Discovering the Real Jesus in Monroe

(My friend Timothy Chung, one of the humblest men I know.)

Humility is the foundational attitude of spiritual transformation. Pride is the enemy of all change. James 4:6 states: “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Moses, the great leader, “was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3).

Our English word “humility” comes from the Latin humus, which means “earth” or “soil.” Our hearts must be like good soil to receive the things God wants to plant in us. Pride, on the other hand, is hardness. Hardness of the heart is the great barrier to spiritual change. C.S. Lewis thus refers to pride as “the complete anti-god state of mind.”[1] Francis Frangipane calls pride “the armor of darkness.”[2] Are you a humble person, or a proud person? One indicator is how you handle criticism. A humble person doesn’t mind being critiqued, even welcomes constructive criticism if it brings more truth. A proud person doesn’t need any advice, and pride’s counterpart, shame, fears criticism.

Like the hidden pride of Isaiah, we need personal encounters with the Living God to see how undone and needy we are. Thomas Kelly has written: “But what trinkets we have sought after in life, the pursuit of what petty trifles has wasted our years as we have ministered to the enhancement of our little selves. And what needless anguishes we have suffered because our little selves were defeated, were not flattered, were not cozened and petted.”[3]

Humility, says Kelly, rests upon a holy blindedness, like the blindedness of him who looks steadily into the sun. “The God-blinded soul sees naught of self, naught of personal degradation or of personal eminence…”[4] Alan Nelson writes, “Growth in humility is a measure of our growth in the habit of the Godward-directed mind. And he only is near to God who is exceedingly humble.”[5]

Thomas Merton writes:
“A humble man is not disturbed by praise since he is no longer concerned with himself. A man who is not humble cannot accept praise gracefully. One who has not yet learned humility becomes upset and disturbed by praise. He may even lose his patience when people praise him; he is irritated by the sense of his own unworthiness. And if he does not make a fuss about it, at least the things that have been said about him haunt him and obsess his mind. They torment him wherever he goes. At the other extreme is the man who has no humility at all and who devours praise, if he gets any, the way a dog gobbles a chunk of meat… The humble man receives praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass. Humility is the surest sign of strength.”[1]

James 4:6 states that God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. This is one of those great biblical either-or ideas which states that it’s not simply a bad thing to have a proud heart but it is an anti-God thing. If you are proud God is against you. My own understanding of this is that, where there is some area of one’s heart that is hard towards God, God stands in opposition to that area. I’m saying this because I don’t believe any of us are totally free from pride. If that is true than God is opposed to us all. I think the human heart can both have areas that have been conquered by God and are humble and have areas of hardness that are not open to God. In this sense it’s not either proud or humble because I can’t imagine a follower of Jesus claiming to be wholly, perfectly humble.

A.W. Tozer once prayed, “O Christ, make me strong to overcome the desire to be wise and to be reputed wise by others as ignorant as myself. I turn from my wisdom as well as from my folly and flee to You, the wisdom of God and the power of God. Amen.”[6] This is the appropriate attitude. This kind of humility is the necessary precondition for spiritual transformation. Pride dies, the soft heart prevails, which allows God to shape one’s spirit into greater Christlikeness.

[1] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
[2] Francis Frangipane, The Three Battlegrounds
[3] Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion
[4] Thomas Kelly, A Testament of Devotion, pp. 62-63
[5] Alan Nelson, Broken In the Right Place
[6] A.W. Tozer,

Bethel Redding Church (California) will do a 5-day conference at our church on Monroe Jan 7-11, 2008 (Redeemer Fellowship Church).

Chris Overstreet will bring a team from Bethel Redding to lead a School of Supernatural Evangelism.

Registration is on Bethel’s website - ibethel.org.

Self-pity is one of the more punishing kinds of self-obsession. Self-pity cannot coexist with spiritual renewal and transformation. In one of my seminary classes I was talking about holding “pity parties” when a pastor named Samuel from Ghana asked, “What do you mean by “pity party?”” I said, “Samuel, the next time I hold one for myself I’ll invite you so you can see.” Unfortunately, I could write a book and call it How To Host Your Next Pity Party.

To be self-pitying is to live life as a victim. While it’s true that sometimes we are victims, I think there is a spirit of victimization (self-deprivation) that is to be distinguished from the real thing. It looks like this. More than once the words have come into my mind, “Poor me! They are not treating me right - and after all I’ve done for them!” Personal deprivation and even mistreatment lead to the emotion of anger.

In this regard Henri Nouwen asks, “What else is anger but the response to the sense of being deprived? Much of my own anger comes from the fact that my self feels deprived.” When one chooses to express this anger by hosting a pity party the self-obsession has begun.

“What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and the only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result… The awful, terrible act of his dying was, he could see, reduced by those about him to the level of a casual, unpleasant, and almost indecorous incident (as if someone entered a drawing room defusing an unpleasant odour) and this was done by that very decorum which he had served all his life long. He saw that no one felt for him, because no one even wished to grasp his position… [W]hat most tormented Ivan Ilych was that no one pitied him as he wished to be pitied. At certain moments after prolonged suffering he wished most of all (though he would have been ashamed to confess it) for someone to pity him as a sick child is pitied. He longed to be petted and comforted.”

When you hold a “pity party” and invite yourself and others to it, the focus is on you. It’s all about how you have been hurt, how you have been mistreated, and how you have been wronged. The ruling emotion of pity is bitterness. But one can’t be at the same time bitter and fulfilling the Great Commandment to love God with all your heart. Self-pity seems to be the opposite of renewal and transformation of the heart. For an unfortunate example of the spirit of victimization consider this.

In 1978 Dan White, a former San Francisco city supervisor who had recently resigned his position, entered San Francisco City Hall through a basement window, went upstairs, and shot and killed Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk. Psychiatrist Martin Blinder testified in court that White had been depressed, which led to eating junk food: Twinkies and Coca-Cola. This further deepened White’s depression, since he was an ex-athlete and knew that the food was not good for him. White’s legal defense was that this junk-food-induced depression prompted his murder spree. This celebrated diagnosis became known as the “Twinkie defense.” We were supposed to have pity on him because the Twinkies made him do it!

Someone who holds “pity parties” refuses to take responsibility for their own behavior and blames others. Self-pity leads to a “victim mentality.” Therefore self-pity needs to be denied, because it keeps us from being fulfilled in Jesus. To experience renewal and transformation be free from giving the “Twinkie Defense.” Experience God as your Defender. Do this by daily being like a branch attached to Jesus the true Vine, gaining your sustenance from him.

Self-hatred is one side of a coin the other of which is self-love. Self-love is a form of pride which thinks “I am really something (in the sense of being better than others).” Self-hatred is a form of shame which thinks “I am really nothing.” Both are forms of self-obsession. And both are spiritually cancerous things that harm spiritual formation and maturity.

Unfortunately, I have much personal experience in hating the self. I have, at times, thought of myself as a nothing and worthless. This is not a good place to be. It’s especially painful to beat on one’s own self. It feels more painful than having others hate me. How can this be overcome? To get at the roots of self hatred I have found hope in the Scriptures as mediated through many who have sought God long and hard about this issue.

Such as Thomas Merton, who writes: “How are we going to recover the ability to love ourselves and to love one another? The reason why we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly, or openly, hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God.”[1]

Here is a simple and profound solution to self-hatred: Be at peace with God, and you will be at peace with self. Love God, and you will love self. This will lead to a truly transforming experience where, instead of beating one’s self for faults and failures, we will rejoice in the greater purposes of God manifested in them. Dom Augustin Guillerand said, “God will know how to draw glory even from our faults. Not to be downcast after committing a fault is one of the marks of true sanctity.”[2]

To be free of self-hatred know the love of God. To know that God loves you, and that your worth is not the same as your usefulness and your being-loved is not related to your failures and accomplishments is to live a life of radical freedom. I have found that the more I dwell deeply in the presence of God, like a branch attached to Jesus the Vine, the more I hear God’s voice telling me “John, I love you.”

[1] Thomas Merton, The Living Bread; in Through the Year With Thomas Merton, p. 66.
[2] Dom Augustin Guillerand, in A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, p. 208.

Today’s cnn.com has an article re. Roman Catholic bishops who will confront Barack Obama on the abortion issue. The article states:

“Chicago Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is preparing a statement during the bishops’ fall meeting that will press Obama on abortion.

The bishops suggested that the final document include the message that “aggressively pro-abortion policies” would be viewed “as an attack on the church.”"

(For Baylor University philosopher and jurisprudential scholar Francis Beckwith’s purely logical argument against abortion see the notes I’ve posted on my website here.)

Here’s a christianitytoday.com article on violent Hindu groups in India who are “reconverting” Christians back to Hinduism. I’m especially interested in this since we now have six people from our church in India training Christian leaders.

(My back yard)

I really like what Lee Grady said about praying for Barack Obama. Here’s some wisdom from Billy Graham. It’s his 90th birthday, and he is interviewed at christianitytoday.com.

Billy is asked:

I understand that you are an avid TV news and talk show watcher. Were you following the presidential campaign? Any endorsements?

Graham responds: “I’ve always tried to keep up with what’s happening in the world, and I still do—including politics. But no, I’m not making any endorsements, and I’m staying out of partisan politics. I’m grateful for our system of government, and I strongly urge people to vote—but I don’t endorse any candidate.

I also strongly urge people to pray for our new leaders, whoever they are, because they will be facing enormous problems, and they’ll need great wisdom and patience from God to deal with them. I pray also that they’ll be able to work across party lines on these problems, and avoid the partisan wrangling that we’ve seen in recent years.”

Now there’s a biblical idea. It’s 1 Timothy 2:1-7 -”1I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— 2for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 3This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.” If you or I have a problem with some elected leader God has allowed us to see it so we can pray for them. Surely God loves them. Jesus told us we’re even to love our enemies. Personally, I don’t view any current elected leader as my enemy precisely because I am free to live out the Gospel and preach it. What if that changes? I don’t see that stopping me either. Don’t panic or spread panic. Instead, pray.

  Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” To take up the cross everyday one must deny the self. This means, among other things, that self-love and cross-carrying don’t go together. Deconstruct the self in order to construct a cross and carry it.

           This is a profound thing because the self-love issue goes very deep. Self-love, writes Thomas Merton, “is the source of all boredom and all restlessness and all unquiet and all misery and all unhappiness - ultimately, it is hell.”[1] How much easier is it to love the self before loving others and living sacrificially in relationship to them. One British politician’s actions were once described as “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his friends for his life.”[2] I discover in my heart a deep-rooted propensity to love “me” as my first priority. But I want to follow Jesus, so I see the “love me” thing must be rejected.

           As a young Christian I was counseled to keep my priorities as follows:

a.      Love God first

b.      Love others second

c.      Love self

           I have found that when I live in this way the love I have for myself is healthy and godly. This love of self is also called pride. C.S. Lewis called pride “the great sin – the complete anti-god mentality.” Put simply, it’s impossible to love God with all one’s being if one has such an elevated love of self. Francis Frangipane refers to pride as “the armor of darkness.”[3] I like this definition of pride because is shows how this kind of self-love necessarily thwarts spiritual renewal and transformation. And, as Merton said, while all this seems counterintuitive to the proud lover of self, in reality it’s all boredom and misery.

(Times Square)

Henry Blackaby has said that we have been “created to be God’s friends.”[1] Renewal and transformation of our spirits happens in this intimate friendship relationship. What could thwart this from happening? A main enemy of intimate friendship with God is self-obsession. Self-obsession necessarily takes us out of relationship with God and others.

         Therefore, in order to be renewed and transformed we must deny negative aspects of the self; namely, the self-obsessive aspects. Jesus gives us this stark, ascetic either-or: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself daily, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever will save his life shall lose it: and whoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it.”[2] Self-denial is to be a daily discipline. I know from this command of Jesus and from my own experience that every day the self will rise up and try to assert itself against the ways of God. When I have allowed God to search me and know my heart one thing He points out my emphasis on myself, sometimes to the point of idolatry. Obsession with one’s self is the enemy of all spiritual renewal and transformation.

         God desires to defeat our self-obsessiveness so we can experience renewal and transformation. One way God does this is by calling us into times of solitude. This is why Henri Nouwen has called solitude “the furnace of spiritual transformation.” If solitude is a “furnace,” what gets burned away? The answer is: the negative aspects of the “self.” Unless we daily practice self-denial, self-centered ideas will rise up against the ideas of God. I have discovered ten such negative aspects of the self. I’ll share them with you soon in separate posts.