For decades, Western culture has been obsessed with improving self-esteem and self-love. Yet a recent issue of the Harvard Mental Health letter reports that our emphasis on improving self-esteem has yielded questionable results in improving character or interpersonal relationships. Despite the widespread belief, even among Christians, that we must "love ourselves before we can love others, " efforts to do so have not made us a more loving people. Instead, many of us who finally feel good about ourselves continue to live self-centeredly, unhappy and unsatisfied.
In Courageous Humility, counselor Leslie Vernick suggests that a return to the model of valuing self in right relationship with God and others will bring about more desirable results, both in our personal lives and in the world around us. Contrasting healthy self-acceptance with the dangers of self-love, Vernick shows what humility is and reveals how it specifically impacts relationships with ourselves, with others, and most of all, with God.
Readers will learn what the Bible says about loving others and themselves well, without putting themselves first, and see how doing both can lead to true happiness in Courageous Humility.
