Low self-esteem is all pervasive in our culture. Within most of us there are powerful negative voices telling us that we are not good enough. It is absolutely essential that shame does not become the only experience we have of ourselves. We need to find a way that will allow us to experience ourselves differently.
One way can be summed up in the three rhyming words – name, claim, tame. We begin by naming our unfulfilled longing. There is deep longing in every human heart. It is difficult to know what this longing is about. Not only can it take time for us to acknowledge our longing. It also takes time to discover what it is for. Eventually we come to realise that our unfulfilled longing is a longing for unconditional love. Each and every one of us needs to know that we are loved and lovable as we are.
The good news of Jesus is that unconditional love is available to us. Unconditional love is available to us in the relationship that God has with each of us. God who is love, loves us as we are, without conditions, without expectations, without requirements. This is the core truth of the Christian Gospel, the one thing we can say with certainty. But it remains academic unless we claim it. Sooner or later we need to claim our belovedness.
Claiming our belovedness is one thing. We also need to tame what we call the false self. The false self is built around conditional love. It keeps us in the bondage of accumulation, achievement and approval. Because of it we tend to find our value in what we have, in what we do and in what other people think of us. Taming the false self is a process of awareness and surrender. First we recognise the many subtle and manipulative ways the false self is at work in ourselves and in the world around us. Then we invite the Holy Spirit to tame the power of our false self. Only the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that unites Jesus and his Father, can break the control that the false self has over us.