When God came to Earth

Today I want to celebrate the day God came to Earth.

The day he decided he loved us too much to see us mucking everything up. He loved us too much to watch us marginalize the poor and the social misfit. He loved us too much to watch us build up our financial, intellectual, and social resources as if they actually mattered. He loved us too much to watch neverending cycles of abuse plague our families. He loved us too much to see us continue to hate those who looked, thought, or acted differently from us. He loved us too much to see us ruining relationships with one another out of self-centeredness. He loved us too much to allow us to be controlled by guilt and shame when we screwed things up.

That day was a little over 2,000 years ago in a backward, Middle Eastern province under Roman occupation.

That day is also today. In Rwanda. In Mumbai. In Juarez. On Skid Row. In Westwood. In Napa. Praise God that he keeps entering into our lives each day. In the brokenness, pain, and suffering throughout the world and throughout all time - God is present.

"To us who cry out from the depth of our brokenness for a hand that will touch us, an arm that can embrace us, lips that will kiss us, a word that speaks to us here and now, and a heart that is not afraid of our fears and tremblings; to us, who feel our own pain as no other human being feels it, has felt it, or ever will feel it, and who are always waiting for someone who dares to come close - to us a man has come who could truly say 'I am with you.'" (Henri Nouwen, Compassion 23)

And what should our response be to this God who chose to be displaced on this earth, who intentionally entered into the suffering of the world, who asked to be called Emmanuel or "God-with-us"? Paul gives us his thoughts: Go and do likewise.

Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love... then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love... Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves ... In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude Christ Jesus had: Who did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death-- even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:1-8)

If Jesus who is God humbled himself to the point of becoming human, experiencing pain and death, just so we would know how much he loves us, how much so should we also enter in to places of suffering and discomfort and show those who hurt that God has not forgotten them.

Finding my Self

I'm reading Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard right now and feeling inspired to write again, especially on the issues of self-centeredness vs. selflessness. This post follows up on one I wrote a while ago on Compassion by Henri Nouwen. These thoughts are still in formulation, so please forgive any lack of clarity or focus :)

Here's a good quote by Willard which first got me thinking:

"Egotism is pathological self-obsession, a reaction to anxiety about whether one really does count. It is a form of acute self-consciousness and can be prevented and healed only by the experience of being adequately loved. It is, indeed, a desperate response to frustration of the need we all have to count for something, to be held irreplaceable, without price." (15) [emphasis mine]

This thought seems so counterintuitive to me. Usually if someone is so exceedingly self-centered my reactionary desire is to show them that they really aren't all that and a bag of potato chips. Even when dealing with my own selfishness - whether I'm attempting to combat or prevent it - my typical response is that I need to accept that it's not "all about me." But instead, Willard says that I need to realize, and what all those crazy egomaniacs out there need to realize, is how loved, how significant, how important, how valued we all are - that we really are something special. The truth is so refreshing, that we are loved sufficiently, that such fulfillment is not beyond our grasp.

And Willard says that this desire to have meaning, to be significant, in itself is not self-centered. In fact, it is actually outward:

"Unlike egotism, the drive to significance is a simple extension of the creative impulse of God that gave us being. It is not filtered through self-consciousness any more than is our lunge to catch a package falling from someone's hand. It is outwardly directed to the good to be done. We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny." (15)

In Compassion, Henri Nouwen seemed to say that to actually have compassion on other people, to really understand the suffering of those who hurt, we need to empty ourselves of the desire for social acceptance. At first I was having a hard time reconciling the arguments of these two authors, but after some thought I can see that they aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. To really have compassion, to mourn with those who mourn, we must let go of this struggle to prove ourselves to others. And perhaps Willard is uncovering that the key to this "letting go" is in the realization that we are already loved, accepted, valued, before we could even prove ourselves.

However, Willard extends this further to say that this desire for significance, to do something good for the world, is how God created us to be.

"Our hunger for significance is a signal of who we are and why we are here, and it also is the basis of humanity's enduring response to Jesus. For he always takes individual human beings as seriously as their shredded dignity demands and he has the resources to carry through with his high estimate of them." (15)

It's so good to know that God has greater purposes for us - he sees us as having greater significance than we could even imagine for ourselves. Think about it: since we only can see our lives as they gradually unfold, we often miss the bigger picture, how we are impacting people and the world. But God sees the whole act. He sees how our work in the past is effecting others now, and how what we do now will continue to bring about meaningful change in the future.

Amidst the craziness and uncertainties of life, it's nice to know that we are highly regarded by an all-loving, all-knowing higher power.