704) There are trends in our world that are humorous. I can’t help but watch another funny cat video. Some trends are phrase-related. If you look at words that have been recently added to our English dictionaries, you might find, selfie, and woke (used in a different way). One trend that particularly catches my ear is, “I need to take a Me Day.” This is logical as our culture has shifted to making sure that you love yourself, treat yourself, pamper yourself and more. I don’t think there is something wrong with the idea that we need to build our self-respect but there’s a balance (and, yes, it’s hard to find). We need to make sure we are not confusing self-adulation with self-respect.

1 Samuel 15 tells us that Israel’s King Saul is pretty good at self-adulation. In fact, he sets up a monument to himself in verse 12 instead of tending to his responsibilities.

I think this is a good example of why self-adulation is not a good thing, it can be very distracting and it does not lend itself to building your self-respect. Self-respect comes from hard work, following the rules, building relationships and just plain old loving others. Time spent in self-adulation totally blocks the good we could be doing.