Edwards and self-affirmation

This flies in the face of modern concepts of self-affirmation which would recoil with ideas that consider ourselves anything less than the center of the universe:

Seek for a deep and abiding sense of your comparative meanness before God and man. 

Know God.

Confess your nothingness and ill-desert before him.

Distrust yourself.

Rely only on God.

Renounce all glory except from him.

Yield yourself heartily to his will and service.

Avoid an

aspiring,

ambitious,

ostentatious,

assuming,

arrogant,

scornful,

stubborn,

willful,

leveling,

self-justifying behavior; 

and strive for more and more of the humble spirit that Christ manifested while he was on earth.

Edwards does not just suggest that we should understand our "meanness" before God, but rather we should actively seek a sense of this lowness. This might very well be the tonic for the "world revolves around me" mentality that our culture imposes on all of us.