Last Sunday I preached on the call of Moses (Exodus 3 and 4, long readings for a Sunday!) and noted that God became very angry when Moses said "oh but I can't..." I came away challenged to consider my own tendency to self-deprecation (is that a Christian thing? A girl thing?) and felt as if God was saying "thou shalt not run thyself down" (God, it seems, does still sometimes speak KJV English!). So I'm trying ... (very, oops. done it again).
But then today I was re-reading Matthew 16:24 - 28 and the call to 'deny self' and, even as I type the words of one of the epistles (it's good enough for Paul and Jesus to say 'it is written', so it's good enough for me...) 'consider others better than yourself', have forced me to ponder a little more deeply.
This is what I think - have thought for ages, even if I'm not too good at the practice of it - we should have an honest view of ourselves, recognising that we have worth in Gods eyes, that we are indeed 'fearfully and wonderfully made.' We should rejoice in what we are good at, but never become vain or arrogant. We should be honest about what we are not good at, never pretending we better than we are. We should have a good sense of self-worth, not consider ourselves miserable worms, but never become self-obsessed.
Churches, for some reason, seem to be places where this healthy balance is especially hard to find. Some of us find ourselves constantly criticised and put-down, even when we have worked hard and done our best. Some of us - probably very few - find that everything we do is celebrated as wonderful even when it isn't. There is a balance to be struck, and Christian niceness and Ecclesiastical negative-critical comments are not it.
So, I will try harder not to run myself down, to receive and absorb the compliments I receive and not to be squashed by careless negatives. At the same time, I will continue to affirm and encourage others - whilst trying not to fall into the trap of failing to acknowledge that which is not good for what it is.
I think this means finally conceding I'm a competent theologian and half-decent minister as well as a mighty fine risk assessor!
Comments
I'm reading about the prayer of examen at the moment. Not having dabbled much in Ignatian (?) spirituality, I'm still weighing up what I'm reading, but the notion of weighing up the positives ('consolation'/what has brought me life) alongside the negatives ('desolation'/what has robbed me of life) seems to be striving for the same sense of balance in the context of God-centred contemplation.
Richard Foster talks about the need to conduct the prayer of examen with God accompanying us. It's more than just self-examination, so we end up neither merely beating oursleves up nor overestimating our own virtues.
Reflecting honestly with trusted others may also be a way of achieving some measure of balance.
On a practical level, you seem once again to have drawn up an appropriate action plan! One day I'm going to have to stop reading all this stuff and actually putting it into practice - but that's probably just the self-deprecation in me talking!
Just read this on Maggi Dawn's blog, a quote from elsewhere:
Recently someone paid me the enormous compliment of telling me I was normal. I fear that those aspiring to be ministers of God need take that to heart. To stand out from the crowd as a church minister you only have to be normal. The bar's pretty low.
Does that hold the balance?