Another contribution is the awareness that a child's self-concept is dependent on what he or she thinks adults think of him or her rather than what the adults think they think. Admittedly, the Bible has been saying this for a long time. This does not mean permissiveness, but calls for more careful admixture of leadership and servanthood on the part of adults than we have realized. The church has tended to come down hard on the side of parental authority and children's submission. There is, however, a fateful flaw in the world's way of encouraging a good self-concept, as Dr. Bernie Sachs pointed out to a number of us some years ago.
Modern people hold with childlike faith to the theory of human autonomy.
Any suggestion that there is a god to whom we are accountable and who established some inflexible moral absolutes is resisted fiercely. Without a transcendent source, the human self is left to chase its tail. This kind of circular thinking can only lead to arrogance, and arrogance is inevitably destructive of a good self-concept. It is an addiction that feeds on itself and resists our best efforts to control it. There is an important element of truth in the assertion that people are good.