Do you do self-endorsements? Or act happy when you’re not? Or try to be more profound than you are? Call it low-level posturing. Wanting weight while living like a pillow. It’s pretty common. How many online identities are efforts in wannabe? Yet as we’re with others the truth emerges. We’re mostly like everybody else.
I fit in here. When I’m asked to deliver more content than I have, an “I don’t know” isn’t quick or easy. Honesty is humbling. Proud, on the other hand, is always ready to perform.
When I was a teacher, my job was to raise questions and offer answers. Yet when I was asked for something beyond my range, I could be a shallow well. Pretense was easy, especially when I was tired or distracted. When some authenticity would have been a fit.
So my aim here is to remind us that humility offers community. Realizing that most of us are ordinary most of the time in most settings. We can relax, then, and offer what matters most: our hearts. A daughter, son, student or friend is asking for relationship along with their questions. One provides context for the other. If we’re strong on care, we can relax in other ways. And even if we do have lots to offer, offering love and kindness is still the best place to start.
This isn’t a platitude. Life-change is sourced in love. As in 1 Corinthians 13:13, “… the greatest of these is love.” Jesus displayed this by coming from heaven to earth as a man. As the Son of God he was and is ultimate. He is both the creator and sustainer of the world. So to truly know him is to worship him. And, by his Spirit, to have him as our close companion throughout a day. It’s why he made us. As people birthed out of God’s expansive love to share his life with him.
But Jesus didn’t fit the leadership profile we might expect. He wasn’t a politician, an academic, a writer, or self-promotional. He was, instead, an itinerant teacher with a small band of close friends who were laborers or low-level professionals. From a plain northern district. He could, of course, be intense at times, as when he confronted hypocritical religious leaders. And he often used his divine ability to do miracles. Yet when John wrote about him the quality he elevated most was this: Jesus loved him.
It’s a lesson we need. Jesus—the ultimate God-man—drew ordinary people to himself with an honest care we can all understand. We aren’t called to him because we’re great. Instead he makes us bigger than we dreamed we could be—as sons of God—by responding to his love.
Start here. We’re all made as lovers, in the image of God who is love. But if we aren’t captured by him, we’ll chase lesser loves—loving the creation rather than the creator. And it’s an act of self-love if we decide for ourselves what makes someone worthy of our love. Yet when the real God comes to us in love—without calling on us to earn it—we relax. And any posturing or pretending is obnoxious.
It’s this last point we need to explore. Do we love the God of the Bible—who came in the manger at Bethlehem—rather than the selfish caricatures of humanity common in society?
Here are three Bible insights to consider.
First, Jesus did make us as very special. “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” [Eph. 2:10]. Yet to discover what he has in mind for us, we need to love him. There’s also a corollary here. He gives us an inclination to be what we’re made for. We instinctively want to do certain things that disclose our design. Call it the itch of a creation-identity. But if we aren’t bonded to him—in step with his Spirit—we’ll be unsettled. And we’ll need to pretend and posture.
Second, we are made as conduits of love, not as reservoirs. Romans 5:5 is key here: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” If we link this verse to Christ’s call for us to love God and neighbors [Mt. 22:37-40] we start to live life in continuity with our God who “is love.” A love that isn’t an end-in-itself. Instead he spreads his goodness to others, eternally. And our own “good works” are a display of our joy in sharing this love with others.
Third, as we receive God’s love we participate in his triune communion. Jesus, by his Spirit, gives his heart away, and we then share it with others. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control…” [Gal. 5:22-23].
An irony of our first experience of life—from before we loved Jesus—is that we had a form of love suspicious of God’s love. A selfless life made no sense with a broken soul; and the distortions of self-love—posturing and identity-shaping efforts—measured such a life. Yet Jesus invites his sheep—all who finally see self-love as emptiness—to repent. It can take time. As with Thomas who finally responded to the resurrected Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” Again, it can take time.
Once it comes, the “fruit of the Spirit” displays Christ’s qualities of life on earth. So when Jesus told his followers how to live out a new life of faith, this was key. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” [John 13:34-35]. The authentic church is a living display of Jesus sharing his love.
Our final “so what” of this reflection is that only God is “Ultimate.” And in Jesus God we have a bridge from ordinary to extraordinary. From being plain to having union with God. And once united to God, with his Spirit pouring out his love in us and through us, we reach the reality our hearts longed for. A life that replaces what was counterfeit with a deep joy.
We also have a new ambition. Paul prayed this in Ephesians 3:18-19—we get to “comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
Yes! The ultimate will fill what was once ordinary for the rest of eternity.
Merry Christmas!
Thank you, Ron. When I read the fourth paragraph my thought was “Amen!” Humility, community, and learning are like three legs of a stool. It requires all three to support the stool. The entire post is excellent. I have made reference to your blog in my own writing and what you have written here inspires me. I will write about this connection between between humility (as teachers) to build community to support learning in our classrooms because it is true, and I will certainly send my readers your way.
I hope you are doing well in your newest adventure. I wish you a merry Christmas brother, and I hope to see you soon.
Thanks so much, Scott! A Merry Christmas to you too!