A Delicate Dance

Taking God more seriously than ourselves

03/26/2021

John 10:31-42 The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus. Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these are you trying to stone me?” The Jews answered him, “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.” Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, ‘You are gods”‘? If it calls them gods to whom the word of God came, and Scripture cannot be set aside, can you say that the one whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world blasphemes because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me; but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may realize and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” Then they tried again to arrest him; but he escaped from their power.

At the heart of Christian spirituality (and even theology) we find a peculiar paradox, a delicate dance, a beautiful balance. On the one hand we must take God very seriously, while on the other hand we must resist the temptation to take ourselves too seriously. What inevitably happens, however? We do not take God seriously enough, and we take our own egos far too seriously. When we cannot maintain this proper paradox, we not only practice poor spirituality we also commit a serious sin. I am convinced that underlying all sinful behavior is the attitude that takes ourselves too seriously and a failure to take God seriously enough.

On the one hand, how do we not take Jesus seriously enough? For instance, when we say he was a “good moral teacher” like Buddha or Mohammed or Confucius. Have you ever heard that, or perhaps even said that? Bishop Robert Barron explained what Jesus meant when he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” He wrote: “Jesus wanted to know what they thought about his identity, his being. And this question sets Jesus off from all of the other great religious founders” (Catholicism, 12). In other words, Jesus did not want his followers to write him off as just another inspired religious leader, but rather to see him as the God-man. That is, Jesus was asking them to take him very seriously.

On the other hand, we must keep our own egos in check, and not let them become overinflated. Bishop Barron wrote a little later: “It has been said that the healthiest spiritual people are those who have the strongest sense of the difference between themselves and God” (Catholicism, 13). In other words, we can laugh at ourselves, and even laugh at our own sins. Christian holiness requires a peculiar paradox, a delicate dance, a beautiful balance: to be able to love God and to laugh at ourselves.

This may help us penetrate the particulate problem for the Pharisees in the gospel today. The Pharisees are so infuriated with Jesus they attempt to stone him. When Jesus asks why, they answer: “We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy. You, a man, are making yourself God.” In a sense, the Pharisees were on the right track. They were starting to take Jesus seriously. They began to glimpse that he might be God, not just “a good moral teacher.” But they recoiled from taking that religious leap of faith and fell back on their egos.

To help them see how they were getting things upside-down spiritually, Jesus quotes from Ps. 82:6, saying: “Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, ‘You are gods’’?” In other words, Jesus was trying to expose their overinflated egos – did they actually think they were like “gods”? – and instead help them see their own smallness, and if possible, to get them to laugh at themselves. But that was asking too much. The Pharisees’ spirituality (and theology) had titled too far in the wrong direction. They took themselves too seriously, and failed to take God more seriously. Hence, they committed the greatest sin of all: deicide, the murder of God. Skewed spirituality ultimately leads to serious sin.

My friends, we see here another great lesson we can learn from the season of Lent, namely, how to perceive that peculiar paradox, that delicate dance, that beautiful balance we call holiness. If you seriously want to be a saint, you should ask yourself two questions daily: (1) how seriously do I take God? and (2) how seriously do I take myself? The modern world not only does not take God very seriously, they don’t want to think about him at all. The fastest growing segment of the U.S. population is atheists.

Secondly, the best way not to take ourselves too seriously is by going to confession. Sometimes, in confession after the person has said their sins, I reply: “Eh, that’s not too bad.” It always makes them smile or even laugh. But it touches a deep truth: sometimes we take our sins too seriously and think they are bigger than God’s infinite love. So we stay away from confession. But do you see what just happened? We took ourselves too seriously and we did not take God’s love seriously enough.

C. S. Lewis once wrote: “No people find each other as absurd as lovers.” That is, lovers can laugh at themselves because they take their love seriously but not themselves; they are truly themselves before each other's eyes. At the heart of all holiness lies a peculiar paradox, a delicate dance, a beautiful balance.

Praised be Jesus Christ!