Self-confidence seems to be a currency we use throughout our life. While self-confidence, in and of itself, will likely not be enough to buy your groceries or put gasoline in your car, it can be the factor which will help you receive the job promotion or allow you to close the deal, giving you a huge sales commission. Let’s face it. Self-confidence “buys” a lot of things for us in life. In fact, millions of dollars have been spent by people seeking gurus who can teach them how to build self-confidence. These seminars will teach you positive thinking techniques and share strategies on how to develop stronger self-confidence. Some seminars simply help you gain competence in a given area of professional or personal life and the outcome of that competence is confidence. In these cases, self-confidence becomes a benefit of the seminar, yet it is still a selling point of the seminar.
People want leaders who are confident. We look to those who possess a “belief in their abilities” and are characterized by “self-reliance and self-assurance.” Don’t take me wrong. I know confidence does have a place in this world. Sales people know the importance of self-confidence as well as the necessity of possessing confidence in the product or service they are selling. Yes. This world trades on the currency of confidence and we cannot deny the role of self-confidence in our lives as we move through this fallen world. However, there are some things from a spiritual framework that is worth considering.
I believe sin and depravity is a foundational truth of life. This reality always causes me to think twice about how much confidence I can have in another person. People are capable of dastardly acts and no one is exempt. Not even myself. The possibility for someone to act in selfish or evil ways is not reserved to a special demographic group in our society. Education doesn’t make people better. In fact, it was D.L. Moody who said, “If a man is stealing nuts and bolts from a railway track, and, in order to change him, you send him to college, at the end of his education, he will steal the whole railway track.” Money doesn’t change people. When a poor person attains wealth they will only become more of what they already were. If they were greedy when they were poor, they will simply have new ways to express the greed when they attain wealth. None of this should surprise us. History repeats the stories of scandals and outlandish evil acts performed by the rich and poor, the educated and uneducated, the minister and the heathen, as well as the politician and the lobbyist.
So the question is this. For a person who struggles with self-confidence and self-worth, how do you attain more of it? I think this is a fair question since we live in a world that seems to require self-confidence. From a Christian framework, I will offer what I have learned in life so you can take it or leave it. An effort to build myself up or appeal primarily to positive thinking tactics is not very transformational. Positive thinking has a place when it is grounded in a Christian worldview as opposed to mere pop psychology. However, in the end, I am coming to believe that attaining self-confidence is the wrong pursuit. The truth is, I don’t put a lot of confidence in myself. I am only a sinner saved by grace. In fact, I am capable of becoming the next Adolf Hilter or Joseph Stalin. How do I know this? I know this because the doctrine of sin is true. If we think we can escape the possibility of embodying evil, we are only fooling ourselves.
For me, I am deciding to trade-in the constant pursuit of acquiring self-confidence for the pursuit of attaining confidence in the Risen Christ and the truth claims about Him. As I do this, my confidence in Him grows and when my confidence is in Him, the confidence I have in myself is really not that much of an issue. My focus will begin to shift to the point where nothing in this world that I will face is going to destroy me if I KNOW He REALLY is who we as Christians claim Him to be. I can face every situation in life, not in “self-confidence”, but in “Christ-confidence”. It is He who is in me that I look to in order to find the courage I need to move forward as I confront the monumental mountains of my life.
I believe we are in a precarious place if our confidence in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is compromised. In regard to the resurrection of Jesus, I have had some people challenge the confidence I have in the evidential truth claims about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. These individuals, say things like “You are confusing fact with truth. You are saying the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fact. We BELIEVE truth and we KNOW fact.” They go on to explain how we KNOW facts with confidence because facts can be empirically proven. Of course, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not empirical in nature. So, the result of this reasoning is that we can never really know truth. We simply believe it with faith (which becomes blind faith). For those who make this case, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not a historical fact. They simply believe it without ever knowing if that which they claim about Christ is actually so. They accept it on blind faith, although they may not like me to characterize their faith that way.
Let’s dig a little deeper though about what is actually being said by those who desire to disown the evidential reality of the Risen Christ. Essentially, their philosophical underpinning is that we cannot KNOW truth, we just BELIEVE it. For these individuals, we do not believe something because it is true. Instead, our beliefs are true simply because we believe it to be so.
Do you catch the difference? It is the same as saying, I believe Santa Clause is true, therefore he must be. Despite the lack of evidence to point me in the direction of affirming the existence of Santa Clause, I fancy it is true primarily out of my desire that it be the case. Therefore, since I want Santa Clause to be real (primarily on the basis of wishful thinking) my belief alone is enough for me to justify an ongoing faith in his existence. I think we can understand cognitive development and how it is possible for the mind of a child to rationalize the existence of Santa Clause. However, hang with me as I play this out.
Let’s imagine I move from childhood into adulthood and insist, purely out of wishful thinking, that Santa Clause exist. Even though I learned gifts show up by loving parents rather than an overweight man in a red suit, I maintain my right to believe in Santa Clause simply because I desperately want him to exist. So, I suspend my growing awareness that no evidence for him is available. Yet, I still insist I have the right to exercise blind faith. If I believe Santa Clause exist, then he will, right? That’s the same as saying we do not know Jesus rose from the dead, we simply believe He did.
It is interesting how we read Scripture, which we affirm as being the revelation of God, and never reflect on what that revelation really was all about. As we read the narrative of the Risen Christ, we see how Jesus showed himself to the disciples. Nearly 500 people saw Jesus. He even let them touch his nail-scarred hand and side. He gave them enough evidence to encourage a sound belief in His resurrection. This was then written down so that we could validate the story and see that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Yet, when you begin to move into the arena of sharing the evidences and rationale for belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, well meaning Christians can sometimes think it is a replacement for faith if we examine the evidence.
The reality is, I wouldn’t want anyone to believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ just because I say it is so. They need to examine the evidence. Can I be really candid and transparent for a moment? If the evidence for the Risen Christ is not valid and we are to blindly believe just like believing in Santa Clause, count me out. I am not going to blindly accept something just because I am told it is true. If this is the case, Christianity has nothing different to offer than any other world religion. If so, all it would really boil down to is flavors of ice cream. Some like chocolate ice cream and some like vanilla and if this is all it amounts to, I am not sure I care to have ice cream at all. The truth is, Christianity is grounded in revelation that revelation is grounded in the historical record. Our revelation is based on the fingerprints of God in our midst. He revealed Himself in time and space. That has always been the claim of Christianity. We have always believed God to be a personal God, not a figment of our imagination.
Just examine the narrative of the disciples and how they lived their life post resurrection. Their confidence was in the revelation of the Risen Christ not in their own genius and self-confidence. They actually saw and touched the Risen Christ and this gave them “Christ-confidence.” Everything changed after Pentecost. No threat made against them could keep them from talking about Jesus Christ. No amount of prison time and no threat on their life would change their “Christ-confidence.” They didn’t have “self-confidence” even though some may have looked at the assurance they had as being such. They had confidence in the truth about the Risen Christ. Period.
People throughout history have died for a lie but did so not knowing that for which they gave their life was a lie. Yet, it is not likely that people will die for a lie if they KNOW they are believing a lie. What would be the benefit in giving your life for something you know is a not true? What is there to gain? Therefore, the question becomes, “Do we know that which the disciples professed about Jesus Christ was actually true?” Here is a place you can go to do your own homework. It is a starting point, not an ending point. The “Minimal Facts of the Resurrection” is a good place to begin and feel free to bring your skepticism. In fact I would encourage your doubts, questions, and skepticism. Here is an article worth looking at: http://pleaseconvinceme.com/2013/the-minimal-facts-of-the-resurrection/.
When I have been at my lowest points in life and in my faith walk, it was the work that I did studying the arguments for and against the resurrection of Jesus Christ that kept me engaged. I did not know what to do with Jesus Christ and the evidential reality of these truth claims. It wasn’t the church that kept me in the “game.” It wasn’t all the shiny church programming and great music in the worship services.
However, I will tell you that it is the homework I did that makes the songs we sing in worship much more meaningful. As those songs connect with my emotional self it does not do so without also engaging my intellectual self. These songs therefore take on meaning that moves me into a place of worship that it otherwise would not if I had not challenged my own beliefs and did the homework.
So, bring your doubts. Bring your questions. Bring your criticisms. Bring your skepticism. It is all welcome. You may not look at the evidence and make the same conclusions I have. I still think it is worth the investigation.
Feel free to pursue tactics that will help you grow in “self-confidence” but I would encourage you to start by investigating the truth claims concerning the Risen Christ and pursue “Christ-confidence” first. I think you will find it worth the work and investment of time. It can also save you a lot of money.
Living Loved in Brokenness 