LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
Counseling and the Sinfulness of Humanity
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
10/2022
No concept is more important to the gurus of modern psychology than self-esteem.
According to the self-esteem credo, there are no bad people—only people who think badly of
themselves.1
For years, educational experts, psychologists, and a growing number of Christian leaders
have championed self-esteem as a panacea for all sorts of human miseries. According to the
purveyors of this doctrine, if people feel good about themselves, they will behave better, have
fewer emotional problems, and achieve more. People with high self-esteem, we are told, are
less likely to commit crimes, act immorally, fail academically, or have problems in their
relationships with others.
The Blind Faith of Self-Esteem
Advocates of self-esteem have been remarkably successful in convincing people that self-
esteem is the solution to whatever ails anyone. One survey revealed that a majority of people
view self-esteem as the single most important motivator for hard work and success. In fact,
self-esteem ranked several points higher than a sense of responsibility or fear of failure.2
But does self-esteem really work? Does it, for example, promote higher achievement?
There is plenty of evidence to suggest it does not. In a recent study, a standardized math test
was given to teenagers from six different nations. Besides the math questions, the test asked
the youngsters to respond yes or no to the question, “I am good at mathematics.” American
students scored lowest on the math questions, far behind Korean students, who had the top
scores. Ironically, more than three-fourths of the Korean students had answered no to the “I am
good at math” question. In stark contrast, however, 68 percent of the American students
believed their math skills were just fine.3 Our kids may be failing math, but they obviously feel
pretty good about how they are doing.
Morally, our culture is in precisely the same boat. Empirical evidence strongly suggests that
society is at an all-time moral low. We might expect people’s self-esteem to be suffering as
well. But statistics show Americans are feeling better about themselves than ever. In a survey
conducted in 1940, 11 percent of women and 20 percent of men agreed with the statement, “I
am an important person.” In the 1990s, those figures jumped to 66 percent of women and 62
percent of men.4 Ninety percent of people surveyed in a recent Gallup Poll say their own sense
of self-esteem is robust and healthy.5 Incredibly, while the moral fabric of society is unraveling,
self-esteem is thriving. All the positive thinking about ourselves seems not to be doing anything
to elevate the culture or motivate people to live better lives.
Can it really be that low self-esteem is what is wrong with people today? Does anyone
seriously believe that making people feel better about themselves has helped the problems of
crime, moral decay, divorce, child abuse, juvenile delinquency, drug addiction, and all the other
evils that have dragged society down? Could so much still be wrong in our culture if the
assumptions of self-esteem theory were true? Do we really imagine that more self-esteem will
finally solve society’s problems? Is there even a shred of evidence that would support such a
belief?
Absolutely none. A report in Newsweek suggested that “the case for self-esteem … is a
matter less of scientific pedagogy than of faith—faith that positive thoughts can make manifest
the inherent goodness in any one.”6 In other words, the notion that self-esteem makes people
better is simply a matter of blind religious faith. Not only that, it is a religion that is antithetical
to Christianity, because it is predicated on the unbiblical presupposition that people are
basically good and need to recognize their own goodness.
The Church and the Self-Esteem Cult
Nevertheless, the most persuasive proponents of self-esteem religion have always included
clergymen. Norman Vincent Peale’s “positive thinking” doctrine, which was popular a
generation ago, was simply an early self-esteem model. Peale wrote The Power of Positive
Thinking in 1952.7 The book opened with these words: “Believe in yourself! Have faith in your
abilities!” In the introduction, Peale called the book a “personal-improvement manual … written
with the sole objective of helping the reader achieve a happy, satisfying, and worthwhile life.”8
The book was marketed as motivational therapy, not theology. But in Peale’s estimation the
whole system was merely “applied Christianity; a simple yet scientific system of practical
techniques of successful living that works.”9
Evangelicals, for the most part, were slow to embrace a system that called people to faith
in themselves rather than faith in Jesus Christ. Self-esteem as Norman Vincent Peale outlined it
was the offspring of theological liberalism married to neo-orthodoxy.
Time has evidently worn away evangelicals’ resistance to such doctrine. Now many of the
hottest-selling books in evangelical bookstores promote self-esteem and positive thinking. Even
Newsweek has commented on the trend. Noting that self-esteem is considered “religiously
correct” nowadays, the magazine observed:
The notion [of self-esteem] may put off anyone old enough to remember when “Christian”
as an adjective was often followed by “humility.” But American churches, which once did not
shrink from calling their congregants wretches, have moved toward a more congenial view of
human nature.… Chastising sinners is considered counterproductive: it makes them feel worse
about themselves.10
Psychology and self-esteem theology have fed one another. And as evangelicals become
more and more accepting of psychological counseling, they become more and more vulnerable
to the dangers posed by self-esteem teaching. As even the Newsweek article suggests, those
who are concerned primarily with self-esteem are hardly in a position to deal with human
transgressions as sin against God or to inform people already comfortable in self-love and self-
righteousness that they are actually sinners in need of spiritual salvation.
Here one’s theology becomes intensely practical. These are questions that must be settled
in the heart before the counselor can offer truly biblical counsel: Does God really want all
people to feel good about themselves? Or does He first call sinners to recognize the utter
helplessness of their own estate? Of course, the answer is obvious to those who let Scripture
speak for itself.
Understanding the Doctrine of Total Depravity
Scripture, of course, teaches from beginning to end that all humanity is totally depraved.
Paul says unredeemed people are “dead in … trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1). Apart from
salvation, all people walk in worldliness and disobedience (v. 2). We who know and love the
Lord once “lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and
were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest” (v. 3). We were “separate from Christ,
excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having
no hope and without God in the world” (v. 12).
In those passages Paul describes the state of unbelievers as estrangement from God. It is
that they hate God, not that they are
intimidated by Him. In fact, Paul says, “There is no fear of God” in the unregenerate person
(Rom. 3:18). Before our salvation, we were actually God’s enemies (Rom. 5:8, 10). We were
“alienated and hostile in mind, engaged in evil deeds” (Col. 1:21). Sinful passions, inflamed by
our hatred of God’s law, motivated all our living (Rom. 7:5). We were tainted by sin in every
part of our being. We were corrupt, evil, thoroughly sinful.
Theologians refer to this doctrine as total depravity. It does not mean that unbelieving
sinners are always as bad as they could be (cf. Luke 6:33; Rom. 2:14). It does not mean that the
expression of sinful human nature is always lived out to the fullest. It does not mean that
unbelievers are incapable of acts of kindness, benevolence, goodwill, or human altruism. It
certainly does not mean that non-Christians cannot appreciate goodness, beauty, honesty,
decency, or excellence. It does mean that none of this has any merit with God.
Depravity also means that evil has contaminated every aspect of our humanity—our heart,
mind, personality, emotions, conscience, motives, and will (cf. Jer. 17:9; John 8:44).
Unredeemed sinners are therefore incapable of doing anything to please God (Isa. 64:6). They
are incapable of truly loving the God who reveals Himself in Scripture. They are incapable of
obedience from the heart, with righteous motives. They are incapable of understanding
spiritual truth. They are incapable of genuine faith. And that means they are incapable of
pleasing God or truly seeking Him (Heb. 11:1).
Total depravity means sinners have no ability to do spiritual good or to work for their own
salvation from sin. They are so completely disinclined to love righteousness, so thoroughly dead
in sin, that they are not able to save themselves or even to fit themselves for God’s salvation.
Unbelieving humanity has no capacity to desire, understand, believe, or apply spiritual truth: “A
natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and
he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor. 2:14). In spite of all
this, people are proud of themselves! Lack of self-esteem is not the issue.
Because of Adam’s sin, this state of spiritual death called total depravity has passed to all
mankind. Another term for this is original sin. Scripture explains it this way: “Through one man
sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all
sinned (Rom. 5:12). When, as head of the human race, Adam sinned, the whole race was
corrupted. “Through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Rom 5:19).
How such a thing could happen has been the subject of much theological discussion for
centuries. For our purposes, however, it is sufficient to affirm that Scripture clearly teaches that
Adam’s sin brought guilt upon the entire race. We were “in Adam” when he sinned, and
therefore the guilt of sin and the sentence of death passed upon all of us: “In Adam all die” (1
Cor. 15:22).
We might be tempted to think, If I’m sinful by birth and never had a morally neutral nature,
how can I be held responsible for being a sinner? But our corrupt nature is precisely why our
guilt is such a serious matter. Sin flows from the very soul of our being. It is because of our
sinful nature that we commit sinful acts: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the
evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as
well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed
from within and defile the man” (Mark 7:21–23). We are “by nature children of wrath” (Eph.
2:3). Original sin—including all the corrupt tendencies and sinful passions of the soul—is as
deserving of punishment as all our voluntary acts of sin. What is sin, after all, but anomia
—“lawlessness” (1 John 3:4)? Or as the Westminster Shorter Catechism says, “Sin is any want of
conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God” (q. 14). Far from being an excuse, original sin
itself is at the heart of why we are guilty. And original sin itself is sufficient grounds for our
condemnation before God.
Moreover, original sin with its resulting depravity is the reason we commit voluntary acts of
sin. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote,
Why is it that man ever chooses to sin? The answer is that man has fallen away from God,
and as a result, his whole nature has become perverted and sinful. Man’s whole bias is away
from God. By nature he hates God and feels that God is opposed to him. His god is himself, his
own abilities and powers, his own desires. He objects to the whole idea of God and the
demands which God makes upon him.… Furthermore, man likes and covets the things which
God prohibits, and dislikes the things and the kind of life to which God calls him. These are no
mere dogmatic statements. They are facts.… They alone explain the moral muddle and the
ugliness that characterise life to such an extent today.11
Salvation from original sin is only through the cross of Christ: “As through the one man’s
disobedience [Adam’s sin] the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the
One [Jesus Christ] the many will be made righteous” (Rom. 5:19). We are born in sin (Ps. 51:5),
and if we are to become children of God and enter God’s kingdom, we must be born again by
God’s Spirit (John 3:3–8).
In other words, contrary to what most people think—contrary to the presuppositions of
self-esteem doctrine—men and women are not naturally good. Just the opposite is true. We
are by nature enemies of God, sinners, lovers of ourselves, and in bondage to our own sin. We
are blind, deaf, and dead to spiritual matters, unable even to believe apart from God’s gracious
intervention. Yet we are relentlessly proud! In fact, nothing is more illustrative of human
wickedness than the desire for self-esteem. And the first step to a proper self-image is a
recognition that these things are true.
That is why Jesus commended the tax-gatherer—rather than rebuking him for his low self-
esteem—when the man pounded his chest and pleaded, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!”
(Luke 18:13). The man had finally come to the point where he saw himself for what he was, and
he was so overcome that his emotion released in acts of self-condemnation. The truth is, his
self-image had never been more sound than at that moment. Rid of pride and pretense, he now
saw there was nothing he could ever do to earn God’s favor. Instead, he pleaded with God for
mercy. And therefore he “went down to his house justified”—exalted by God because he had
humbled himself (v. 14). For the first time ever he was in a position to realize true joy, peace
with God, and a new sense of self-worth that is granted by God’s grace to those He adopts as
His children (Rom. 8:15).
