"christianity" vs self-esteem?

Think my first question would be, does the pastor think everyone has to follow exactly what he says? Does he dictate his beliefs and claim them to be the gospel. If you disagree or don't follow church rules, are there disciplines/punishments? Or is he presenting his view and allowing others to decide for themselves? That would be a big difference for me.

Pastors don't always say things the way they would like to say it and sometimes they don't have time to finish explaining something they've started. So don't take things too literally. A pastor who is approachable wouldn't be defensive if you questioned him about his teachings - he would encourage you to think for yourself. Your experience might not be the same as his. Also remember his own upbringing may have a big influence on his view of God and Bible. In the same way your upbringing might also influence you.

What the preacher man must have been saying is...
If you painted a beautiful picture and are proud of the job you did,

Who should get the credit?

You could say God is the puppet master so God did it.
Or everything is Gods work even ours.
You could say something like God provided me with everything to enable me to paint this picture. The glory is his. And so on.

Or you could say you did it and have your own self esteem instead and thank the big bang.

Behold a picture has been painted by anonymous.

I agree about people having their own interpretation and there are so many variations and a lot of confusion. I have met some really friendly people who are Christian and was involved with church for a long time. But as someone who has had struggles over self-worth and identity stemming from childhood, I too found this concept of men being worthless without a God difficult to come to terms with. I really tried very much and my sense of self and self-esteem just fell so much that I decided that I wouldn't go back.

One thing I keep in the back of my head is something I read about how God reached out to man but religion is man's attempt to reach out to God; it's a two-way street and the Man-to-God one is human all the way.

All the rules, regulations, preaching, etc. is a human attempt to interpret that human's faith/ideas of what they see/believe to be true about God. But we all have to look at everything and see what we see and decide what we want to believe.

Some people are raised in "the" Church and accept/believe it because that's pretty much all they have known and others come from outside and look at what is there at any given church accept its message or a modified message, whatever.

I do not want to believe in a God that thinks I'm worthless or that did not give me my "Self", my originality and personality and attributes I have genetically inherited, etc. I don't want a "simple" god who is so easy to know (how many people do you get to know by reading a book? :-) or one who I take someone else's word for what he is like; kind of like a middle manager telling his employees what the "big boss"/owner is like?

I do not want a paternalistic god who thinks women are secondary and not equal in the scheme of things; women are over half of earth's population but not anywhere near that in esteem, self or otherwise!