Every once in a while, I come across an article or book that exemplifies the best of what Christ-animated scholarship can and should be. I recently came across one such article in the field of psychology that addressed the topic of human worth.
The concepts of self-worth and self-esteem have a long history in the discipline of psychology going back to William James and have been the subject of numerous books and studies. For example, a 2017 article noted that the “WorldCat bibliographic database yielded 6,177 books (both print and electronic) the titles of which include ‘self-esteem,” and 18,365 books on the subject of self-esteem.”1 And that is just books and not academic articles.
These are also topics that have received extensive exploration, critique, and redemptive correctives from Christians in the popular Christian press. For example, I remember going through the book Search for Significance in college and learning some great truths about how God thinks about my own identity and worth.
While these corrective books directed to a Christian audience are important, what Christian scholars and/or practitioners frequently fail to do is build an alternative scholarly theory from a Christian viewpoint that can be used and promoted in the broader academic discipline. That’s why when I came across, Steven Rouse’s 2012 article, “Universal Worth: Construct and Scale Development” in the Journal of Personality Assessment, I took notice.2
Rouse’s article begins the work of creating an alternative theory informed by Theism that can be set forth and applied within the broader academic profession. Rouse (2012) defined universal worth “as the belief that all humans (including oneself) are equally valued by a deity, and therefore each possesses intrinsic worth.”3
He goes on to explain that there are three key interrelated components to universal worth: “valuing one’s self because of a belief that one is valued by a deity (i.e., personal value), believing that one’s value is not contingent on successes and virtues or failings and vices (i.e., non-contingence), and believing that no person is valued more or less than any other (i.e., universality).”4 Thus, universal worth is not derived from a person’s accomplishments, their own sense of being better than others, or contingent evaluations of others.
Rouse’s theory is important because it allows others of us to build on it using additional empirical work. For example, scholars have found evidence that less contingent sources of worth, such as God’s love, are more secure sources of worth.5 Indeed, past research has found that depression symptoms and suicide risk were markedly lower for students with secure (i.e., high yet noncontingent) self-esteem.6
Moreover, these findings have been replicated in high-performance contexts. In a sample of elite athletes, researchers found athletes with a performance-based self-narrative profile (i.e., self-worth contingent on performance) had the highest levels of depression, anxiety, and shame as well as the lowest life satisfaction, whereas those with a purpose-based self-narrative profile (i.e., high universal worth) had the lowest levels of mental health illness indicators and highest life satisfaction.7
Finally, unlike finding worth in one’s appearance or others’ approval, recognizing and internalizing universal worth is not simply a matter of situational variables. It requires moral education and development. That is why, religious communities need to teach that people should find their worth in God or the divine. It does not simply happen “naturally” or “organically.”
Rouse’s theoretical groundwork also helped provide the foundation for some qualitative research our research team was doing. We have been asking college students this question: What gives you worth and value? Unfortunately, our findings, recently published in Self and Identity, reveal that first and second-year Christian college students at both elite Christian and secular institutions are not necessarily adept at finding their worth and value in God.
Interestingly, we found that Christian students in secular universities were doing a much better job. In fact, 16 of 24 students involved with a Christian Study Center at one campus found their worth and value in God—through the universal worth that Rouse described. (e.g., “through God, I have inherent value”). In contrast, at one Catholic university, only 1 out of 24 students made that connection.
What our research adds to Rouse’s theory is that we found Christian students find worth in five different ways. First,
They focused on God’s vision (e.g., “the value that God sees in me”) or God’s words about them (e.g., “my goal is to be defining my worth as to, ‘What does God say about me?’”) …. Second, another significant group of students (n = 13) focused on their status according to a particular God-bestowed identity (e.g., “Really, my deepest value is just intrinsically in the fact that I’m made in God’s image and likeness”) … Third, more than a dozen students (n = 13) mentioned their reliance upon God’s steadfast love. Parker explained his noncontingent source of worth in this manner, “There is simply not anything I can do, for better or for worse that will diminish God’s love for me.”… Fourth, a few students (n = 6) also pointed to God’s salvific actions as a source of their worth (e.g., “finding meaning in being saved by Christ” … Finally, some students (n = 5) shared how a cognitive understanding of God’s creation of them and personal knowledge of them served as their source of value. As Kara shared, “I think I feel valuable when I look around at creation and see and think and reflect on how God has made all of this, but He knows me by name. And He wants a relationship with me.8
When presenting this important truth to our students, we can use all five ways to help them understand this point.
In fact, the best approach would be to combine an understanding of all five views. For example, one student’s response relied on three of the five:
I think it’s just like my head says the fact that I’m created by God, that I’m made in his image, that he loves me with an everlasting love … I think, yeah, a lot times daily it’s just the fact that he continues to walk with me in life and that he continues to show mercy to me when I turn against him in sin. I think being consistently forgiven and consistently invited into relationship is kind of like what makes me feel valuable.9
I hope that every Christian student, as well as other theists, leave the university understanding the source of their true worth in similar multi-faced ways.
This finding has led me to expand the original statement I placed on my syllabus. It used to read, “I want to remind you that your worth and value as a person does not depend upon your grades, or what you, your parents, or friends think of your grades. It depends upon the reality that you are made in God’s image with intrinsic worth.” I have now revised it to include additional sources of worth, “It depends upon the reality that you are made in God’s image, viewed by God as having intrinsic worth, and loved deeply by God.”
I also hope that more Christian scholars publish articles similar to Steven Rouse’s work. There are creative and redemptive ways that we can set forth Christ-animated scholarship in the wider scholarly world. For example, recent research in gratitude has recognized that we need to distinguish between and understand the importance of gratitude to God and not simply gratitude in general (for a helpful journal article that contains and uses the Gratitude to God scale see here). I could see how research exploring how stewarding one’s body for God versus stewarding one’s body for one’s self or others might be different. There are likely plenty of ways in your discipline you can advance these kinds of conversations.
Footnotes
- Tamara L Eromo and David A. Levy, “The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of ‘Self-Esteem’: A Critique, Reconceptualization, and Recommendations,” North American Journal of Psychology 19, no. 2 (2017): 256.
- Steven Rouse, “Universal Worth: Construct and Scale Development,” Journal of Personality Assessment 94, no. 1 (2012): 62–72.
- Rouse, “Universal Worth,” 62.
- Rouse, “Universal Worth,” 62.
- Julie Arsandaux, Ilaria Montagni, Melissa Macalli, Vincent Bouteloup, Christophe Tzourio, and Cédric Galéra, “Heath Risk Behaviors and Self-Esteem Among College Students: Systematic Review of Quantitative Studies,” International Journal of Behavioral Medicine 27, no. 2 (2020): 142–159, https://doi.org/10.1007/s12529-020-09857-w; Elizabeth M. Bounds, Juliette L. Ratchford, and Sarah A Schnitker, “Profile Membership of Self-Worth Contingencies Predicts Well-being, Virtues, and Values, Journal of Happiness Studies 25, no. 4 (2024): 42, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-024-00758-3; Michael H. Kernis, “Toward a Conceptualization of Optimal Self-Esteem, Psychological Inquiry 14, no. 1 (2003): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327965PLI1401_01.
- Chad E. Lakey, Jameson K. Hirsch, Lyndsay A. Nelson, and Sheri A. Nsamenang, “Effects of Contingent Self-Esteem on Depressive Symptoms and Suicidal Behavior,” Death Studies 38, no. 9 (2014): 563–570, https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2013.809035.
- Benjamin J. Houltberg, Kenneth T. Wang, and Sarah A. Schnitker, “Religiousness and Perceived God Perfectionism Among Elite Athletes,” Movement and Being: The Journal of the Christian Society for Kinesiology, Leisure and Sport Studies 4, no. 1 (2017): 29–46, https://doi.org/10.7290/jcskls04ur31.
- Perry L. Glanzer, Jessica Martin, Elizabeth Bounds, Theodore F. Cockle, Sarah A. Schnitker, and Karen K. Melton, “The Challenge of Finding Noncontingent, Universal Worth for Elite U.S. College Students,” Self and Identity 23, no. 3-4 (2024): 277–78, https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2024.2357848.
- Glanzer et al., “Finding Noncontingent, Universal Worth,” 278.
