I’ll admit that while I was writing Part II, there were a few uncomfortable moments where I thought, “Mike, this is a really audacious claim you’re making. You mean to tell me that you actually think you were worth the great God of this universe allowing his only son to die a gruesome death for you?! You better hope that’s supported biblically, or else you’ve found yourself square in the most arrogant heresy there ever was.” So if you’re like me, the assertion that you were worth the cross can feel every bit as presumptuous as it does healing.
You might be tempted to say, “Claiming that I was totally worth the cross is an absolute affront to God’s grace. I wasn’t worth it at all, and that’s what makes God so good.” If you believe this, I have news for you:
I think you’ve fallen victim to some clever wordplay.
What you are worth and what you deserve are two incredibly different things. God’s word could not be more clear that you are worth everything (Luke 12:7, Matthew 18:12-14, 1 Timothy 2:5-6) and deserve nothing (Romans 11:35). In fact, Romans 5:8 declares this all by itself (brackets added by me): “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners [deserving nothing], Christ died for us [declaring us worth the highest price to Him: his son's perfect life].”
But here’s the crazy part: I often believe the exact opposite. Instead of believing I deserve nothing but am worth everything, I think Satan does a really good job of convincing me that I’m worth nothing but deserve everything. As a result, we walked around like a bunch of self-deprecating entitled fools, rather than humble, confident, thankful witnesses.
Let’s look into definitions here.
Deserve: to merit, be qualified for, or have a claim to (reward, assistance, punishment, etc.) because of actions, qualities, or situation.
Claiming to God that I deserve something from him is pretty insane. I would have neither actions, qualities, nor situation if he hadn’t chosen to give me life. So if I claim that he owes me something on account of those things, it’s pretty silly. Not to mention, I came out of the womb knowing nothing about him or how to attribute to him everything that is actually his (my life, the beauty of this world, his son’s sacrifice, etc.) Even my ability to give back to him a tiny portion what is rightfully his would be impossible had he not sought me out to give it to me.
Worth is a different matter, though. I took my entire last post to define worth because the dictionaries do a horrible job of it. Most sources will define worth in terms of value, and then define value in terms of worth. The only way out of it is to say that something’s worth/value is what comes from a “fair or equivalent exchange”. And we all know what was exchanged for you by the God who defines “fair”.
Believing that you are worth something great brings life. Knowing that God Almighty calls you “very good” and paid the highest price imaginable for you actually gives you and me the ability to live life outside of the tragic fate of circumstance determining our sense of self, because God has already given it to us.
Believing that you deserve something great brings death, because every time you’re not given what you believe you’re owed, you either feel wronged and invalidate your lack of reward (inflating your pride, setting yourself up for even bigger falls down the road), or you feel worthless and validate your lack of reward (leading to depression). In both cases, your only choice is to insulate yourself from relationships with others because relationships inevitably bring this lack of reciprocity. Your spouse, family, and best friends can never give you all the things that you’re convinced make you worth something. And then your loneliness brings eventual inner death, because you were made in God’s image, intended for loving relationship, as He is in loving relationship with himself (Father, Son, Holy Spirit).
So let’s have a brainstorming session called: How to Destroy a Human Psyche
Let’s start with a couple basic facts:
1) People need relationships
2) People are imperfect (have shortcomings, make mistakes, etc.)
3) People need validation
4) This world and its events are largely unpredictable
So then, if I want to destroy a human using just these 4 basic facts, I want to leverage facts (2) and (4) against (1) and (3). I want to make the shortcomings of human beings and the world’s unpredictable events undermine everyone else’s need for personal validation and loving relationships. How do I do that?
One of the best strategies I can think up is to convince them that all their validation has to come from what they receive from others.
That way, whenever (2) or (4) inevitably happens, and the world is unable to provide for them (3) for some time (and remember, they have no other source for (3) because of what I convinced them of), they will want to distance themselves from others, leaving them to destroy their own (1). And there we have it, the two core desires of a human being have been removed. Death of psyche.
I know that’s super brief and way over-simplified, but I wanted to give you a quick demonstration as to why I believe that Satan does this exact thing, and it’s so effective. I think one of his grandest schemes is to convince you that you have no inherent worth, but your situation or actions merit people repaying you all the time.
Because if you believe you have no inherent worth, then you are going to depend upon your actions- and situation-based rewards to determine your worth (flowers when you’re sick, trophies when you win, praise when you accomplish something, money for your job talent, etc.). But these things obviously could never communicate what you’re worth. It’s why the people who receive some of the most material rewards in life still end up killing themselves.
So then, when other people inevitably fail to give you the recognition that you were convinced you deserved, parts of you that hoped for being worth something die. And as a result, you inwardly die. And the Evil One enjoys great victory because his plan all along has been to destroy you.
I hope you’re beginning to understand that the only remedy for such a tragic state of the world is to receive your validation from something that transcends circumstance. And as much as part of me wishes that you could just give that to yourself, I don’t think you were made to (Part I). I hope that this post has given you the desire to recognize the difference between security (knowing you’re worth something) and entitlement (thinking you deserve something). As similar as they seem on the surface, they are worlds apart; one bringing life, and the other bringing death. May you live your life as someone who is secure in knowing that you deserve nothing, but that the loving God who made you has declared that you are worth everything to Him.
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