Christian theology is not too big on self-esteem

Christian theology goes against the grain of modern psychology, such as in the issue of self-esteem. Whereas we are taught that we are all good and should feel good (consider, for instance, the many Dove commercials, with self-esteem as the battle cry), Stephen Charnock, an English Puritan clergyman, wrote this about man as he pondered on the doctrine of regeneration.

In ourselves we are nothing, we have nothing, can bring forth nothing spiritually good and acceptable to God; a mere composition of enmity to good and propensity to evil, of weakness and wickedness, of hell and death; a farden of impotence and conceitedness, perversity and inability, every way miserable unless infinite compassion relieve us We have no more freedom than a chained galley slave till Christ redeem us; no more strength than a putrefied carcass till Christ raise us, an unlamented hardness, an unregarded obstinacy, an insensible palsy spread over every part, a dreadful cannot and will not triumphing in the whole soul.