The One About Bible Plans, King Saul, and Self-Loathing
Dear West Family
There is a great irony to the fact that I am paid to read the bible and yet I am no good at keeping up with annual bible reading plans. Don’t worry, it isn’t grounds for dismissal as I am still in the scriptures all the time, but I am just not that good at the whole - reading prescribed texts every day and ticking them off on a calendar thing (though I do see this discipline as immensely valuable.) I tend to get stuck in particular texts for long periods of time and then I fall behind. All that to say, I am twelve days behind on my annual bible reading plan, which means that I am in the midst of the story of Saul and David when I should be further through the narrative than that. But, I am glad I am here, and I feel like God is showing me some new stuff in a very familiar section of scripture, as He always does.
I usually read this narrative with a particular focus on David, but this time I have been fascinated with Saul. He is a tragic tale of self-obsession, neurosis, suspicion, self-loathing and a tragedy of deep insecurity. And yet he had so many things in his favor, but he just couldn’t see it.
I am more like Saul than I dare to admit.
There is a verse that forms part of a really difficult exchange between Saul and Samuel, and Samuel says something so unbelievably telling to Saul.
Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? - 1 Sa 15:17.
“Though you are little in your own eyes.”
A man who stood head and shoulders above anyone in Israel was small in his own eyes. A man who had been called by God to lead the tribes of Israel was deeply insecure. This is self-loathing that masks itself as humility. We might ask if it isn’t good to be small in one’s own eyes as a biblical virtue, but it isn’t. This is the opposite of genuine biblical humility which is secure in God's love and therefore free to be made less of.
I love what C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity.
“Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.”
Rick Warren took that quote and boiled it down into the often quoted (and really powerful) truism.
“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it is thinking of yourself less.”
It has been really disarming to me, and really helpful in my pursuit of joy to realize that my inner monologue of self-loathing is not from God, and makes me more like Saul than it does like David. This leads to patterns that we see clearly in Saul’s life, and in our own. Just a few verses later Saul says that what motivates much of his disobedience is “ ... because I feared the people.”
When you don’t have a right view of yourself, then you tend to have an outsized view of other people.
Friends, you are beloved by God, called by heaven, set aside as holy saints, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and called to be co-laborers with Christ, and all of that is in spite of you and not because of you. Welcome to the wonderful freedom of self-forgetful humility!
Don’t be little in your own eyes, but rather let your eyes be filled with the glory of Christ.
It is much more helpful and more edifying to spend your time looking at Him than it is looking at yourself.
The music this week is an oldie but goodie from Sting. Vinnie Colaiuta is one of my favorite drummers in the world, and here he makes a very complex time signature sound easy, which is what makes him great.
Press on,
Ross
