What are you really worth?
(or, why smart people do dumb things)
Listen to this by following this link!
Psalm 37 and Ephesians 2:1-10
On October 23rd 1990 Jason Haffizulah, a star student of Coral springs public high school in the USA, stabbed his physics teacher with a butchers knife. Jason had never scored less than an A in any test he had taken. Jason was outraged that his physics teacher had just given him a B – so turned up at high school with a knife intending to commit suicide but ended up stabbing the teacher. According to the New York Times, the judge accepted a defence of temporary insanity, declared him not guilty, and ordered him and his parents to undergo 12 months of therapy.
Why do smart people like Jason do dumb things?
The Bible is full of examples of this sort of thing, smart people doing or saying dumb things…
Vineyard workers – Jesus tells a story of a team of workmen who pick grapes, but some of the team arrive later than others. In the end, the landowner is generous enough to pay them all the same wage. Yet the ones who were there first cannot enjoy the boss’ generosity – they whinge about the others getting the same as them! It is so typical of our behaviour… what we have is not enough; we cannot help comparing ourselves to others and so we fail to enjoy what we have. We may be smart, but that is just dumb!
Jacob – grew up in the shadow of an older brother who was his father’s favourite. Essau was big, butch and hairy and the apple of his dad’s eye. Jacob was delicate and effete – a bit of an embarrassment, really. So he grew to feel like a victim and had to compensate for his lack of hairy manliness. But Jacob was incredibly smart and a natural grifter – he managed to con his father into giving him Essau’s inheritance. In the aftermath, he had to flee for his life and spent years in unhappy exile. So many smart people experience the same, rivalry with a brother or sister driving them to do dumb things.
The Prodigal’s brother – in another one of Jesus’ stories a long lost child returns home and his father throws a party. Half way through the celebration the oldest brother returns. Everyone is having a great time; until the older brother walks in and makes his resentment very clear… immediately the atmosphere changes, and everyone is miserable. Why do smart people do dumb things like that? It is because we cannot celebrate when others are successful if we are really in competition with them.
Elijah – one of Israel’s most powerful prophets. He had defeated the enemies of God in a spectacular competition on Mt Carmel. But afterwards, he found that he could not cope, broke down and ran away. When God catches up with him, Elijah comes out with a truly self righteous and sanctimonious speech about how he is the only one left who doesn’t serve false gods. Some of us are naturally inclined to blame ourselves when something goes wrong. But others are like Elijah – it’s always someone else’s fault! Smart people always sound dumb when they complain about everyone but themselves.
All these great people of God had small flaws… comparing yourself to others, a sense of inferiority, being in competition with people, desperate to get other’s approval, quick to judge others, inability to let God’s plan take it’s own time… all of these psychological forces can make smart people live dumb lives and do amazingly stupid things.
The ABC of psychological security
Smart people are less likely to do dumb things if they are secure in themselves, if they know who they really are. Look at the advice King David gives us in Psalm 37.
Psalm 37:1-11
“Do not worry… do not envy… trust in the Lord and do good, then you will live safely and prosper… Take delight in the Lord… commit everything to the Lord… be still in the presence of the Lord… do not worry… do not fret… do not be angry.”
Notice that this psalm is addressed to man and not God; it is godly advice about feeling secure when you are under pressure. In its original setting, each double verse began with a fresh sequential letter of the Hebrew alphabet. It is literally an ABC of psychological security.
King David, who wrote this poem, sings about how calm you can feel when you are under pressure. … the pressure to get angry, to make things happen, to let people have a piece of your mind. In short, the pressure you and I feel to do something outstandingly dumb!
Let’s take a closer look:
First , there is an appreciation of what is really going on in the world (1-2). Most of the people who give you a hard time are dying… they have no future. They may be angry with you, but you can only ever feel sorry for them.
Second , the people who know God personally are secure, and they can enjoy being secure (4-5)! You can see here exactly what it means to ‘know God personally’ – it means to trust him. You can’t see him, but he has spoken to us in the bible, trust what he says.
Third , because he loves you, you can trust God to look after you and bring you through the hard times (7)
Remembering this really can calm the feelings that swamp us when we are about to do something, or say something really dumb.
Knowing who you really are
But there is more to this. David was writing with a heart full of the things that God had revealed about humanity. He deeply understood things that have been neglected in our twenty-first century world. He knew what human life was really worth.
What is a human being worth? In the 1950’s there was a famous radio programme called The Brains Trust – a panel of eggheads would answer questions sent in by the public. One such was a professor C.E.M. Joad. This was his answer to the question, “What’s a man worth?”
“Enough fat to make seven bars of soap, enough iron to make one medium sized nail, enough sugar to sweeten seven cups of tea, enough lime to emulsion one chicken coop, enough phosphorus to make 2,200 matches, enough magnesium for one dose of liver salts, enough potassium to blow up one toy crane, enough sulphur to get rid of the fleas from one small dog, all dissolved in several buckets of water.”
There you are, that is your identity!
We grow up being told that we are no more than animals, just advanced chimpanzees. But why is it that Chimps are an endangered species clinging to a few patches of remote jungle, when human beings are able to thrive on every continent and send people into space? The Bible gives us a wonderful explanation; that we are God’s creation, and that he made us with his ability to create, to communicate and to rule over the world of nature. We are, the bible says, made in his image.
This is your identity – you are a child of God, made in his image, and built to know him, love him and worship him . Now you can see why David sings so beautifully of God’s intimate care for those who trust him… we need to absorb this deep down in our soul… you are not an accident, you exist because someone wanted you to exist, your birth was an act of love by an almighty Creator. You life has a purpose; there is a right and a wrong way to live, and to discover that you need to trust him.
Knowing who you can become
But we know something David didn’t; we get more from knowing God than he ever understood. Christians learn it from Ephesians 2:1-10.
Sometimes we have done so many dumb things we wonder if God would ever want to do anything good for us. Religions tend to reinforce those feelings of guilt, and try to control us by telling us that God is driven by law and will demolish us if we break his law. But God is not driven by a desire to punish us, he is driven by grace, and compassion, he longs to forgive us and enable us to live a new life. And the astonishing thing is that you access this new life by trusting him… he does not even ask that you pay some kind of fee for it!
That is how much he loves you! Do you remember that we started with two stories that Jesus told; the story of the workers in the vineyard and the lost son. Both of these stories are really about God’s outrageous generosity and kindness: he gives the same reward to the lifelong saint and the thief on the cross, he does not ask the lost son to pay back what he squandered, but wraps his arms of love around him! The bible calls this grace – Gods special favour to people who trust him.
Now see what you can become, it is in verse 10, “For we are God’s masterpiece, he created us anew in Christ Jesus so that we can so the good things he planned for us long ago”.
Some years ago, my son, his grandad and myself built a nineteen foot open canoe, a few years later we
teamed upagain to build a strip planked kayak. We put our heart and soul into those boats, something of the heart of three gererations of my family went into them. They are beautiful to look at and a joy to paddle! Here they are, don't they look great!
I’ve still got those boats and we will never part with them. Something of me and my son went into them as we worked together. They are our masterpiece.
That is how God sees you, he rescued you from sin and death and hell. Now he is ‘doing you up’ so that you become like Christ. He will never, never part with you, something of himself has been expressed in your salvation.
And as if that was not enough, he has a special commission for you, a job that has been waiting for you since the dawn of time (10)
Do you see… do you have any sense at all of how precious you are… your true identity?
Let the smart hi-jack the dumb
Some of the worst moments in our lives happen when our dumb self takes control of the smart self. When we spoil the party because we feel we have been wronged, we end up on our own because our clever schemes have made everyone mad at us, when we blow up at everyone because we feel we are bearing the whole load.
Let these truths soak into your soul:
- You exist because He wanted you to exist
- He is not waiting for you to perform; he is waiting for you to trust him
- He has a job for you to do
David knew most of this, you now know more than he ever did! It’s time to put it into practice!