Happy Tensions: Humility + Contentment
I’ve recently come to see how un-humble I am (read: prideful), and am desperately in need of the Gospel, and being specifically humble before my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.
Humility is a reoccurring theme, and truly the answer for all my problems in this two-second earthly life. A right assessment of self (humility), and a proper view of circumstances, as in contentment (see here ).
On this theme, there seems to be a strange paradox at work in my life. Why is it that sometimes I am more authentic with people I know are not Christian than with fellow believers and leaders in the church. Not overall as a huge difference in character on display, but in spots and situations. Why is that? Why do I ‘edit my story’ and try to come across as competent and gifted and a good leader? Anyone else struggle with this? (It is sin, and we must repent of it, and flee it .. but how?)
An incisive quote by Tim Keller addresses part (or at least the center) of my dilemma in his book The Reason for God . He writes:
"Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity, apart from him…Sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God" (p. 162).
(Thanks to Jake Belder for the reminder .)
That is my problem — making good (not at all sinful things) into the ultimate things. I suffer with this self-idolatry, being a task-oriented, generally productive and competent (with a Type-A personality fueling it all). By default I find significance in what I do , which is a perversion of identity and life purpose before God. Rather, my significance is found in Christ, my life hidden with Him in God — in fact, Jeff is dead (Col. 3:3). That’s the reordering of life under the Gospel.
Unless we are diligent in seeking humility (since we cannot simply "do" it) we will not be progressing on the trajectory towards Christ-likeness. To long to fulfill what Andrew Murray defines humility as: "simply the sense of entire nothingness, which comes when we see how truly God is all, and in which we make way for God to be all " [Andrew Murray, Humility , p. 12].
A passage that keeps coming to mind is 1 Corinthians 8:1-3:
Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.
It probably took about three hours wrestling with those verses to scratch the surface of what they mean for my identity, seeking knowledge and loving God in all things. (Still wresting with it.) Knowledge is not bad, nor is seeking knowledge a vain pursuit. The issue is with motives, issues of the heart and mind. Why am I seeking knowledge? For God’s glory and my joy? Is my learning a loving act towards God and others? Loving God is the chief goal (display His infinite worth and glory, by enjoying Him through love). And all knowledge should serve to help us know, love and enjoy God above all else. But of course none of this can be done in a vacuum, to the exclusion of others. We do not live to ourselves, and even in living to God we affect (and should) others greatly. If we wish to help others see Christ as beautify and glorious as He is, then we must be actively loving others. That is how the world will know Christ is in us, that He knows us (John 13:35). And that is what I am learning. Humbled, learning contentment. Happily.
I guess that if you are a Christian reading this then I’m being authentic with you after all…
May 28th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
I took a systematic theology class this past semester that in part dealt with biblical anthropology, and I still think about it almost every day. I’ve never thought so much and so hard about what it means to have our identity located and centered in Christ. The implications are phenomenal and so far-reaching I don’t know that I’ll ever comprehend it. So I’m identifying a lot with what you’re saying here, Jeff.
May 29th, 2008 at 7:20 pm
“The implications are phenomenal and so far-reaching I don’t know that I’ll ever comprehend it.”
I totally agree, Jake, as you might guess.
Tim Keller and Darrin Patrick especially (as well as others like John Piper and my good friend Adam Poole) have helped me — well, almost as much as my wife! — realize that seeking to find value in what I do is a vain pursuit, and that to be “in Christ” is the greatest reality/title ever. A Son, a beloved child of God, a saint while simultaneously a sinner, yes, becoming the man God has redeemed me to be. And God loves me now, and not just a future version of me!? An incredible and never-ending journey, to be “be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law [performance], but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Phil. 3:9). Union with Jesus is the most mysterious and beautiful truths ever.
I think studying true Identity is like the Gospel, the deep end we get to swim in, continually, and always looking outside our fallen selves.