Life for Dummies – Be a Humble Poser

Sycamore Creek Church
Be a Humble Poser
August 21, 2011
Luke 14:7-14
Tom Arthur

When are you poser?  What do I mean by “poser”?  I mean a time when you act phony, false, or fake; times when you put on a mask.  I pose sometimes.  I pose especially when I’m talking to someone and they assume I know the details of what they’re talking about.  This happens particularly for me around guy stuff.  Technical details that you’re supposed to know as a guy.

Guy: “I just put in a new SATA/IDE PCI Card”
Me: Oh yeah.  Um hmmm.  That’s cool.  POSING!  I have no idea what a SATA/IDE PCI card is.

Guy while watching basketball: “That was totally a charge.”
Me: Oh yeah.  Totally.  He totally charged.  POSING!  Confession: To this day I still don’t know how to tell when someone charged in basketball.

Guy at the auto repair shop: “The tie rod on your passenger side needs to be replaced.”
Me: Oh yeah.  I thought I heard that making noise.  POSING!  I rarely if ever know what I’m talking about when it comes to car parts.

I suspect I’m not the only guy to pose in a situation like this.  None of these are really that important, but recently I was very tempted to pose.  I had my yearly one-on-one evaluation with our District Superintendent, Bob Hundley.  I, and many other leaders in our church, have to fill out a lot of paperwork before this meeting, and then Bob and I talk about it.  At the moment of both filling out the paperwork and the moment of sitting down to talk about it, I had to ask myself, “Am I going to be honest about my weaknesses and the places I struggle, or am I going to put on a good face that says, Everything is just fine.  Nothing to see here.  Go look somewhere else.” I decided to be honest with Bob and share both my strengths and weaknesses over the past year.

I was talking with Bill Hoerner about this recently, and Bill told me that in his most recent yearly evaluation he went in to his supervisor and said, “I didn’t accomplish any of my goals this past year.” That’s a gutsy thing to do.  Bill was definitely not posing in that moment.  The good news was that Bill’s supervisor reorganized his work load so that he could accomplish his goals next year.

I also asked my female friends on Facebook about how women pose.  I found out that posing isn’t just for guys.  Here are what two female friends said about women posers:

I think a lot of women pose by acting like their relationships are going fine when they are often far from it. I’ve seen (and done myself) some posing by making sure the house/garden/makeup/clothe?s (etc) always look perfect for when guests come over. Not all that glitters is gold…

Personally, I think that women tend to “pose” way more often than men. Even though it’s an obvious generalization, I think that society tends to encourage women to do this because of the competition we tend to create amongst one another. Each has to be “better” than her neighbor, coworker, or even friend, and since this is impossible to do all the time, women “pose” to create the illusion that they are perfect.

So maybe you don’t pose quite these same ways, but you probably pose sometimes.  I think we are all concerned about the way others view us.  Posing can also have to do with our stuff.  We try to look a certain way.  We want others to think of us as certain kinds of people by the things we have.  I asked about this on Facebook.

The number one thing that popped up over and over again was technology.  Do you pose by the kind of cell phone you’ve got?  Second in the list was clothing.  Do you pose by the Abercrombie and Fitch clothing you wear?  Third on the list was automobiles.  Do you pose by the kind of car you drive?  Fourth on the list was homes.  Do you pose by the size of your house?  Next on the list was education.  Do you pose by the particular school you went to?

Juliet B. Schor, a professor of sociology at Boston College says:

A ‘horizontal desire,’ coveting a neighbor’s goods, has been replaced by a ‘vertical desire,’ coveting the goods of the rich and the powerful seen on television….The old system was keeping up with the Joneses…the new system is keeping up with the Gateses.

So we no longer try to pose by looking like our neighbor, but now we try to look like celebrities we see on the TV!

Jesus tells a pretty simple little story about a poser.

Luke 14:7-14 NLT

When Jesus noticed that all who had come to the dinner were trying to sit near the head of the table, he gave them this advice: “If you are invited to a wedding feast, don’t always head for the best seat. What if someone more respected than you has also been invited?  The host will say, ‘Let this person sit here instead.’ Then you will be embarrassed and will have to take whatever seat is left at the foot of the table!

“Do this instead — sit at the foot of the table. Then when your host sees you, he will come and say, ‘Friend, we have a better place than this for you!’ Then you will be honored in front of all the other guests.  For the proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored.”

Then he turned to his host. “When you put on a luncheon or a dinner,” he said, “don’t invite your friends, brothers, relatives, and rich neighbors. For they will repay you by inviting you back.  Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.  Then at the resurrection of the godly, God will reward you for inviting those who could not repay you.”

This is a fascinating story.  We tend to pose by thinking too much of ourselves.  Jesus is telling us to pose in the other direction!  I think he’s exaggerating a bit here, as he often does to get across a point.  What I think Jesus is talking about here is the way of humility.

Humility

Michael Casey in his book, Living in the Truth, says, “Humility aims to eliminate the phony aspects of our life and to help us to live in the truth.”  Eliminate the phony.  Take off the mask.  Get rid of the fake.  Stop posing!

He goes on to say:

Those who are humble experience no shame.  They do not need lies and evasions to inflate their importance in the eyes of their associates, or to buttress their self-esteem.  They have overcome the tendency to regard others as competitors or rivals, and so they work with whatever they have, and waste no time envying those who possess different qualities.  The humble are equally content with both the gifts and limitations that come from their nature or their personal history.

Humility is essentially about living in the truth.

When it comes to talking about humility, I think there are a lot of common misperceptions out there.  Here is a list of some things that humility is not:

Humility Is Not

Humility ? Passivity (We can be assertive and be humble).
Humility ? Mild Temperament (We can be an extrovert and be humble).
Humility ? Low Self-Esteem (We don’t have to put ourselves down).
Humility ? Institutional Conformity (We don’t have to do the same thing everyone else is doing).
Humility ? Humiliation (We don’t have to be taken advantage of).
Humility ? Non Faith Sharing (We do still share our faith).

Humility Is

On the other hand, humility is recognizing that we are not divine (We don’t get what we want right now).  We are creatures (We are dependent upon others, especially our creator).  We are sinners (We need to be forgiven, quite often).  We are stalled human beings (We may aspire to the highest ideals, but we rarely even live up to our own standards).

Take for example your movie queue.  Anyone have a movie queue on Netflix or the like?  Research has shown that we tend to think we’ll want to watch high artsy movies.  Serious movies about serious things.  Documentaries.  Foreign flicks.  Maybe even a French documentary.  My own queue is littered with these kinds of movies.  But when it comes right down to it on the night I’m deciding to watch a movie, I always choose something less than these high ideals.  I go for the action flick with a studly actor and beautiful actress, where the good guy after blowing up a lot of stuff gets the girl, and they kiss.  I am a stalled human being.  I suspect you are too.

Humility is, in a word, truth.  It is grasping and living into the truth about who we are.  Humility is in short order these days.  St. Benedict, the father of monasticism, had a three part rule: humility, silence, and obedience.  In contrast, today’s rule for living is vanity, gossip, and rebellion.

But what if you read Jesus’ story and you wanted to do what you could do to develop humility in yourself?  You can practice humility.  Practicing humility leads to having the habits of humility.  Having the habits of humility leads to having a humble nature.  Having a humble nature eventually leads to delighting in humble practice.  Jesus’ story points to a simple practice of humility: telling the truth about yourself, not being a poser.

I’d like to look at several situations we often find ourselves in and explore what it would be like to practice humility by telling the truth and not posing.

First Dates

What about a first date?  On first dates we tend to make ourselves look the best we can.  We clean up.  Wear our best clothes.  Exaggerate our strengths.  Look all together.  But in the movie, The Invention of Lying, there is a very awkward scene of two people having a first date and telling each other the “truth.”  Well, I’m not sure they actually tell one another truth.  They tell one another exactly what they’re thinking whether it is the truth or not, and there doesn’t seem to be any kind of filter between their brains and their lips.  This is not the kind of practice of truth telling that I’m talking about.  Truth telling would simply be not just putting your best foot forward.  What if you shared not only your hopes and dreams but also some of your fears and failures too?  I don’t know that you have to say absolutely everything about yourself, but you’re beginning to lay the groundwork for a possible future life together.  Will that life be based on posing or truth telling?  My parents’ marriage ended in divorce.  I think that neither of them really knew one another when they got married.  Who they thought they were marrying was an illusion.  Don’t begin building that illusion on a first date.

Wedding

I’m about to step on a whole lot of toes.  Let’s look at weddings.  What does a traditional American wedding look like?  It actually looks like an English wedding that took place on January 25, 1858 between Princess Victoria and Prince Frederick William.  Almost all of our modern traditions date back to this one wedding.  The problem with all this is that they had the national treasury to pay for their wedding.  We don’t.  But we end up trying to have a wedding that makes us look like a princess and prince, and we end up with the debt of a king and queen.  We try to pose like we’re William and Kate, but we don’t have parliament to pay for the wedding.  So we start life together with massive debt (or we pass it on to our parents).  Costofwedding.com puts the average wedding in Lansing between $15,839 and $26,398.  That’s crazy.

I’ve only presided over one wedding so far.  It was Danielle and Mike Johnson.  My impression was that Danielle was so happy that Mike was home safe from Iraq that she didn’t really care too much about all the details of the wedding.  Her focus was elsewhere, on her future husband.  Isn’t that where it should be?  They had a rehearsal dinner at a local pizza place.  Sarah and I loved it.  I asked her about this later on and she said, “We don’t eat like a prince and princess,” so why would their rehearsal be any different?

To practice humility at your wedding, here’s a simple truth telling practice: don’t go into debt to pay for your wedding.  Don’t pose as William and Kate.  Let the celebration be on par with who you are and what your family makes.

Parenting

Sarah and I have recently entered into the realm of parenting.  It’s quite scary.  Me a dad?  Yikes!  How do I practicing humility in parenting?  Micah has lately started to fuss or cry, the precursor to a tantrum, when he doesn’t get what he wants.  I’m tempted to give in just to get him to quit fussing or crying, but I don’t.  Then one time it happened while we were in the checkout line at a store.  Now I’ve got the eyes of everyone behind me on me and my crying baby.  I’m faced with a simple question: Am I more concerned with what these strangers think about me or the long-term character formation of my son?  I can in that moment give him what he wants so he shuts up and I pose like a parent who’s got it all together.  Or I can let him cry and face the staring eyes behind me resting in the truth that I’m doing what is best for him over the long-haul?  Every parent is faced with this kind of a dilemma.  Parents, choose humility in the crying baby over posing like you’ve got it all together.

Visiting a Church

Have you visited a church lately?  If you go on vacation, I hope you have.  You do go to church on vacation?  Right?  So what does the practice of humility look like when visiting a church?  I tend to turn on my church critic when I visit a church.  Sarah and I went to a church up north recently.  When we left, I graded everything about it from the hospitality to the building.  Literally.  Hospitality – D.  Preaching – C.  Music – B.  Building – B.  I’m not sure God spoke to me while I was there.  Then again, maybe I was being too much of a critic and not listening enough for God’s voice amidst this very human community.  I’d suggest that when you’re visiting a church, practice humility by sitting in the front.  Yes, the front.  In Jesus’ story the front seat was the best seat, but have you ever noticed how in churches the front seat is the seat everyone stays away from?!  Don’t sit in the back as a disinterested critic.  Get down in the middle of things.  And if you’ve moved and are looking for a new church, give each church three visits before you make a decision.  Maybe the day you went was an off day.  Practice humility when you visit a church or any community.

A Community Practicing Humility

Here at Sycamore Creek Church, we like to talk about igniting authentic life in Christ.  This means connecting to God and others, growing in the Character of Christ, and serving our church, community and world.  This word “authentic” is important to us because it means we’re trying not to be posers.  We’re trying to be real rather than phony.  We’re trying to unmask ourselves with others.  But this authentic life in Christ, practicing this kind of humility, isn’t going to happen with much depth if we’re just practicing on a Sunday morning. If you’re coming just on Sundays, but not getting involved in small groups in some way, then I think you’re going to have a very hard time growing in the practice of humility and being authentic.

This past weekend twenty-one men of our church met for our annual CRASH retreat.  A “crash” is a herd of rhinos!  Last year our men also met monthly for reCRASH events.  At one of those events, we ate breakfast then broke into small groups to answer the question, “How are you?”  That’s a simple question, and most of us pose when we answer it.  But that morning the guys in my group didn’t.  Ben Shoemaker, John Brinkerhuff, Keith Cantrall and I sat around a diner table and really answered that question.  We outlasted every group.

I came across a list of six questions that expand on that basic question.  I’d like to share them with you.  I’ve been trying them out lately, and I’ve found them to be particularly powerful for creating deep, meaningful, and very truthful conversations.  I think they provide a space to practice humility.  Those six questions are:

1. How are you?
2. What are you celebrating?
3. What challenges are you facing?
4. What are you doing to overcome those challenges?
5. How can I help you with those challenges?
6. What can I pray for you?

You can’t ask and answer these questions on a Sunday morning.  Who is asking you these questions?  Don’t be a poser when you answer.  Practice humility this week by sitting down with someone, answering these questions, and telling the truth.

Prayer

God, help us to practice humility by not posing.  Help us to tell the truth to one another.  Help us especially to tell the truth to you.  Give us courage to practice humility when we lack it.  In Jesus’ name, amen.