it would starve the country of a lot of what it needs. Everyone will want to become a yuppie. Nobody will want to become teachers, scientists or the police. These professions don’t make very much money, and people in it are regarded as losers. Yet without these professions prosperity would be impossible.
The problem with self-esteem is that it rewards wrong things. If you have lower standards for yourself, you will find it easier to feel good about yourself than if you have higher standards for yourself. The person with lower standards will have a higher self-esteem; the person with higher standards will be a better person. Rewarding self-esteem does not reward personal good. It rewards low standards.
The problem with personality psychology is that it doesn’t pass the first rational muster. According to personality psychology, some people – sociopaths and narcissists - are bad and can only be bad whatever they do. This contradicts most basic reason. If people are responsible for themselves then anyone can be good, and if some people cannot be good whatever they do then people are not responsible for themselves. This ideology is irrational, it is cruel and it is wrong.
I knew someone who once had a friend who was good at many things. He told his friend that he had high self-esteem, and his friend said, “No, I know myself through God.” Striving for esteem in the eyes of God is certainly more valid than striving for esteem in the eyes of yourself. You are put in front of the perfect mirror. And then you can see yourself as you are, as opposed to as a function of whatever beam there is in your eye.
So we have some people saying that the project of God is to frustrate the world in order to bring it to serve him. I used to be against this idea, but I’ve found much greater wisdom in God than I have in these psychological theories. And I hope that more people who face these beliefs have the correct arguments that they can use, so that they can avoid themselves being taken advantage of and led down the garden path.