Lent 9: Passing on praise

John replied "... I am not the Christ but am sent ahead of him."  John 3: 28.

John's response to the questions of his disciples about Jesus is one which takes the gaze of those around him away from himself and onto Jesus - the one who he knows to be "the Christ".

He is not self-deprecating, or falsely humble - he simply knows where his strength and his words came from and wishes that to be peoples' focus.

I always struggle to know where the line is between false (and slightly annoying) 'Christian' humility which rebuffs any compliment or thanks in a slightly Uriah Heap-ian fashion, and true Christian humility which comes from one who knows their worth and beauty in God, and passes all compliment and thanks through themselves and onto the one who gives them all that they have.  One is an avoidance of the beauty and worth in a person based on the distorted belief that the only beauty and worth in the world is in God; and the other is based on the gentle and joyful knowledge that one is loved to the core unconditionally (which, in essence, means that one can have done nothing to win that love, and can do nothing to change it) and so comes to the point where they can accept all praise and thanks and pass it quietly onto God without it changing their knowledge of their beloved-ness.

John, for me, demonstrates the second kind of humility.  He could have allowed the focus to come onto himself for he was most certainly an excellent speaker and evangelist; but his eyes were fixed on the one who gave him all that he had and so it was no problem to him, nor a lessening of his worth to pass people's attention immediately onto his Lord.

I have a lot to learn from John; but I will not learn it by forcing myself to somehow ignore praise or to find success meaningless.  This attitude can only come gradually and willingly with the knowledge that all I am and all I have finds its source in God.  Then it will be my pleasure and joy to pass all praise and thanks onto God, and to feel myself to be no less or no more in the process.