A few decades ago the concept of self esteem crashed into the psychological and educational world. The theory was that aggression, promiscuity, and all manner of anti-social behavior were rooted in poor self-esteem. As a result, schools, psychological institutions and even churches embarked in massive campaigns to improve the beleaguered esteem of people everywhere. Competition, comparison and absolute performance evaluations were curtailed and effort was the ultimate acheivment.
The idea was nice, but the results have been mixed. Further research in this massive social experiment now suggests self esteem is more complex than whether we feel positive or negative about ourselves. Rather than discuss esteem in simplistic terms, I believe that the subtleties of our mindset is what matters. The Hebrew people had a slave mindset and it affected how they looked at the Promised Land and what they were willing to do. How we view our role in the world becomes our mindset and determines our belief in whether or not we can make this world a better place.
God created us to have a servant mindset. A servant mindset possesses a sense of human worth and dignity and extends this to others. It is able to hear and respond positively to criticism. It can evaluate a changing world and adapt when needed. It has the capacity to give and receive love, manage anger, and reject the hatred and malice of others. A servant mindset takes reasonable risks for gain, is willing suffer for the good, and can do both without resentment when things don’t turn out they way they planned.
A servant mindset is nurtured in our relationship with God when we love and serve him first and our neigbhors as ourselves.
On the other hand, hyper controlling sociopaths (like the Egyptian slave masters) use to abuse, violence, and absolute disregard for human dignity to create a slave mindset. Personal dignity and worth is obliterated and abuse comes to be perceived as deserved. Tragically, this mindset can feel more at home with anger, malice, and hatred than love, charity, and kindness. The dominance of fear prevents someone with a slave mindset from connecting with others and being a part of community. This is all the malicious goal of the slave master to keep the slave under his control.
How do you think four hundred years of slavery impacted the Hebrew people’s sense of self? How could they have gotten rid of their slave mindset? How can this mindset creep into our lives today and what can we do about it?
