Feeling Unworthy vs. Feeling Proud

Many times I have shared in this medium how I felt unworthy of the many gifts I receive from God, and feeling particularly unworthy and lacking in my job performance.

Take for instance this post, where I probably felt at my lowest in terms of my job performance. I felt like I've grown a lot since that experience.

I have a new job as a Immigrant Rights Organizer, and I really love it! Yes, the hours and pay and benefits are great, but it is more the fact that I'm doing things I hope make a difference in my community.

I love this job for the same reasons I love working as a missionary: bring people who have been neglected and forgotten some hope.

With this new job change I am confronted with a cocktail of feelings: feelings of unworthiness vs. feelings of pride.

Let me explain. I can feel proud as I sit in my office and say to myself "look at me with my desk and everything!" and then I can feel unworthy as I remind myself that this job is a gift from God and something I don't deserve.

I was always struck by the ebb and flow of these opposite emotions; a sense of entitlement and a sense of unworthiness.

Caught in this false dichotomy, as I believe many of us are, I realized those opposites are ultimately unhealthy.

I believe God doesn't want me to fill myself with pompous pride and look down on my ex-coworkers at the gas station and tell myself I'm somehow more worthy than them. And I believe God doesn't want me to feel so unworthy as to regard myself as garbage deficient of any good gifts.

There has to be a third way out of these two horns and it has to come not from pride or unworthiness but from a place of humility.

One morning, as I was seating in a boring meeting at my job (I hope my supervisor is not reading this!) I felt God nudging at my heart and saying : If I gave you this job is not because you are worthy of it or unworthy of it, but because I know you can handle it.

The words you can handle it really impacted me at that moment. I took my notepad and wrote down "It is not about deserving a gift or not, but that you can handle it".

This I believe, is the third way. In saying that God give us things when we can handle them we are affirming that every good thing is a gift from God.

We are also avoiding the pointy two horns of pride and unworthiness, as we recognize the reality that God's grace and gifts are not a matter of deserving them or not, but simply a free gift of love, a gift God gives when He knows we can handle it.

It gives me a healthy sense of confidence, as I feel God trusting me with a gift that I know I can handle receiving. It gives me the confidence to resist the darts of the enemy that tells me "you are not worthy of this", and without relying on my own pride.

Be happy and celebrate the gifts God gives us, and rest in the knowledge that if He gave you that gift, it is because He believes you can handle it.

Humility is Truth Part II - A Confession

Click here for part I.

In part I of my humility posts, I used the story of the washing of the feet as a framework to talk about humility.

In part II I want to share about my struggles with humility.

As many of our struggles do, this one started many years ago.

I grew up in a middle class home in Managua, Nicaragua. We lived in a relatively poor neighborhood. I lived in between two worlds, the world of middle class Managua, full of private schools, nannies and maids, and the world of my poor neighborhood,  full of improvised games on the streets,  shared meals and non stop pranks.

Because of my involvement in both of these worlds, I never really felt like I belonged to any of them.

I never was the popular kid. Never was good enough for sports, or the sorts of athletic feats that makes you popular in my country.

I was into classical music, art and technology.

Somehow knowing how to use Photoshop at the age of 12 and knowing the difference between a violin and a viola doesn't really make you the center of attention.

The mocking, the lack of connectedness, created a lot of resentment. I retreated into my hobbits.

One summer vacation I spent most of my time painting scenes of mountains, lakes and forests, creating my own little world, the decider of every fate at every brushstroke.

I may not be the best athlete, I thought, but I bet they don't know how to paint. What do they know about computers anyways?

My pride in my own little hobbits grew. My identity was found in them.

Eventually this pride slowly grew into cultural snobbery.

Yeah, they may mock me, but I'm better than them. I know more about the stuff that "matters". But I wish they knew how much better I am.

Even now as a follower of Jesus, I'm still struggling with this. I know my identity is found in Christ alone, but it is so easy to retreat into these cultural things to find comfort and self esteem.

But a metanoia is starting to occur in my mind, where culture, with all its fancies, style and ultimately, divisions, is starting to lose its taste.

And I believe that's where conversion starts.

"Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will" Romans 12: 2 NIV.

Culture is important, and has its important place in life. But culture is ultimately of this world, a construct of our hands and minds that in the end is perishable.

It is worth our time and attention, but not our lives.

Humility is Truth Part I

"Humility is truth" said my spiritual director, as we talked about humility.

One of my favorite stories of Jesus is the washing of the disciple's feet. We find it on John 13. We all know the story, and so I won't transcribe it here. I will, however, quote from it throughout this post.

"During Supper" (John 13:2a ESV). This supper is important because it was just before the Feast of the Passover. There is even some debate among theologians who suggest that this is the Passover meal.

Jesus and the Disciples were eating with their feet dirty. It was the custom of the day to wash the host's feet before the meal, because as they sat down on pillows around a round table, the feet would be too close to the meal.

Imagine! Dirty feet from walking on sandals all day close to a meal. Why didn't anyone think of washing their feet before eating?

Well this job was reserved to the lowest slaves in the household. We know from Luke 22:23 that the disciples were discussing who was the greatest among them during this time.

They knew that washing of the feet was essential in their culture before having a meal, but no one volunteered for the task because that would put them in the lowest position, culturally speaking.

So instead they chose to eat with their feet dirty!

Jesus knew that His hour had come, and wanted to take advantage of these precious last hours to teach something to His disciples. He chose Humility.

When Jesus decided to interrupt dinner to wash His disciple's feet, He did more than simply preach a sermon on humility. He did more than taking a commitment of Humility. He did more than a ceremony that is repeated annually.

What is Humility? For the longest time I thought that Humility was simply beating yourself down, accepting the "fact" that you are inferior to others. A low self esteem seemed like the sour medicine that I must take to force myself into humility.

I don't believe that anymore.

"You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am" (John 13:13 ESV).

Jesus makes no apologies in this story of who He is. He didn't say nah guys, you have it all wrong, you think I'm all great and stuff, but I actually kinda suck. That would be ridiculous, in light of what He is.

And so it is ridiculous to beat ourselves down, in light of what we are in Christ, and mask this self violence with the pretty face of Humility.

Jesus is humble not in despite of what He is, but because of who He is.

Because He knows that "the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going back to God" (John 13:3 ESV), He is able to assume the position of a slave in service.

His identity was not in how this world sees greatness in their different cultures, but it was based on God's love.

And God's love is self giving. How are we to love without serving?

If Jesus wasn't of God, He would be forced to support His identity on other things other than God. Maybe He would have chosen His culture, His social status, or the intellectual knowledge that He had.

But cultures, with their complex stratifications and social divisions, can force upon us rules of engagements that limit who we serve and how we serve. Just like the disciples were forced to not wash each other's feet because, in their culture, that would put them in a lower position than the rest.

Jesus, because He is not of this world, is replacing all of those rules with one: love one another. It's not who we love what's important, but simply to love.

And Love is self giving. And Humility is just an expression of that love, where you forget who you are in this world and simply give yourself in loving it.