“I deserve this.”
Those are magic words. Right up there with “this wasn’t supposed to happen to me.” Each time we say it, we’re betraying the sense of entitlement we all have.
Often the focus of entitlement is on “American culture” or “American greed”. But I don’t think that’s the real problem. Oh sure American’s may have a highly developed sense of entitlement, but all humans believe they are entitled.
After all, didn’t Adam and Eve feel entitled to the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil? Didn’t Jacob feel entitled to Esau’s inheritance? Didn’t David feel entitled to more than one wife? Didn’t James and John feel entitled to a special place at Jesus’ side?
History is filled with a sense of entitlement.
And so are we. It’s part of human nature. For instance, if you find out your co-worker makes more money than you, but does less work, how does that make you feel? Don’t you immediately think you deserve more money? More respect? More vacation time? And they deserve more work?
Psychologists have a theory of motivation to explain that behavior, they call it ”Equity Theory.”
But the world is neither fair nor equal. And on top of that, God never promised us a life of fairness or equality. He doesn’t even promise us comfort. He just promises us life and freedom.
I’m not immune of course. And a sense of entitlement fills me more than I’d like to admit. Even as I type this I feel that I am entitled to finding a job (as many of you know, I’m currently out of work). But I don’t want to find a job through hard work, suffering, and faith. Instead I want this job to fall into my lap, offering a pay raise, shorter hours, and an easier commute.
So why should you care about any of this?
Because entitlement is dangerous. It blinds us to our own greed and selfishness. Often we can’t even recognize that what we’re doing is wrong. Consider the person who steals a tie because he thinks he’s owed by the “establishment.” Or someone who downloads music off the internet because “it’s not fair to have to pay for it.”
Entitlement surrounds us in sin, but whispers to us “I deserve this.”
The irony in this post is that we’re approaching Christmas. To many Christmas is a time of rampant entitlement. We criticize presents because they are “not quite right.” We complain about relatives and travel arrangements. We attack store employees because they don’t have what we are owed in stock. And sometimes we even kill to get a good deal.
Yet to God, Christmas is a time that contradicts entitlement. Christmas is when God gave up every right he had, and decided to come to earth for the sole purpose of dying. Simply to save us.
So this Christmas, as we start feeling a sense of entitlement, maybe we need to stop and reflect about the actual cost of that feeling. (Hint: God gave up everything for us. It cost him his life.)
What can we give up for him?
]. It’s not you that needs to make something out of your life, it’s God. That I know of, nowhere in the bible does God tell us that we have to make something out of ourselves. That’s His job…our job is to listen to what He says and act on what we hear, whether that’s physically doing something, or waiting on God to do something.
reader comment: king of the hill
Posted by e. barrett | Posted on 17-11-2008
Category : God, failure, faith, reader comments, sin
Tags: Christian, Christianity, failure, faith, God, John Ortberg, practice, religion, sin
I’d like to say that I’m home after a few weeks of travel. But I’m actually back on the road. Which is nice because where I live it’s snowing and where I am its 70 degrees. You have to love that! So while I’m on the road I want to take care of a little housekeeping and expand upon an interesting idea.
Christopher sent in an email about the king of the hill post.
Practice. It’s something I usually don’t’ associate with living out a life of faith. But you know what? I think that’s a great way of looking at it. It’s very rare that we instantly become people who can live in perfect faith. Usually it takes weeks, if not years, to overcome some of our sinful behaviors.
I think this is one of the most dangerous times of being a Christian. When we become frustrated that we aren’t changing as fast as we should be, we run the risk of giving up. We can become so upset that we keep making the same mistake we wonder, “will I ever be able to overcome this?” It’s easy to say we’re never going to overcome our selfishness, our lust, our greed, and so we give up.
But if we look at it from a practice perspective, things change. Our weaknesses no longer become impossible to overcome. Instead they represent a chance to learn and try again. In the book, God is closer than you think, John Ortberg has a prayer that simply says, “God I’m sorry I failed, please help me start again.”
God can never change our hearts if we’re running away from him because we see ourselves as failures. But he can radically change us if we keep getting back up and saying, “God, I failed, help me to stand up and try again.” This is the balance between truth and grace.
Maybe it’s true what they say: practice makes perfect.