Category: SELF-WORTH

  • He who hates himself is not humble.

    The Trouble With Being Born
    Emil Cioran

  • Someone with absolutely nothing to prove, to yourself or to anyone else, and doesn’t require others’ admiration. Someone who has come clean with God in your transgressions and who is, in fact constantly coming clean with him. Transparent to God, you have broken the shackles of self-justification, constantly trying to rationalize your sins. You have attained the humility of accepting God’s love and forgiveness. Your goal is not to impress or to blame, and certainly not to judge anyone. That’s the freedom attained through humility and repentance.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • So we have to discern this concept of self-acceptance thoughtfully as well. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh said, in one of his informal talks to his parish, “Accept yourself, as a stone given to a sculptor. Accept how you are and that you need work to reveal the statue, i.e. what you truly can be.” In other words, reconcile yourself to being you, a beautiful creature but a work in progress. Accept also that you must give yourself over to God’s sculpting. Because there are elements that need refining and others that need excision to reveal the genuine you.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • So the messages we hear, exhorting us to build up our self-esteem, are correct, but they go astray when they tell us to do so through an unbridled self-pampering, especially through unchecked consumerism.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • And then of course there is the damage to oneself. On the milder level, consider the person who is unaware of what she is truly capable of achieving, and is held back all his or her life by low self-esteem.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff

  • People with poor self-worth make the rest of the world suffer for it.

    How to Be a Sinner
    Peter Bouteneff