Ben Schnell

Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number..." We typically think of "being fruitful' as having children, but it means more than that. Plants can only bear fruit when they have sufficient resources. In the Bible, bearing fruit is a sign of thriving. Consider these examples: Psalms 1:3 says the righteous is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers. Psalms 92:12-14 says the righteous will flourish like a palm tree and still bear fruit in old age. Proverbs 12:14 says from the fruit of their lips people are filled with good things.  Jesus says in Matthew 7 that we can know men by the type of fruit they produce, “by their fruit you will know them.”  In Mark 11 Jesus cursed the fig tree because it would not bear fruit.  In John 11, Jesus encourages his disciples to abide in the vine, so that they will bear good fruit.  In the Bible, bearing fr...

 I was thinking about narcissism and how I had heard that narcissists are overcompensating for their self-doubt. I also considered my own pathological tendency to be a “people pleaser”. In therapy, a counselor asked me why I tend to walk on eggshells around people and tried too hard to be liked. I realized I’m a people pleaser because I have a desire to be liked by everyone, and that in some key ways I derive my sense of self-worth from the approval of others. With this in mind, a new realization started to form in my mind: Personality disorders (like my people pleasing) are misguided attempts to cope with our insecurities. I ran this idea by my Ivy League-educated neuroscientist brother-in-law, and he confirmed my suspicions. More than that however, he told me about many personality disorders I didn’t know about or hadn’t named, and showed how each of them relate to self-worth. I basically only knew about narcissism and people pleasing, and I had a vague idea what being histrionic...

What should we do if we have low self-worth? I don't have confidence in my answer to this question, but I think it's worth chewing on. In a previous post, I said that God designed us (and all life) to thrive, and in another post, I said that low self-worth is the most persistent barrier to thriving. The difficulty with self-worth is that, if you don't have it, you don't think you're worthy of it... It's a tragic cycle.  Part of the answer is that some people who struggle with acting poorly towards others have enough self-worth to put some effort into having more self-worth, once they're aware of how self-worth functions and relates to their happiness. But for those who don't believe they're worth improving, even for their own sakes, I'm a bit lost. My hope is that by showing them love, even if they're too self-absorbed (ironically) to love others, that someday, sometimes, that love will break through and show them that they are worthy. I beli...