Believe in yourself?

Last night while surfing channels to find something to watch right before I went to bed I came across a channel playing the first service of Lakewood Church at the former Compaq Center. Joel Osteen was speaking and besides wowing at the size of the place and how full it was, the main message was "believe in yourself." Joel discussed how he had to believe in himself and not let the cynics get him down when he was working on moving his church to the Compaq Center.

It reminded me of something I recently read in G.K. Chesterton's "Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith," a book he wrote to answer the question, "if a man is not to believe in himself, in what is he to believe?"

"Shall I tell you where the men who are who believe in themselves more colossally than Napoleon or Caesar. I know where flames the fixed star of certainty and success. I can guide you to the thrones of the Supermen. The men who really believe in themselves are all in lunatic asylums....."

"If you consulted your business experience instead of your ugly individualistic philosophy, you would know that believing in himself is one of the commonest signs of a rotter. Actors who can't act believe in themselves; and debtors who won't pay. It would be much truer to say that a man will certainly fail, because he believes in himself. Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness. Believing utterly in one's self is a hysterical and superstitious belief like believing in Joanna Southcote."