The Humility Commission

A few weeks back we licensed Calvin into the work of the ministry. Calvin is proof of the God-changed life. Lately Calvin has been teaching me more than I could teach him.

During the commissioning I washed Calvin's feet as a sign of servanthood. As I read from John 13 I told Calvin "Calvin as you pursue the Kingdom of God you will be misunderstood, attacked and disrespected. People you love will for whatever reason walk away. Your motives will be questioned and your vision challenged. In all of this remember that you're not serving for your name on a billboard or an up-front parking space. You're doing it for the Lord and you have to be faithful to Him."

I didn't realize how true those words would have to ring to me in a matter of a few weeks. This past week was one of the most challenging, frustrating, confusing and yet rewarding all at the same time. Several different balls were juggled in the air and some were tough and some were great. In the end I pray that the all work out in God's soverignty.

In the middle of all of this I was questioning my responsibility and how to respond to some of the things brought my way. Then I read a passage from John Piper's devotional (that I happened to start to work through this week) and it says the following:

What is Humility?

In 1908 the British writer G.K. Chesterton described the embryo of today's full-grown, adolescent culture called postmodernism. It's already a worn-out phrase. Someday readers will have to look it up in a history book. One mark of its "vulgar relativism" (as Michael Novak calls it) is the hijacking of the word arrogance to refer to conviction and humilty to refer to doubt. Chesterton saw it coming:

"What we suffer from today is humility in the wrong place. Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition. Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction; where it was never meant to be. A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert--himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt--the Divine Reason... "