When it comes to conversations, some things seem obvious. Things like offering encouragement to the discouraged. If someone is feeling deflated, what could be more obvious than trying to build them up? When a person’s sense of worth is low, we want to remind them of their abilities and gifts.
Yet, on many occasions in Scripture, God’s word to the weary and embattled simply doesn’t seem to work like that.
It may be that we have absorbed more of the world’s thinking on self-esteem than we care to admit. Low self-esteem? Offer some boosting words which remind a person of their excellence. The trouble, of course, is that such an approach leaves us with nothing more to grab hold of than ourselves. What it doesn’t do is take us out of ourselves. And out of ourselves is absolutely where we need to be.
The limitations of Job
Consider the way God does it in his dealings with Job – who was about as deflated and discouraged as a man could be. Everything had been stripped from him. His belongings, his children, his honour, his health – all of them were gone. Job had nothing to feel good about. Yet even here God’s word isn’t designed to build him up but rather to put him in his place.
The barrage of questions presented to Job in the climax of the book don’t remind Job of forgotten capacities. Instead, they only serve to press upon him more evidence of his lack. First, in chapters 38 & 39, Job is reminded of the many things he does not know. Then, in chapters 40 & 41, Job is confronted with the many things he cannot do. There is no boosting of self-esteem going on here.
Yet something else is going on. For even as Job is being forced to recognise all that he does not know and cannot do, he is simultaneously seeing all that God does know and God can do. The message seems to be this: ‘you may not know this Job, but I do’. And ‘while you cannot do this, I can.’ Job is confronted with two contrasting realities: while his own powers are seriously limited, God’s are not.
The limitations we all face
Something rather similar happens when Jesus speaks about worry in Luke 12. Here too the remedy for worry, fear and inadequacy seems to be at odds with the typical contemporary approach. For here there is no ‘you can do it’ pep talk, but something quite the opposite. ‘Who of you by worrying’, Jesus asks, ‘can add a single hour to your life? Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest’ (Luke 12:25-26). Again, the message is the same: you cannot do this; you are not capable. There’s no puffing up here. But the parallel implication is also clear: you can’t but God can. He is the one who determines the number of your days.
Over-reaching
One of the most important ways to understand the heart of our spiritual misstep is to see that we over-reach. We try to be who we are not and do what we were never intended to do. It began in the garden when Adam and Eve adopted the role of lawmaker which only ever belonged properly to God. They appraised God’s wisdom and they found it wanting – because the fruit looked good to eat, they took it.
But whenever we get our position and God’s position muddled, things go awry. It happened catastrophically at the fall and has continued to happen in individual lives ever since.
Our proper place
That is why the remedy we so often need isn’t for us to be built up, but for us to be restored to our proper place. And for that to happen we need to remember God – to recapture a vision of his greatness and his glory. When we find our proper place in relation to him, we don’t feel demeaned or belittled. We don’t feel worthless or put down. What happens is we feel secure. We finally feel settled.
Psalm 131 puts it perfectly: ‘I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me’ – that is, I don’t overreach – ‘but I have calmed and quietened myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content’. (Psalm 131:1-2).
The psalmist is where he should be. He is childlike and needy and resting in the arms of the one who can provide more than everything that is needed. In our fears and failings as well as in our weakness and incapacity, we don’t so much need building up as taking in. We need to see the mighty arms of our loving heavenly Father, so that we rush into those arms and find a place where we are truly safe and truly kept.
