Bragging Rights Series

Everybody knows that Christians shouldn’t boast, right? Some people are so leery of boasting that they hide the gifts God has given them in the mistaken notion that God will be pleased with their humility. But that’s just as bad as seeking every opportunity to grab the limelight, because God can’t use you with your brakes locked. On the other hand, showing off at every conceivable opportunity, rubbing other people’s noses in your skills or accomplishments, fame or money or lineage or looks, is a kind of attention-deficit disorder displaying a serious problem in your relationship with God.

First of all, God declares in no uncertain terms that he will not share his glory with anyone else. [Is 42:8] So taking credit for what God has given you is, in effect, stealing from God. But secondly, it displays a real insecurity about where your worth actually comes from. Being God’s adopted child should matter more to any of us than being a headliner, even if it’s in the biggest show in town. I don’t know that Abraham ever boasted, but the Jewish people certainly did - in their descent from Abraham. Perhaps it was because the Romans looked down on them, perhaps it was because they were afraid of losing their national and religious identity to the lure of a seductive pagan culture...

Does anybody here remember having seen the old classic Three Musketeers movie, the one from the 70's with Michael York as D’Artagnan? Do you remember how touchy he was about his honor, and how ready he was to defend it with his sword? And of course he got insulted rather often, because he was an awkward country boy in shabby clothes riding in on an absolutely ludicrous yellow horse, just arrived in the big city of Paris from the poor rural province of Gascony. It was kind of like being an Iowa farm boy at a charity ball in New York.

Anyway, as you might expect, D’Artagnan - and practically everybody else from Gascony - overcompensated like crazy for their insecurity. As a matter of fact, the dictionary lists “Gascon” as a synonym for braggart. But we Christians shouldn’t suffer from that kind of insecurity. Because we know that God cares if we’re here or not; in fact he put us here. And we - each one of us - matters so much that he died for us.

And as much as other things in our society have changed, I think that bragging is still a symptom of insecurity. Bragging is a way to make sure we get the respect, the recognition we crave from the people around us. It’s a way of saying, “I’M HERE! PAY ATTENTION TO ME! I MATTER! I AM SOMEBODY!” But you only need to do it when there’s an empty place inside that says “Nobody cares if you’re here or not, and you really don’t matter after all.”

But here we are, with Paul just having completed a long chapter explaining how everything we have is a gift and we aren’t supposed to boast about any of it, and what do we see? Paul’s telling us to boast. Well, he doesn’t actually command us to boast, but he says that he does and implies that we as fellow Christians have the right to do the same. He says “we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings...” [Rom 2b-3a] So what’s going on? What’s he trying to tell us?

Are we supposed to go about saying to other people, “nya nya nya nya nya nya, I’m going to heaven and you’re not?” I don’t think so. Or are we supposed to go about comparing trials, and saying, “I’m more spiritual than you are because I’ve suffered more?” I can just see a kind of schedule of benefits, you know, x number of points for cancer, x number for a job loss, x number for divorce, etc. There’s also the danger, in most denominations, on both ends of the theological spectrum, from the Confessing Church movement to the More Light churches, feeling that they are not quite as sinful than the people on the other side of the great divide. Which is not what Paul said at the beginning of this great letter - that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” [Ro 3:23]

Paul is not talking about anything related to self-esteem at all. His concern is that we should assign value to the things in our lives that really matter. And he is telling us is that instead of looking to the things the world values, seeking recognition from our neighbors and rivals, we should instead take pride in the things God has given us - even when the world might think we’re absolutely nuts.