He Came to Free Us From Being Sure of Ourselves

Those of us born again in Christ (in the way explained to Nicodemus in John 3) often marvel at, if not recoil from, the ignorance we lived in before Christ.

I think back to my college years, attending a “Big Ten” university and my subsequent thinking that somehow that made me, of course, a Big Deal too—and certainly superior in worldview! 

I was so sure about so many things: 

*that drinking was cool; non-drinking was lame; 

*that poetry and literature were the highest art form and television (other than 60 Minutes, Northern Exposure, MTV and the Frugal Gourmet, of course) was for losers; 

*that open-mindedness toward other cultures made me an expert on those cultures; 

*and that, generally speaking, since I pretty much had the capability to have an opinion, I thus had earned the legitimacy to have that opinion (on just about anything and everything).

But in reality? Most of the time, I didn’t have a clue!

I knew nothing of other cultures. 

I never hung out with non-drinkers, so how could I “know” they were “lame?” 

And just because I had an opinion, didn’t mean it was an informed opinion.

I also was in denial in my belief that my television watching was sophisticated while other people’s television watching was not. 

In fact, that habit of denial was a facet of every aspect of my life. Why? Because denial is easy when you don’t have objective truth. Denial is easy when you live in relativism. Denial is mandatory when you make yourself the god of you!

Now, some of this I chalk up to simply being young, immature and inexperienced. 

Even if people are raised as a Christian, there is still a learning curve and a breaking down of patterns of denial and pride. 

But since I had no objective truth from which to begin or build upon, and since my only base line of morality and wisdom was that formed by a childhood reading of Aesop’s Fables, I was at liberty to just create my own moral, emotional and intellectual operating system. 

This tended to engender a wider sense of boldness that then allowed me to fashion opinions on the world without actually having experienced that world. 

The result is what we term “hot air:” I said a lot of things off the cuff, with no factual basis, first-hand knowledge or study. And I remember—boy do I remember!—feeling as though I was the “expert;” and even more, needing to be the expert.

And that’s how it was that, just because I thought something to be so, it was so.

How foolish I was!

But the chickens came home to roost! 

I don’t claim to know the specific steps God takes, or His exact timing and purpose, but I do know that He is always in the position of getting our attention for our own good and out of His love for us. And so God, as He has done with so many others, got my attention and brought the curtain down on the farce I was making of my life.

I once heard a man accuse Christianity of being “a fairy tale.” 

Yet, what would he call the “belief” system I, willy nilly, had carved out for me? It wasn’t based on anything historical; it wasn’t based on knowledge; it hadn’t the benefit of being tested and tried—at least, not yet.

That’s when God came into the picture for me: when my personal belief system did begin to hit the wall and was found empty.

And that’s where the subjectivity of me, myself and I, met the objectivity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 

Christ came to take away our sureness in ourselves — freeing us to comprehend, like Job, that we spoke of things too wonderful for us; things which we did not know…therefore we retract, and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42).

copyright Barb Harwood