UPFRONT July 19, 2010 Issue

THE JOYS OF TRUE SELF-DISCOVERY

KIM SHIPPEY, SENIOR WRITER

These days the self-help shelves in bookstores bulge with brightly colored volumes prescribing ways to improve your life, while the Internet offers dozens of questionnaires to set you on the right path.

The term self-esteem, which is all about valuing oneself, features prominently in these exercises, though not all the available resources point out that this quality can swing two ways—toward self-respect or self-conceit. And it doesn't appear that many of these questionnaires explore the possibility that the selfhood that's most valuable, and most worthy of respect, relates to God's likeness—which is our Sentinel focus this week.

This likeness is conscious only of good, and is incapable of anything weak or mean or hurtful. Most important, it is able to detect such sly errors as self-righteousness, self-interest, self-indulgence, and self-justification—and eliminate them.

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