So most of us spend most of our lives getting good at things. This is a good thing. Except when it's not.
I work on campus. The very nature of the college academic experience is to "major" in something--that is, to develop some core competencies in a field of study. All of this is well and good, except that competency can work counter to the flourishing of the Christian spiritual life.
Competency is the ability to do something on our own...or at least to know enough of what needs to be done to bring in the proper help if help is needed.
But the core message of the gospel cuts deeply against competency. No amount of competency could undo the sin nature. No amount of competency could restore us into fellowship with our Father.
And so the gospel is an offense to our culture that has been built on American ingenuity and competency. When it comes to the most important relationship in our lives, we all alike must confess our inability to do anything about making the most deeply wrong things right. We need mercy, grace, forgiveness, and the aid of Someone else to come and rescue us. Otherwise, we are stuck with a simple, shallow competency.
Of course for all of us our competencies have limits. And so when we get stuck at the outer limits of our abilities to fix something, we often find ourselves asking God for help. Only mostly what we're asking for is for more competency to be able to fix it on our own strength so that we might be even more independent.
God, in his mercy, is good to be slow to grant those requests. All of us must occasionally (some of us more often than others) hit the wall. We must find ourselves unable to fix something in our own strength.
And when we get there and then get mad at God for not giving us more competency to fix the situation, it would be good for us to step back and pause. Perhaps the thing that we're asking for is the very thing that would be the worst thing for us to receive--in fact, it would be death for us were God to give it to us.
God did not come in Christ to make us more competent. He came to call rebellious, needy, broken people to lay down their arms in surrender and lean into God's mercy and grace. That's offensive. It's also very, very good news.
2 comments:
Were you thinking of me . . .? Just kidding, but I definitely have issues w/ appearing (and/or being) incompetent. Jesus has been doing some work on that in me lately.
Just read something recently that relates. It's a little different take (and perhaps more historically accurate) on Jesus when he talks about us needing to be like children. We often think of it as being innocent (and maybe needy, which gets more at the meaning), but actually in the ancient world it was more accurate for children to be viewed as worthless (and maybe incompetent?) since they have nothing to contribute to society. So when Jesus tells us to be like the children, it means to regard ourselves as worthless and incompetent - we have nothing to offer God. We are "needy, broken people" to use your words.
Thank God my salvation doesn't hinge upon my competency (or lack thereof).
Good post!
jason, i was definitely thinking about you when i wrote this...glad you stopped by to get the message!
just kidding, of course, thanks for the encouraging word and good insight into what's going on in that Jesus passage.
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