Long Distance Runaround

I heard two excellent sermons on Sunday. My very own pastor is preaching through the Beatitudes (helpfully distracting me from his point every time he reminds us how inadequate the phrase "the attitudes you oughta be at" is), and this week's verse was:

"Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

Tom pointed out various things that meekness isn't, including being the guy who sits in the back of the room, trying not to be noticed...or the guy who sits in front of his computer, day after day, bothering no one. To be meek isn't to be a shrinking violet - it's to be the beautiful violet itself, which has no eyes to admire its own beauty.

To offer a more tried-and-true explanation of his excellent sermon, I'll quote C.S. Lewis. Tom had a similar quote from someone else, but that quote reminded of this one by Lewis, from Mere Christianity:

Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call "humble" nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you'll think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him... He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

This rings very true, of course. I know that I think about myself far too much. Scarily, my cognizance of this indicates that there was probably a point in my past when I thought about myself so much I didn't have enough time to think about how much I thought about myself.

Honestly, though, that's not what scares me most. Want to know what does? You're still reading, aren't you? Well, what scares me most about this... is how heartily we'll agree with it. So heartily (as it often is with Truth), in fact, that I am led to suspect that there must be something in the practical application that we're missing completely.

I'd suggest that what we're 'missing' is our ability to completely reconstruct our personalities in a way that allows us to believe we're no longer thinking about ourselves.

Huh-what? Let's take this one step at a time. When I am reminded that I think about myself too much, what is my first reaction? Generally, it's to (gasp) think about how I shouldn't do that. That, of course, is more thinking about myself. Fine, we all get that, and we often eventually realize we're doing this. Next step? For some, we remind ourselves the great Truth about putting off sin, and putting on Christ, or good works, or what-have-you. Fair enough. So now we're thinking about Christ, or how, because He loves me, I ought to love my neighbor, and that if I love my neighbor, maybe she will see how good Christ is, and love Him, and love her neighbors, and then maybe this world won't be such a terrible place - oh, but wait, remember that the world will always be a terrible place 'til Christ returns, and of course, it's not just my neighbors' fault, it's mine too, because I don't live like I should...anyway, it's still Good to build the kingdom of God, and it's lovely that He allows us to participate in that, and I wonder what I can do better tomorrow to love Him and love my neighbors? (This is usually the point where I fall asleep, of course, since I've been thinking while lying in my bed - but that's an issue for another time.) Some of you may have better luck in having those thoughts on a regular basis than I do - some, perhaps, less. Other times, or perhaps all the time with some people, maybe the thoughts are more general - how can I improve my community/environment/world/galaxy/local playground?

All of these are fine - nay, necessary thoughts to have. What concerns me is what we do next. This, by the way, often takes a whole lifetime (this pearl coming to you from my extensive experience with lifetimes), or at least many years to come to fruition, making it (again, from my experience) very hard for us to see in ourselves. What we often do next is, over time, teach ourselves to think about ourselves less, and the goal more. Whatever that goal may be - starting schools, building churches, feeding orphans and widows - we start pouring ourselves into it. When someone makes a comment in church about how many inner-city folks are poor because they refuse to work, my mental militia is marshaled immediately ("But they've been deprived of every social advantage you've ever had! In the city, there's no work to do! When's the last time you actually talked to one of these people, anyway!?"). If an actual discussion ensues, I am often deeply offended or annoyed (on behalf of the important cause I am defending, of course!) by the very real blindness that my brother or sister is displaying.

This is sin, of course - indulgence in hatred and anger is usually pretty easy to identify once you start talking about it openly. But what motivated the sin? Surely, my sympathies are with the people living in miserable conditions in the inner city, not with my own comfort, wealth, or personal liberty? I would suggest that the sin was motivated by the fact that, while convincing myself that I am tearing down the fortress of my own self-absorption, I have silently rebuilt my personality around 'the cause.' This may sound labor-intensive, but it is really rather easy to do, and tremendously tempting. Why? Let me go out on a limb here, and declare that none of my readers will ever be as wealthy as Warren Buffett. You won't, in all likelihood, end up as President of the United States of America. You probably won't even be on the evening news. Your name will not endure in the annals of history, and even if you DO become President, what will you really be remembered for? How well (or poorly) you managed to implement the great programs that you championed, first as a candidate, and then as the Commander-In-Chief. Your only shot at immortality is to be identified with an enduring system - an enduring cultural good (to borrow from the excellent language of Culture Making, which I recommend more highly than any book I've read in the past year, excepting only The Idiot). Whether you know this consciously or not, this is your instinct for self-preservation - or, if you prefer, your striving to be like God - kicking in behind the scenes to keep you satisfied with a life that is otherwise clearly moving toward its end. "If you will identify yourself with causes, then you can live this life without appearing to be selfish. If you pick those causes wisely, then it's a win-win!"

This evening, I read about Kendrick Perkins, the center for the Boston Celtics, who won't be playing in Game 7 of the NBA finals because he tore his MCL and PCL in Game 6, last night. I don't know the man's heart, but I know my own. In his words, however, this is how I would identify myself with a cause:

"...it's not about me. We're trying to win a championship. It's not about me. And I don't want the focus to be on me -- for my teammates. I don't want nobody feeling sorry for anything like that. We got a game to win. I want them to stay focused. I'm going to be all right. It's an important game. I appreciate my teammates and coaches that they're concerned. But it's not about me. It's about winning a title."

Well, that's great. Obviously quite the team player. Except, if it were me, I know I would say those same words, and the reason for those words? I want a title. I want a championship ring. Sure, I'll be thrilled for my teammates, too. I'll be very happy for the fans. I'll give away my championship bonus (I know nothing about basketball, bear with me here) to the underprivileged kids in Boston. Because I, yes, I, won an NBA championship! If all my teammates will just please forget that I'm injured, so that they can focus on winning (me) a championship, I will be very, very content!

Thing is, there's really no getting around this. We are on Christ's team. When He wins, we win. When the brokenness of this world is defeated, even a little, by the feeding of a homeless man in downtown Baltimore, we do actually win. But as soon as we start buying into the idea that these victories are worth pursuing, we'll also start reconstructing our own personalities around them. It goes from being a cult of personality focused on my very obvious desires (money, sex, power) to a cult of personality built around all the things I've turned myself into (the crusader for human rights, the Habitat for Humanity builder, the retired Marine officer, the bold evangelistic preacher). So it's still about me, and not about Christ.

Jesus came to set us free from ourselves (the sinful 'flesh'). Free to love Him, free to follow Him, free to find our identity in Him. He doesn't expect us to have no personality at all; He does expect that it not be focused on ourselves, whether through sarcastic, grade-school humor designed to exalt ourselves in the presence of our peers, or through clever political satire designed to make the institutions we've staked our lives on look better than those of our adversaries.

If you find yourself offended by someone's comments about something near and dear to you, ask yourself Why? - and don't settle for the easy answer. If you are constantly getting lathered up about politics, or economics, or social justice, or the unity of the Church, ask yourself, Why? There may indeed be something of the driving-out-the-money-changers-with-a-whip in your motives...but there is guaranteed to be something of the cutting-off-the-ear-of-the-high-priest's-servant in there as well. Pray that you will not be so easily hoodwinked by your ability to love yourself by proxy as you are relying on everyone else to be.

Jesus is the only way to be meek. He is the only one who was meek. I must not turn Jesus, or any of the innumerable, good things that He loves, into that beautiful, new, granite pillar that everyone simply must go see, in order that they will be thinking only of how wonderfully meek I am when they finally see the golden statue of me, high and aloft, in the center of the square.