8 And
they heard the sound of the Lord
God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord
God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to
him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound
of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you
eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The
man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the
tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have
done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”
Genesis 3:8-13
The integrity of humility and dignity is shattered right after human fell into
sin. What was in harmony is now in tension. It has been in tension
ever since. We struggle with the limitation of our physical body.
When God came to search for Adam and Eve, they did not welcome God with joy and
thanksgiving. They no longer felt the dignity and honor of being visited
by their Creator. So they hid behind the trees. They thought that
when they hid their physical bodies, they could avoid God’s piercing eyes and
his omniscience. They were ashamed of who they were. They could not
present their bodies as they were before their maker. The natural
humility was burdened with shame and humiliation. And their dignity went
awry. It went haywire. Short circuited from top to bottom.
And so in their humiliation, they did not humble themselves. But instead,
Adam magnified his pride and answered the Lord as if
he did nothing wrong. He did not respond in humility.
The first question God asked was: “Where are you?” The answer to
the question was a cosmic disconnect between heaven and earth. This is
the answer Adam gave to the caring and loving question of his God: “I heard
the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I
hid myself.” When a king calls, his subject must answer “Here I am
Lord.” But Adam did not answer politely. Why was Adam afraid?
Why did he hide? This kind of action offended God. Was God some
kind of monster that Adam should be afraid of? The magnification of his
pride took the best of him. And so instead of admitting his fault of
being disobedient, he accused God of being intimidating.
Then the second question from God: “Who told you that you were naked? Have
you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” Instead
of again humbling himself and answering the King with proper honor, he indulged
his pride and accused his wife of causing his disobedience. And
ultimately he magnified his pride so great that he accused God himself to be at
fault because he brought the woman to him. The integrity and harmony of
humility and dignity that is within human nature has gone mad. Human is
disintegrated into the two polarities of humility and dignity. When the
two important ingredients of human structure are disintegrated what is left is
humiliation and pride. This also happened to the first woman. When
God then asked Eve: “What is this that you have done?” he got a similar
answer from her in her magnified pride saying: “The serpent deceived me, and
I ate.” The integrity is shattered. The harmony ceased to exist.
In our deepest humiliation we magnify our pride over in order to cope with the
feeling of brokenness and unworthiness inside. Our eyes are fixed on the
valueless dust that constructs our physical body. The data is interpreted
by our mind, which in turn informs our pride to build a fortress in order to
cover our fragility. This mode of survival is then passed on from
generation to generation. It fits our sinful nature and has helped humans
to survive in the merciless world. Our defense mechanism always starts
with pride. Humility makes us vulnerable, so we set it aside. We
take dignity and corrupt it so as to exploit it in a different format.
The dignity is no more for it has been transformed into pride. Pride
becomes our weapon and defense against being humiliated. The glory of
being human is a thing in the past. Our humble origin from the dust of
the earth shaped in the masterpiece of God, which obtained life through the
breath of God himself, has become our enemy. To acknowledge that we are
created by God is humiliating for our sinful mind. Our rebelliousness
can’t accept our honorable humility. And we consider our origin as
weakness. Pride takes over that instead of humbling ourselves before our
Maker, we challenge God through our wild imagination of our origin. The
proud humans did not want to give the honor to God for being our creator, and
so in our stupid pride we leave the seat of honor that only God can sit on to
chance.
So we learn to balance the art of hiding our humiliation and the skill to
magnify our pride. Humility is a rare gem in the world of pride. When
humans gather, we boast and brag about our achievements. We put our
weakness in our safe deposit box to avoid humiliation and we wear the magnified
mask of pride in order to present our self praise. In our habit of doing
so we lost our true self and be deceived by our own masking of pride into
embracing our false self as our identity. From there we extract values
and ethics. But God reminds us time and time again of our humble origin
through unavoidable death. So when God judged Adam he said: “... till
you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and
to dust you shall return.” Our humble origin is our nature. It
is within us. We tried very hard to sweep it under the rug, but we can
never avoid it. It is inevitable. At the appointed time our
dustness will be exposed and nothing we can do about it. When our humble
origin is invoked and we are nearing our return to dust, we realize our
humility. The memory of the past flies right in front of us to give us a
reflection of our futile attempt to hide it. In our reflection we are
reminded the vanity of our pride magnification throughout our life. No
matter what we do to hide our humility, in the end it comes to us unstoppable.
That’s the time when we break down in tears regretting every single decision we
make that brought us further away from our true self. In our deathbed we
are face to face with the reality of our true identity. Soon we will meet
our Creator and we can hide nothing from him. Our true identity will be
exposed. But at that time we understand that we have deceived ourselves
our entire life with the false self. We want to deny our false self, but
time is against us. We had our entire life, but we wasted it in pursuit
of deception for fear that our humiliation would be found out and be exposed to
the world. Now we are at the brink of death, we have no time anymore to
nurture our true self. It has been forgotten for so long. Our true
self is dying together with our body decaying. That’s the time when we
can no longer brag and boast about our pseudo glory.
Sin devastates the integrity of our humility and dignity. It has
destroyed it to the point that we are neither humble nor dignified. Sin
depraves us that in reflecting our maker we no longer reflect him properly.
Sin binds us in the state of humiliation and pride. The pursuit of pride
leads us only to our humiliation. The life of a human being struggles
between the polarity of humiliation and pride. No way out for us.
Philosophers and religious leaders have worked very hard to solve this puzzle.
But the disintegrity is never mended. Human wisdom can’t compete with the
chasm in the midst of the disintegrity. Human is lost. Deep down
every person cries out for help. God knows our need. So in his
infinite wisdom and eternal love he planned for his Son to come as the savior
of humankind. He fulfilled his plan 2000 years ago. He sent his one
and only Son, Jesus Christ, to come into the world. He came in humility
to redeem us from our humiliation. He came with the heavenly dignity to
redeem us from the bondage of earthly pride. He came an integrated being
who was comfortable with his humility and walk dignified as the Son of Man.
So when he was on earth he never gave in to temptations. He never felt
insecure. He never needed to hide his humble origin. The whole
earth celebrated his birth on a manger. He was okay with it. He
never needed to mask his humble origin with a mask of pride. He never
lost his dignity in his humble state. In that he is glorified to the
highest by his Father.
In Jesus Christ we are redeemed. As his redeemed people, we regain our
dignity in the embrace of our humility. God is transforming us to be like
his Son. And so we gradually actualize our true self in our life by
continuously denying our false self. In our humility we allow Jesus to
lead us in the way we should go. That is our dignity as the children of
God.
The Business of Christian Education LXXVI
The Business of Christian Education LXXVI
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