Tag: knowledge

Humility Month: Part 2–God is God, and You are Not

 

Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre: Thus says the Lord God:

Your heart has grown proud,
and thus you say, “I am a god;
I sit on a godly throne
in the heart of the seas.”
But in reality you are a man, and not a god,
even though you compare your mind
with that of a god.
Are you as wise as Daniel?
Is no secret hidden from you?
By your wisdom and your intelligence,
you have amassed great wealth for yourself.
You have deposited gold and silver
into your treasuries.
Because of your skill in trading,
your wealth has greatly increased;
and as a result of your riches,
your heart is filled with arrogant pride.

Therefore, thus says the Lord God:

Because you consider your wisdom
to be equal to that of God,
I will bring foreigners against you,
the most barbarous of all the nations.
They will draw their swords
against the beauty of your wisdom
and defile your splendor.
They will hurl you down to the pit,
and you will die a violent death
in the heart of the seas.
Will you then still say, “I am a god,”
when your murderers confront you?
No, you are a man, not a god,
in the hands of those about to slay you.
You will die the death of the uncircumcised
at the hands of foreigners.

I have spoken, declares the Lord God.
(Ezekiel 28:2-10 NCB)

 

As our guest author Karen Pennington noted in part 1 of this series,  “Simply put, pride involves the idolatry of placing ourselves in front of God, in any way, or for any reason.”

In front of God is bad enough. However, in the passage above, the prince of Tyre was making himself EQUAL to God. Definitely a career-limiting move on his part.

The word “pride” in verse five above is accompanied by the word “arrogant. ”  These two words frequently hang out together. It is never a good thing when they do.

Arrogance is a rejection of wisdom. It results from a person elevating incomplete knowledge to a level it does not warrant.

Everyone knows a lot about a few things and a little about many things. A person blinded by arrogance does not make the distinction between knowing a lot and knowing a little.

Pride, then, is arrogance in action. This is when a person professes that their incomplete knowledge is equal or superior to Wisdom and Truth. When left unchecked, this pride can proliferate into a god complex, whereby a person esteems his own intelligence to be unlimited.

This is asking for trouble.

Montana West World

Only God is God

 

Now it´s not likely that you or I will ever find ourselves ruling a city-state in the Middle East, but pride can creep into the life of anyone in any situation. It rears its head not just when you´re on top, but even when you are at rock bottom. Consider the story of Job.

 

In a single day, Job lost all his children, all his property, and all of his servants. Everything but his wife and his life. Then, to make matters worse, his entire body was covered with painful sores. Yet, he never sacrificed his faith or integrity.

Even so, there´s only so much a man can take, even a righteous man like Job. He goes off on a six-chapter rant, justifying himself and complaining why he doesn’t deserve his circumstances. Then God answers, with seventy-two verses of sarcastic questions, ending with this:

“Do you still want to argue with the Almighty? Or will you yield? Do you—God’s critic—have the answers?” (Job 40:2 TLB)

After a bit more chastening, Job responds:

“You said, ‘Listen and I will speak! Let me put the questions to you! See if you can answer them!’

“But now I say, ‘I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you, and I loathe myself and repent in dust and ashes.’” (Job 42:4-6 TLB)

 

Job exchanged his unintentional pride for intentional humility. As a result, God restored to him double what he had lost, and he lived to a ripe old age to enjoy it.

Strength in Surrender

So as we can see, pride makes us enemies of God, but humility sets things right again. By surrendering our pride, we open up Blessing Blvd. to traffic. God hears our prayers and answers them according to His will.

This is what we need to remember when our circumstances go south. Because they will. In fact, if you take a look at the world around us, they already are.

It is so difficult to look at the chaos of our society and believe that God is in control. But He is. It is WE who aren’t. Because it´s not our job.

For only God is God.

 

 

 

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The End of the Age: Part 2–What Sign?

As he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple area, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, “Tell us, when will this happen, and what sign will there be when all these things are about to come to an end?” (Mark 13:3-4 NABRE)

This scene immediately follows Jesus’ public prediction that the temple would be destroyed. Jesus’ inner circle is trying to get the inside scoop on what’s coming next.

We’re all kind of like that, aren’t we? We like to be the first ones to know. Sometimes it’s just for the knowledge itself. Sometimes it’s for the attention we get in the short term. Or it might be about having the reputation for being a source of reliable information.

But there is a warning that comes along with this thirst for knowledge. The sense of pride that comes from being first to know can overwhelm the significance of the actual knowledge that you are conveying. To avoid succumbing to that, check your motivation for obtaining the knowledge in the first place. Is it to help others, to help yourself, or just to be first?

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Fake News

I don’t need to remind anybody in this age of disinformation how much garbage there is on the interwebs masquerading as knowledge. Any post or clickbait that triggers somebody’s offense mechanism has the potential to go viral before a single fact has been checked. And now, social media itself, under the guise of “fact checking,” is censoring voices that dissent with its political agenda, making even the real news look like fake news.

But our urge to be able to say, “You heard it here first” is so strong that people have gone so far as to create new social media networks, just so they can have an outlet to forward the latest “breaking news” without fear of recrimination by the “tech lords.” So, under the guise of free speech, all we have done is relocated and refined our echo chamber.

Another thing to be wary of with a thirst for knowledge is that sometimes when you ask questions, you might get more than you bargained for with the answer. Consider how Jesus responded in Mark 13:5-31 to the question posed by His inner circle at the top of this post.

He begins with a warning. “Watch out that no one deceives you.” Fake news was a thing even 2000 years ago. Jesus knows the hearts of His disciples, so He knows their motivation for asking. Although we can’t really tell from the context, Jesus’ warning is useful regardless. He wants them to have correct information from the Source, both for their own knowledge and to share with others who might ask.

Getting the Scoop

There is also a sort of secondhand knowledge that people thirst for. If you aren’t in the “you heard it here first” club, then maybe at least you can be the first to report a sign predicted by those who were. Jesus knows that even though He is telling his inner circle directly about the signs of the end, since these signs will be unprecedented, they could easily be misinterpreted.

What I mean is that our individual perceptions color our worldview. When we see a war, a certain political alliance or a natural or humanitarian disaster, we might be tempted to point and say, “See? The end is near!” But Jesus specifically said this 2000 years ago:

When you hear of wars and reports of wars, don’t be alarmed. These things must happen, but this isn’t the end yet. Nations and kingdoms will fight against each other, and there will be earthquakes and famines in all sorts of places. These things are just the beginning of the sufferings associated with the end. (Mark 13:7-8 CEB)

To a woman going through childbirth for the first time, labor pains are an unprecedented calamity. There is no pain quite like it (so I have been told). But the labor pains themselves are not the main event. They are the prelude to a birth.

Likewise, these signs of worldwide calamities, which have been going on throughout the ages, are not the main event themselves. It might be accurate to call them “the beginning of The End,” but since we don’t know when The End will be, we also have no idea how long the Beginning of The End will be. It seems kind of pointless to even try to measure such a thing as it is happening. Perhaps this is also a symptom of our wanting either to know more or to at least make sense of the knowledge we have.

(To be continued in Part 3: On Your Guard)

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