Hey Access Teens!

Here is an answer to a question that has totally confused many people (including yours truly.) Read it over and enjoy!

As I sat there drinking my deliciously, over-priced (and seldom gotten) white chocolate mocha, enjoying a great conversation with a great guy… a question was brought my way that I totally wasn’t ready for! It was a good question too! So I thought for a moment… and then another moment… and I was genuinely stumped.

The question was, “is it bad to be self-confident?” Now this was coming from a great young man who’s living “all out” for God, yet he often found it difficult being “self-confident.” Probably because it felt so much like pride! Now I’ve heard many of the modern self-confidence theories, and have probably used a few myself, but when I was brought face to face with this question, I found it hard to tell him that self-confidence was ok.

So after getting into my car, I began to think, and verses began to come into my head. Verses like, being confident of this very thing… or In the fear of the Lord is strong confidence… or even better the LORD shall be thy confidence... And I saw a common thread, THERE WAS NO MENTION OF SELF ANYWHERE. (at least in the verses where confidence was a good thing)

So I pulled out my phone, and my thumbs began to write furiously, and this is what they came up with!      Enjoy:

Beginning of (unedited) personal Note:

“Pride has to do with self, strength has to do with truth. When one is focused on living for the truth and knows that they are standing on the truth they can be confident. When one’s confidence is in one’s own merits or strengths one is prideful and vainly (worthlessly) so. One may know that he is strong and not be proud, but once a person rests his confidence in his strength he is proud. Weak people are proud people, and false humility is also pride.

In today’s world confidence is paraded, but on faulty terms. Confidence isn’t admirable unless the one who is confident is right and humble. Bravado isn’t confidence, it is a weak man trying to act like a strong man. It is a small man acting large. It is as when a little dog feels he is the alpha and is not and thus must go about barking incessantly.

Strength and confidence come from temperance (the ability to hold oneself to an absolute moral standard). It is knowing that one stands on the absolute truth. This knowledge is what brings confidence. And the arrival at this knowledge must not be paraded, for that would also be pride. To safe guard against that form of pride one must realize that they were not the creator of that truth, but merely a discoverer.

Is self confidence necessary?

It is largely accepted that to thrive in this society, one must have a certain amount of “self-confidence.” Meaning one must have an adequate view of one’s self. My question is though, as a Christian, is “is self confidence actually necessary?”

I propose that confidence and self-confidence are not one and the same, and therefore self confidence is not necessary. 

Self-confidence has its basis in the fact that “I am good enough,” whereas the basis for confidence is, “the truth I stand for is good enough.”

This may seem like semantics but I assure you it is not.

How does this play out?

A self confident person must promote themselves constantly. They cannot take a blow to their image or else they lose confidence. But a confident person can take personal defacement and still remain confident because of the solid foundation of truth they are resting on.

Self confident people possess a vain confidence because the object of their confidence is unsure. Humans are fickle and unreliable and therefore any absolute trust in oneself is destined to be absolutely disappointed. This adds to the weakness of this false confidence. Self confidence is so hard to attain because we know ourselves and can’t trust ourselves with our own absolute confidence.

Confidence, on the other hand, is absolute and sure. I don’t have to be bashful when I say that 2+2=4, why? Not because I’m something special, but because it is true and has nothing to do with me! I don’t make it true, it just is and that gives me confidence. Truth makes us bold! Even if I’m publicly ridiculed, I can be confident because I rest on absolute truth and not my own ideas about myself.

Self confident people are proud. They believe that they are worthy to be flaunted and that they themselves are something special. Conversely, confident people are confident only because of what they stand for, not because of who they think they are.

Self confident people must constantly give themselves value. Self confident people try to fool others into being confident in them by convincing their own self, on no proper basis, that they are valuable. Their confidence is merely biased opinion because it is their own. It is hard to have strong confidence on such a shaky foundation.

Confident people know their value based on truth. I have been created in the very Image of God, that means I am no less valuable than the president who was in the same way created. We are all equal in worth so we mustn’t worry ourselves with self worth. It is an empty pursuit. We already think we are worth something, from the braggart to the self depreciated, all of us think we are worth something. It is when we feel that others don’t view us as we view ourself that we take on one of these two extremes. We either must boast or feel sorry for ourselves when we feel as though the world doesn’t get how special we are.

Confident people understand that all of us are equal. This forgoes the need to prove oneself as well as helps us see others in a greater light and therefore are more loving and generous. Self confident people see themselves as superior in worth, confident people see themselves as equal in worth (not in roles or gifts). This confidence is based on truth. We are equal because we are all created by the same God. We are equal because we are all human. Therefore, based upon these truths, one can be confident.

Truth brings confidence and true confidence is humble. It doesn’t think about itself because it is forced to think of others as its equal. The confident realizes that all of its confidences rest not on himself but on the truth.

The confident mustn’t down himself either because he is no greater than and no less than any other human, but a confident man must rest on the facts, and the facts say that he is equal to humans but unequal to God. This creates a need to be reconciled.

If we, as imperfect created beings, have wronged our superior, we must be sorrowful. He is better than us and we need Him. He is the source of the very truth we rest on. The very nature of our situation demands that He act to provide the reconciling. Nothing we could do could force his hand because He is greater than us and innocent. We are less than He is and guilty. Therefore he must move toward us or we are without hope. And He did!! And now we can be confident because of the fact that he provided a way for us to be reconciled. We can be confident in the truth that He has made a way. We can be confident that we please Him when we follow his explicit commands.

Confidence must always be placed in something unfailing and outside of ourselves or else it is a false confidence. Therefore self confidence is foolish.”

That was the conclusion I came to, and I hope it helps you as you strive to be a confident teen in a self-confident world!

As always, Love you guys! Stand confidently on the Word! Stay focused on God and others, and not about what others are thinking about you 🙂 and remember that God is our confidence!