I'm Nobody! Who are you?

(The Loser, Part II)
By: Emily Dickenson

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you -- Nobody -- Too?
Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!
They'd advertise -- you know!

How dreary -- to be -- Somebody!
How public -- like a Frog --
To tell one's name -- the livelong June --
To an admiring Bog!

The Loser

I was rocking out to Switchfoot today on my way home from driving a friend to his house. Switchfoot rocks. Hence me rocking out to their music. Anyways, there I was driving along when the guys start into a song with a groovy riff at the beginning of it. I start into that head groove bounce thing that lets people know I'm way cool enough to be "feeling" the music, but I'm definitely not a wierdo-idiot-moron-loser kid flailing his hands in the air wildly. I'm too cool for that. Jon Foreman starts to sing:

"Only the losers win / They've got nothing to prove / They'll leave the world with nothing to lose / You can laugh at the weirdos now / Wait till wrongs are right / They'll be the ones with nothing to hide"

So if the losers are winners, what does that make the cool kids? The superstars? The popular ones? The ones with all the fans? I think most people with any religious affiliation whatsoever are familiar with the Bible verse that says not to store up treasures on earth, so that when you get to eternity (which, as a side note, I don't believe you "get to eternity" . . . more on that later) you will have everlasting treasures.

I think there is another aspect to this concept though. Storing up treasures in heaven is a very abstract concept. Most things about God are very abstract. If they weren't, God wouldn't be God. If we understood God completely, He would not by so . . . mystical. All that to say, I believe God stuck another, more concrete aspect on to this concept of not making yourself so cool now that you can't be cool later. Of course in eternity there is no "later." But that's beside the point.

About three paragraphs into writing this, my dad called us all to a devotional time. I was hesitant to go. I was really having a great time blogging. But off I went, cause dad is dad, and dad knows best. Turns out, he often does. Anyways, we settled in on the tree and the chaff in Psalm 1. The whole chapter is not long; I'll put it down here.

1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.

2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.

4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.

5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.

6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

I didn't know what chaff was. I looked it up. In case anyone else is as oblivious as I, chaff is what covers the seed in fast growing grains such as wheat and barley. (During devotions I pretended to know what it was so that I could remain an intelligent component in the conversation. I recently had it impressed upon me that this is a bad idea. Wisdom asks. That came from dad.) So dad told us about how trees grow slowly, but they grow to be massive, powerful, fruitful things. And trees never stop growing. Chaff on the other hand, springs up in less than a year, but is thrown away at harvest time.

We were made to be trees. We weren't made for instant fame. Almost every person out of high school that I've talked to about the subject has said that the cool kids in high school are the losers now. Either that or they're just never heard from again. Losers only have one direction to go. When you're at the bottom, there's not much that can pull you down any farther. And loser is a partial word. No loser is a loser at everything. This is also the same for winners, in an opposite sense. No winner is a winner at everything. Nobody's perfect. And there's always somebody better.

"When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, 'Give this man your seat.' Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, 'Friend, move up to a better place.' Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

That was Jesus. That is one of the most simple, down to earth things I can recall him saying. It's like bragging about being the best basketball player (and maybe you even exaggerate a little bit) and then some loser comes around and shows you up like nobody's business.

Only the losers win / they've got nothing to prove / they'll leave the world with nothing to lose

I wish I was a rockstar. Right now I ask people to take pictures of the band. If I were really a rockstar, I might even be asking the obvious. Pictures don't make the band, popularity doesn't make the man. I think I've written a little bit about meekness before. I work really hard at being meek. Jesus said the meek would inherit the earth. That sounds like fun. I think meekness is knowing between you and God that you're so cool in His eyes, that you don't need popularity to affirm that for you.

My prayer is that God would bless you and I with that kind of confidence. That we would let our actions speak, and keep our prideful, exaggerant words to ourselves.

I've been thinking / thinking I've got a plan to lose it all / I've got a contract pending on eternity / if I haven't already given it away / I've got a plan to lose it all

Of Bumblyburg and Prideful Thoughts

Went for my driver's test today. Failed it miserably. I was upset.

But more than being upset, I was angry. At first I thought I was angry at the "stupid lady" who graded me on my driving. Then I came to the conclusion that it wasn't her, but the heavy traffic that I had to maneuver because of the time of day. Or that truck that tried to pass me on the right while I was trying to merge quickly into that lane. Mixed with my current level of frustration and lack of sleep, this provided the perfect explanation for me. But after slamming the strings of my acoustic for a while, I decided that it was neither of those reasons that I was really mad at.

I was simply mad at myself.

Not just mad because I had failed it, but mad because now I have to go tell everybody that I failed it. This is especially bad when you've previously found everyone that would listen to you, and excitedly told them that you had a driver's test today. My natural reaction was anger, because if I got angry at all the things that hurt me, perhaps everyone would feel sorry for me instead of laughing or telling me how much of a failure I am. I've already been told that once today. At least if I got really mad then maybe no one would really approach me about it. But whatever the case, the excuses and the anger flowed from my every pore.

After pouring my angry heart out to God for a while, it is plain as day to me that my failure was fully and completely my fault. Yes, I think I have a right to be disappointed in myself and maybe even in my circumstances, but I absolutely don't have a right to make excuses and beat myself up for the rest of the day. It may not exactly be hakuna matata, but the past is the past, and the past is not something to dwell on. . . It's something to learn from.

So what can I learn from this?

First, I should focus on improving my driving in the areas that were mentioned in the after-test report thing. But I think there is a deeper lesson to be learned. I have often heard the proverb "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall," but never has it been more real to me than this. I have drawn a new dimension into my knowledge of this phrase. It is true that pride may make your chances of failing higher, that overconfidence could lead to complete destruction, especially if that overconfidence has no basis.

I think there are two different kinds of pride: genuine pride in some accomplishment you or someone you love has made, and the kind of bragging pride that is either hurtful to someone else, or even yourself, being that your pride is based on absolute speculation, or is not even yours to be proud of. Although there is an extremely fine line between the two, I believe the pride spoken of in Proverbs 16:18 is the second, more arrogant, pride. In this sense of the word, my recent epiphany has led me to read this as "Pride increases destruction, a haughty spirit lengthens the fall." By this I mean to say that pride not only increases your chances of destruction, but also that pride makes the fall hurt worse. When pride leads you to go bragging all over the place about this or that, if for some reason, or by some slim chance that thing that you've been bragging about turns out not to be true, you're not only unhappy, but your reputation is damaged and you are pained more than you would have been had you kept your excitement to yourself. The more and more you tell people of your pride, the harder you fall if it turns out to not be true.

This makes me think back to the lessons on lying that I learned as a child. The more you lie, the more you have to lie to cover up that lie, and so on. Eventually, just like our fine friend Junior the Asparagus, you build up a fib so big that it threatens to destroy the Bumblyburg inside of you. Eventually almost every case is discovered, and as I learned the hard way, the spankings last longer and hurt more if you lie about it. Just the same, the consequences of pride can be disastrous.

My mom told me a little thing about meekness the other day. Meekness is not synonymous with weakness. On the contrary, it is the humble strength that says "I have nothing to prove; my life will speak for itself." If you have meekness, you don't need to have pride; your life will speak for itself. Then others will speak for you, which is more honorable than speaking for yourself. Jesus Himself said when he was being doubted: "If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me" (John 8:54).

Looking back over my ramblings I see that I have gone on many tangents, and I don't quite see how to wrap this up. Thus, may God bless us all as we battle pride and search for meekness. It will benefit us in the end.

Of Humility and A New Perspective

You should read this: Humility Comes Before Honor - by Kristy Dahms. I believe this is the essence of being hiddeninsignificance. It is good to have a new perspective on topics such as this one.

Of Prayer and Relationships

"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words." (Matt 6:5-7)

Flash back about eight years.

This is my first time attending the church prayer meetings on Saturday nights with my dad. Nope, sorry. Can't sleep over tonight. But inside, I'm not too sad. I'm finally growing up. Finally to be recognized as something more than an insignificant child. I am nervous my first week. I sit quietly with my dad, soaking up the genuine spirit of the meeting, along with the religio-lingo that gets stuck in there to make everyone in agreement feel important. As I sit there huddled beside my dad, I formulate my prayer for next week. It will be grand.

This is probably my first time experiencing the kind of feeling that I believe the pharisees of old felt. You know the ones. . . they were the ones Jesus was talking to when he said, "pray in your closet." Anyways, here I come to the next meeting. Theres a lull in the praying. . . here's my chance! "Jesus. . ." I begin. Oh no! What comes after this? Dead silence. "Uh. . . please help my grandpa's leg to feel better." I blew it! My chance to impress all the mature Christians that I want to be recognized by, gone! Right out the window! As the meeting comes to a close, I am surprised to be greeted with thanks, with an almost adult-like respect. It isn't just smiling, as if to hide thoughts like, Oh man why did that kid have to come here and ruin our religious time with God. They were genuine thank-you's.

Flash forward to now. Looking back I realize that the response I recieved from my prayer may have been because of the simple joy that I gave everybody just from the encouragement of seeing a kid who seeks God. But maybe there was more to it than that.

The simplicity of a child.

Despite the fact that I'd had this huge elaborate speech of a prayer planned out, when it slipped my concrete, childlike mind, I automatically reverted back to my natural self. My natural self is the person that I am when I "pray in my closet." I was thanked not for the depth of my prayer, but for the authenticity of it. I was simply praying to God the same way that I would any other time.

My dad is a firm believer in "ask for what you want." The philosophy of this idea is that someone can't help you achieve something if they don't know what it is you want to achieve. The easiest way to help someone see what you want is to simply ask them strait up. In fact, people often get annoyed when you put too much icing on the cake and side-step your actual question.

I believe that God responds in a similar way. Not that He gets annoyed with us necessarily, and not that he doesn't already know what we're trying to ask, but God doesn't need or want to hear all the elaborate speeches we hear in prayer meetings. Our God is a god of the common folk. Proof of this? The New Testament was written in "slang" Greek (a nifty tidbit I picked up from my dad). He had the Bible written in the common tongue so that everyone would be able to know Him. Not just the scholars and philosophers. From the naive children to the stubborn elders. Everyone.

God created everyone as they are, with specific plans for them. He knows the journeys. He loves us as He created us. When we come to Him in prayer, specifically in front of others, I don't think he's looking for us to show off how "tight" we are with Him. That's silliness. It's like these stupid "top friends" on myspace and facebook. Instead of aiming for deep relationship with someone, we aim for a spot on that top friends list; whatever it takes, I've got to get on his/her top! This isn't what relationships are people! Yet, however much I wouldn't like to admit it, I myself get trapped in this relationship race quite often.

It is much the same with our relationships with God. He wants us to aim for personal depth, not the admiration of others for our vocabulary or our "deep relationship with God." I believe God is infatuated with children. Children are so genuine, so simple, so insignificant.

"Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven" (Matt 18:4).

God loves the simple. He wants everyone to come as we are. He created our "natural selves." He wants us to come to Him just as he created us. He desires for us to be one person, a person of integrity, without different costumes and masks for every situation. God wants that person that is praying fervently in the closet to be the same one praying in the spotlight. This is not to say that the spotlight is wrong. Indeed, the Bible, our life manual, encourages praying in groups. We've all heard the pastor or small group leader recite the scripture: "Where two or three are gathered. . ." However, there is also the time that he criticized the hypocrites who pray on the pedestal. So what does this mean? Does it mean that Jesus just can't decide what we should do? Definitely not. I think that both apply.

God wants us to pray like we pray like we pray. Same in the closet as in the small group as in the spotlight. The emphasis is not on how many people are watching, but on our internal motives for our prayer. Are we praying to and for God alone? Or is there an ulterior motive? Are we working up the relationship ladder to God? Or are we working up the church ladder to fame and importance?