Thursday, February 24, 2022

Entitlement Mythology 101

 

Thursday, February 24, 2022

“Listen, O Israel!  Today you are about to cross the Jordan River to take over the land belonging to nations much greater and more powerful than you.  They live in cities with walls that reach to the sky!  The people are strong and tall—descendants of the famous Anakite giants.  You’ve heard the saying, ‘Who can stand up to the Anakites?’  But recognize today that the Lord your God is the one who will cross over ahead of you like a devouring fire to destroy them.  He will subdue them so that you will quickly conquer them and drive them out, just as the Lord has promised.  “After the Lord your God has done this for you, don’t say in your hearts, ‘The Lord has given us this land because we are such good people!’  No, it is because of the wickedness of the other nations that he is pushing them out of your way.  It is not because you are so good or have such integrity that you are about to occupy their land. The Lord your God will drive these nations out ahead of you only because of their wickedness, and to fulfill the oath he swore to your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Deuteronomy 9:1-5

Perched on the eve of conquering Palestine, the fledgling Israelite nation was warned by God to keep perspective on the source of the greatness they were about to experience.  God told them to not get puffed-up like a proud peacock over their supposed goodness, or integrity; their victory was a gift.

Many nations and many people have written their own brand of history.  It is said the winners of wars will tell the story of their own greatness, while truth goes begging.  Whether we like it or not, truth writes its own story, without regard to any other version. 

Scripture warns in many ways against pride.  Solomon’s words tell it plainly: 

Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall.  Proverbs 16:18

Claiming personal greatness is a symptom of the pride that goes before a fall.  Pride is a bulldozer paving the way down the slope of disaster.  The history of God’s special people is written over and again, with alarmingly similar results:

·       First stamp:  God’s great hand of favor clears the path for their success.

·       Second stamp:  Within a few generations (sometimes less), the truth is forgotten, and God’s greatness is claimed for the pride of a new leader. 

·       Third stamp:  God takes Israel to the woodshed (captivity, plagues, etc.).

·       Fourth stamp:  Repeat steps 1, 2, and 3.

American history bears unmistakeable parallels to Israel, of the way God blesses a nation.  That much is hardly questioned to my mind.  The troubling part of that statement, is, that we also bear the marks of the rubber stamp history of Israel. 

There is a sense of entitlement in the land today which smacks of the pride of privilege.  It’s not just white privilege that plagues, it is the endemic arrogance of any privilege.  Ethnic privilege, perceived greatness, dominant history, and any other sense of entitled platform is a house of cards awaiting collapse.  To borrow from James Russell Lowell’s thinking about truth ever being led to the scaffold, and wrong enthroned, in America, it seems, humility has been beaten with the shame brush, and pride lifted to the throne.  We are living in a false myth!


For You Today

Matthew Henry wrote a commentary on the entire Bible.  When it came to the Proverbs’ warning about pride, he gave us a Humility-101 kind of last word in this simple sentence:

Therefore let us not fear the pride of others, but greatly fear pride in ourselves.[1]

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!  

[1] Title image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©   


[1] Matthew Henry Commentary on Proverbs 16:18

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