There once lived a king. He was a great warrior who led his army into many victorious battles. He was loved and infamous throughout the land. One day a man came to him with a terrible grievance.
“There were two men in the city. One was rich, and the other was poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cows, but the poor man had only one little female lamb. He raised her, and she grew up in his home with his children. She would eat his food and drink from his cup. She rested in his arms and was like a daughter. Now a visitor came to the rich man. Because of the rich mans greed, and his contempt for the poor, instead of preparing his own stock for the meal, he took the poor mans lamb instead.”
Now the great king was outraged. His anger grew as the man told the story. With passion in his voice and fire in his eyes, he declared to the man, “I solemnly swear, as the Lord lives, the man who did this certainly deserves to die! He must pay back four times the price of the lamb because he did this and had no pity!” The man solemly looked at the great king and replied, “The man in which you speak of, is you.”
This story may be familiar to you. You may recall a women named Bathsheba. She was very Beautiful. The king in this story, King David, came upon her bathing one evening and despite his many wives, decided to take her into his bed and seduce her. She was married to an honorable man named Uriah. He was not only her husband, but was an officer in King David’s army.
Long story short, she became pregnant. To hide his transgressions from the people, he brought her husband back from the battlefield and ordered Bathsheba to lay with him. Her husband had so much integrity and honor, that he responded to the king, “The ark, Israel and Judah are staying in tents. My commander Joab and my lord’s men are camped in the open country. How could I go to my house to eat, drink and make love to my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing.”
King David, fearing he might be found out, sent him to the front lines, and then ordered his troops to withdraw, thus leaving Uriah alone to be slaughtered in battle. Then he took Bathsheba as his wife.
King David, forgetting his own transgressions, was astonished when he was told of the Rich’s mans evil, oblivious to the fact that the story was a parable. As I’m sure you have deciphered, King David represents the rich man, and Uriah, the poor man.
He projected his anger onto somebody else, when his anger should have been towards himself. He not only committed adultery, but murder. Yet he was furious when he heard the story of the poor man with one lamb.
This is a perfect analogy for our current culture. We are so outraged by what we see as the transgressions of others, we are blinded from the faults we ourselves have. This, is the essence of cancel culture. We call others out as racist, yet fail to see the prejudice in our own lives. We are beside ourselves when others use words that offend us, yet forget the countless times we ourselves have spoken unwisely. We judge when we see social gatherings of more than 6, and at the same time, make excuses for the times that we have done the same.
Our current culture lacks the self awareness needed to be a healthy, striving society. From the media, politicians, and celebrities, it’s becoming more accepted to call out others while standing aloof to ones own imperfections. We live in a culture where we allow the mob to rule, and its a mob of blind children throwing rocks into a crowd.
We view ourselves as constant victims, while being envious of those who have more money and success. We view life as something that is happening to us, rather than viewing our lives as something we are in control of. We demand instant results, and when we don’t get it, we instantly wave a white flag.
Society has forgotten that life is a journey. Life is about falling in love with the process, and judging yourself against who you were yesterday. If we could throw out the juvenile yoke of instantaneousness, our lives would become an adventure of constant learning and growth, relishing in the process rather than expecting immediate results. If we realize that small steps grow exponentially over time, every obstacle, every trial, every step in the process becomes about growth rather than burden.
All this requires humility, which is a virtue our society views as a vice. We have forgotten of our own ignorance and rather than being constant seekers of truth, we have replaced this with a pretentious mindset of false certainty. We are certain of our political ideology, theological leanings, and our scientific findings, yet we are fools who stand on a pillar of arrogance and ignorance.
We demand the generosity of others, meanwhile failing to be generous with what we ourselves have. We are constantly stuck in a scarcity mindset and instead of giving thanks and practicing gratitude, we are envious, greedy, and coveters of the worst kind.
We live our lives in fear, rather than living our lives in the victory that God himself set before us. We have thrown out our identity as image bearers, and replaced it with an identity of insignificance.
I believe in the human spirit, because I believe in the God who gave us intrinsic value. I believe that every person has a potential for greatness because I believe in the God who has placed stepping stones towards himself that lead to greatness. I reject the soft bigotry of low expectation and I reject the politics of identity separation.
This is not a prosperity gospel message, this is about shifting our paradigm back into image bearers. We cannot confuse humility with defeat. We have to repair our broken lives by bringing back meaning and purpose. Without it, we are hopeless. We have lost our path.
Though the world is dark, there is hope. We were not made to be a weak and defeated people. We have hope through Christ who has defeated death and darkness. Through the victory He has set before us, we can be free from our own narcissism, relational disfunction, destructive mindset and a hopeless worldview. The path isn’t easy, it’s been described as narrow, and it takes humility, honesty, and perseverance. When we fall short, we need to learn the lesson and push forward. The problem is when our eyes are set so low, we cannot see the things that are high.
Until we make a real decision to remove our own planks, and stop the distraction of the transgressions of others, we will continue to be crabs in a pot, pulling each other down until the pot is a rolling boil. It’s time for self reflection, and to set our minds up high to become a striving society that seeks to bring others to victory as image bearers.
Rogue Journal 