Onus III

 If I’d ever had to work for someone, I’m sure I would have been remanded to sensitivity training by now. Either that or fired outright, because I don’t suffer fools, and everything in life, save for a couple of things, are binary choices that most people choose to complicate to feel self-important or be able to justify their victimhood.

When it comes to being a child of God, either you are, or you aren’t. When it comes to submitting, obeying, and doing what He has commanded you to do to receive what He has for you, either you are, or you aren’t. It's binary. Only two paths are possible. No third option exists.

It’s only when the unscrupulous realized there was an opportunity to be exploited that the niche market of ‘spiritual people’ was created, where it was proffered that you can be spiritual without being saved, you can know a higher power without knowing the God of the Bible, and a special class, a whole new heaven, an entire religious concept was created out of whole cloth, and no one batted an eye. Prayer was replaced with positive affirmations, obeying God by trusting your feelings, and submitting to God by following your heart. Dante ain’t got nothing on us when it comes to the hell we can create for ourselves when we think we are as God doing as we will, believing that the tab will never come due.

You have a bunch of dopey people talking about how they are very spiritual and that when they die, they will ascend to the oneness of the universe, meld into the eternal mind, and return to some sort of hub or nexus where all the gods you could ever imagine will share an antechamber. Everyone will have a space reserved exclusively for themselves so they can bask in the glory of Zippy, the Space Lord, their deity of choice.

These are people who didn’t want to submit to God, who didn’t want Jesus as Lord, but who needed some sort of assurance that when they pass, it will be to something akin to heaven, but not quite heaven because they’re not willing to give up the things of the flesh in order to acquire heaven.

All I can do is tell people what the Bible says. Whether they follow through and do as instructed is wholly up to them. I know; choices and accountability-who’d have thunk it? The world is currently in the mess it's in because a small number convinced a large number that they can live consequence-free and do as they will without repercussions. By the time they realized it was a lie, an impossibility, it was too late, and now they are cogs in a machine that seeks their destruction.

Being humble today is considered counterculture. You have to be brash, and in your face; you have to claw your way to the limelight and nail yourself to the floorboards once you’ve arrived. You have to tell everyone about how great you are just in case they haven’t figured it out. People need to see your uniqueness, glom on to your brand, idolize you, and tell others you’re the bee’s knees, and in all that push for personal relevance, Jesus gets lost in the shuffle. Now, do you understand why humbling yourself in the sight of the Lord is so important? Now, do you see why it is one of the requirements James highlights as a necessary virtue?

Forced submission is bondage. There is no love in forced submission; this is why God will never force someone to submit to Him or humble themselves. Yes, there are occasions where God humbles us, but humbling oneself and being humbled are two different things, which, although similar sounding, are not.

I know it’s a stretch, but humor me. If I walk into a gym and put six plates on each side of a bench press bar, get under it, and try to lift it, chances are I’d crush my trachea and hope someone will come along to save me from myself. Having tried and failed spectacularly, I was humbled.

If, however, I walk into a gym and acknowledge that I can’t push that kind of weight and limit the number of plates I pack onto the bar to one or two, then I was humble enough to acknowledge my shortcomings and didn’t need to be humbled.

Sometimes, God needs to humble us for our own good, but it’s an object lesson, a learning opportunity, something we are meant to grow from. Unless you are willingly and willfully participating in humbling yourself in the sight of the Lord, you will bristle and balk and be an otherwise bitter servant who drags his feet and does the least he can get away with without being reprimanded.

There is a caveat to humbling oneself, a promise God makes, and that is if we humble ourselves and follow through with the intention of doing it and actually do it, He will lift us up. How, how high, or the manner in which God will lift us up is uncertain, but one thing is beyond doubt: when God lifts a man up, it is in such a way and to such heights that the individual himself could never have achieved it no matter how hard he tried.

When God lifts you up, there’s no scrambling for the limelight, no clawing your way to the middle, no undermining others just so you get ahead, no underhanded tricks, no machinations, just God elevating a man above his station, above anything he could have envisioned given where he started.

When God lifts up the humble man, he doesn’t have to fret or worry about reach, branding, and all the other foolish things of the world that have seeped into the church. The only thing he has to contend with is to submit to God, draw near to Him, and walk in humility. God takes care of the rest. It’s what He promised.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.