I have had a conversation with a couple of different people over the last several weeks that have lead me to read the following excerpt from Eugene Peterson’s book God’s Message For Each Day in a unique way. Peterson writes,
“Michelangelo sculpted in marble what many Jews and Christians have carved in their imaginations—a flawless David, the spirited human body in perfection. But the Biblical text does not give us a flawless David. Putting people on pedestals is a way of not having to deal with who they really are (and who the God working in them really is). The Biblical narrator insists on telling us everything bad about David . . . The narrator refuses to idealize or glamorize him to show that God’s sovereignty works through just such a mixed bag of human failure and sin.”
Obviously, Peterson intends for us to consider times that we place others on a pedestal and are need to repent of that. However, I also think there is great application to the way that we perceive ourselves and the way we allow others to perceive us! If we allow ourselves to think that we have everything under control or to allow others to perceive us in the same way is to discount the fact that we rely on God for everything! Remember that God never calls us to be God! In fact, generally speaking, this was the desire of Adam and Eve that lead to the fall. Peterson writes, "God’s sovereignty works through a mixed bag of human failure and sin". Paul put it this way “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” God’s strength is shown in our weakness! We must quit pretending we have it all together. We must treat ourselves and others with grace and understanding. God does!
2 comments:
I think this issue actually causes the church a lot of problems. They want to seem better and all together as you put it. The problem is they are all human and this unhealthy idea of perfection gives the church a bad image. People seem to do the same with their pastors and this causes many problems cause they all seem to screwup as much as the rest of us. I think the church would be doing much better if it tried to become more human and less god like. By that I mean be a lot more open that we are only people and are all messed up. Honestly I doubt that will ever happen cause even if a number of christians were to try and be honest about their short comings there would always be the few holy rollers that would jacked it up.
Back to the point I do think that the harder the church and christians try to pretend to be perfect the worse their witness becomes. I could be wrong but I have yet to meet the person that can live up to expectations(besides chuck norris) so why try and set them rediculosly high. Non-christians already view the church as hypcritical so lets just make it harder for us to live up to the image we are suppose to portray. Well I am sure that didn't make much sense and it just seemed like a pointless or uneducated rant, but thats cool it made me feel better.
whytim,
Thanks for the comment. Some good words. However, I am most appreciative of getting Chuck Norris on the blog!
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