De-served

Turn on your TV and listen to the advertisements.  You won't have to listen very long before you hear a salesman pitching a product and enticing you to purchase what they are offering because you deserve it. 

You deserve to own a bigger TV (because you work so hard. . .); you deserve a great vacation (because you need a break from the grind); you deserve a new computer (because it will make your life so much easier); you deserve, you deserve, you deserve.

We are inundated with this message of 'you deserve'.  We are being told that the world owes us.  That is what it means to deserve something--it is to be owed.  There is something about who we are or what we have accomplished that means that others owe us, or me. 

This kind of philosophy puts me at the center of my universe.  In fact, we can think it is a virtue to deserve as this is a kind of validation for things like hard work, or diligent service.

But I am struck, once again, with how Jesus teaches us something about real life that stands in opposition to this kind of mentality. 

In a Jesus-philosophy-of-life to have an attitude of 'I deserve' just doesn't fly.  For just a moment, if you think about Jesus' life, do you ever get even a sniff of an attitude from Him that He felt He had an attitude of 'I deserve'?

To live with the 'I deserve' mentality is to live with a 'Me first' mentality, and Jesus never did that. 

Here is a great example of someone who lived a Jesus-philosophy-of-life:  In Luke 1:26-38 we hear God speaking through an angel to Mary about His plans for her life.  She is being told that she will be impregnated by the Holy Spirit (crazy stuff I know!) and that as she will never have had physical intercourse with a man, she will be giving birth to a baby as a virgin.  What this meant for Mary was significant.  Why?  First of all, everyone would think that she has had sex with a man--which is normal of course.  But, they would also know that her husband would not be responsible for the pregnancy.  It would have looked to many people that she is making up this outlandish story of a Holy-Spirit-impregnation, but people would be thinking that she simply had an affair.  In Mary's culture, a woman who cheated on her husband was in a lot of trouble.  In fact, her life could be in jeopardy.  But this is what God wanted to do through her in order to bring salvation to the world.

You know what Mary's response to this was?  It certainly wasn't "Lord, this is unfair!  Don't you know what people are going to say about me?  Don't you know that my standard of living could be in real jeopardy here?  Don't you know that I deserve better?

No.  This is what Mary said:  "I am the Lord's servant. . .May it be to me as you have said."

All I can say is 'wow'.  What a selfless and humble attitude.  Mary was not ensnared in what her culture was trying to convince her of--that she deserved so much for herself.  She was free from all that.  She was free to be a servant of God.

When we live with an 'I deserve' attitude what we really are living is de serving life.  That means we are devaluing having a servant attitude; humility and self-sacrifice become less important to us.  Just like deconstruction is the breaking apart of a building, de-serving is the breaking apart of a servant attitude.

Jesus did not live with a deserving attitude--He lived as a servant.  Mary, though her life would have been very difficult because of what God wanted to do through her, did not say that she deserved better--she modelled such a beautiful servant heart.

It should be obvious to us that we should not live as de-servants but as servants.  May God help us to do so.

BT