God has a thing for the
lowly.
- The lowly he sets on high (Job 5:11)
- He looks kindly on the lowly (Ps 138:6)
- The lowly in spirit gain honor (Pr 29:23)
- The lowly will be exalted (Ez 29:14)
- Whoever takes the lowly position...is the greatest in
the kingdom of heaven (Matt 18:4)
Actually throughout the Bible we
read stories of God choosing and using the lowliest people. David was the
youngest of his brothers, Ruth was a beggar and a foreigner, Mary was a teenage
peasant, most of the disciples were poor fishermen, the people on whom Jesus
poured out compassion were the outcasts, the broken, and the harassed. And he
counted himself among them. He, himself, was lowly.
So I've been asking
myself, "Jenn, do you count yourself among the lowly?"
I went to Amazon to see
if there were any books on the subject. After all, Jesus talked about and modeled
lowliness so frequently, you'd think that "lowliness" would be all
the rage among his followers. There were a few books about Jesus' lowliness on
the the third and fourth search pages. The first pages were filled with
"Lowly the Worm," a Richard Scarry children's book character. Maybe
Lowly the Worm has something to teach me, but I didn't see any titles like 40
Days of the Lowly Life, or Becoming the Lowlife God Made You to Be,
or Your LOWLIEST Life Now!
As I reflect on what it
means to be lowly, I am tempted to sanitize the idea. To turn it into a state
of mind rather than a state of being. After all, the word is clearly related to
humility, meekness, poverty of spirit. Those words are so much prettier and
easier to dress up. And they allow me to keep my dignity intact.
The world trains us to
disguise our lowliness, to despise our lowliness, and to do everything we can
to deny our lowliness. And it feels like much of the Christian evangelical world
feeds us the same lines, only they translate them to Christian-ese. “Work hard
and God will bless your efforts.” “God wants you to succeed.” “God loves you and
has a wonderful plan for your life.” I wonder what the martyrs would say to
that one!
I’m not against success.
I don’t think God is either. I’m against success being a way to avoid the
reality of our own desperate depravity and lowliness. I'm against the idea that
changing the circumstances of my health or my wealth can (or should) enable me
to overcome my lowliness. And I’m really against the idea that God would want
such a thing for me.
Because whether I count
myself among the lowly or not, lowly is what I am. Christ, who is one with the
Father, became lowly through the incarnation. I was born into it. And I’m
beginning to realize that the Christian life isn’t about overcoming my
lowliness, but embracing it. This is the economy of the upside-down kingdom,
where first is last and gold is pavement.
Well said, Jenn. I have the same thoughts about the American Christian obsession with "success".
ReplyDelete