article on women insecurity
Answers
I’m concerned we are misdiagnosing insecurity. And as a result, I’m concerned we are mistreating it too.
I first stumbled toward this realization after wrestling with insecurity in several areas of my life. I devoured every book and article I could find on the subject of self-esteem. I read verses about God’s delight in me. I self-talked scriptural truths about my identity in Christ. I did this for months, and at the end of it all, I realized something.
None of it helped.
I knew God loved me. I knew I was made in his image. I knew I was created with a purpose. I believed all these things. Yet none of it touched the depth of insecurity inside me. It wasn’t until I read Tim Keller’s tiny, power-packed book The Freeedom of Self-Forgetfulness that I understood why these messages weren’t working.
The problem, I discovered, was a gaping hole in Christian teaching, especially to women.
Two Sources of Insecurity
I came to realize there are two primary causes of insecurity. The first is one we talk about all the time: low self-esteem. Spiritually speaking, I define low self-esteem as an inability to see ourselves the way God sees us. When our self-image is primarily shaped by wounds or lies, the pain is real and damaging, and the gospel has an answer for it. God absolutely desires to restore our self-understanding by aligning it with the truth of his Word. We rightly respond to low self-esteem with biblical affirmation.
However, there’s a second cause of insecurity, one we almost never address. For many of us, the source of our insecurity isn’t low self-esteem, but self-preoccupation. What we need isn’t to think more highly of ourselves, but to think of ourselves less.