Ruin, Part 2: Boasting about Ruin
In my previous newsletter, I talked about the call I feel to self-ruin. One of the biggest challenges when we experience ruin is the strong impulse to defend our image. I feel a need to repair my status and standing before others, and this typically manifests in defensiveness and boasting.
I recently listened to someone who is going through this very thing. He experienced a form of ruin at work. My friend’s co-worker did something manipulative that led to his personal diminishment with his boss. His strong impulse has been to repair his image, which means he has been giving a lot of energy to trying to control how other people think of him. The primary way this came out in our conversation was through boasting. He kept telling me how great he was in one form or another. I can only imagine that he was doing this at work too…constantly pointing out his accomplishments to his peers and boasting about the things he does well.
As I listened to him, I was sad. I didn’t think less of him because someone wronged him. He didn’t need to defend himself to me. I also wished that he would welcome this experience of image-ruin and trust that God would take care of him. However, in order to make this shift he needed to believe that God would be his defender.
In a way, this is the situation the apostle Paul found himself in with the Corinthian church. He discovered that his status was diminished before them. In his absence, some “super apostles” had come along and wooed the church with their greatness. In the process, they had dismissed, put-down, and ultimately damaged Paul’s standing with the Corinthians as they boasted of their own grandeur. The Corinthians were swept up in this. Like my friend, Paul was facing diminishment at work and the book 2 Corinthians is Paul’s response.
In it, he engages in a sort of defense of his leadership, but it’s not the typical defense. A typical defense would have been defensive. It would have looked like what my friend was doing at work – boasting about the greatness of his “self.” But Paul does the opposite. Paul boasts about his ruined self, and then trusts that the Lord will defend him.
There is a difference between boasting about our “self” and the LORD’s defense of us. When I boast, I talk about things I’ve accomplished in the past in order to convince you that I have a measure of worth. I do this in order to get you to value me, to respect me, and to listen to what I’m saying. The LORD’s defense comes in the form of commendation. This commendation happens when the LORD speaks within your spirit about me.
Not surprisingly, Paul says the LORD’s commendation of us is much better than our own boasting about our “self.”
For it is not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends. ~2 Cor. 10:18, NIV
What Paul is talking about here is something we’ve all experienced. It is that experience in the Spirit that happens when we are talking with someone or maybe just observing someone, and the Spirit gives us an insight. In that moment we are aware of something about this person. We are aware that they are humble. We see that they are motivated by love. We notice that they are peaceable. We sense their commitment to truth. We feel safe with them because they are gentle.
In this moment, the LORD is bearing witness about this person within our own spirit, and we are inclined to listen to them and trust them. This is the LORD’s commendation. It is much better than our own boasting.
This is the same thing that Jesus talks about when he uses language about the Father bearing witness to him in John 5:31-47. Here’s one example:
36 “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, 38 nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. 39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life. ~John 5:36-40, NIV
Jesus said that the Father was commending him. As he did the works he was doing, the Spirit was bearing witness to Jesus’s identity. The Spirit was in the hearts of other believers commending Jesus. Jesus didn’t boast. The Spirit commended.
Of course, one of Jesus’s great points of pain was that so few people were listening to the voice of the Father bearing witness about him. So many people couldn’t see the work of God in Jesus’s life because they couldn’t hear the Spirit bearing witness about Jesus. They looked at Jesus and only saw the signs of outward ruin – his lack of education, his low status, his poverty, his distance from seats of religious power, etc. They looked at the outside self, or his image, while the LORD was speaking within the heart.
And it will be the same for us. The LORD WILL commend you to others as you walk in the way of the Spirit, but there’s no guarantee other people will listen to the LORD’s commendation of you. They may only see your ruined self. But this is no reason to take up boasting in the self. Rather, it’s reason to take up boasting in your own ruin, just as Paul did in 2 Corinthians. When we boast in our ruin, we make evident to the world around us that we are no longer living in the kingdom of self. This points people to the realm of the Spirit where, if they listen, they will hear the LORD’s commendation of us.
That’s what Paul did. Throughout 2 Corinthians, he boasts in his ruin as a way to instruct. He wasn’t actually boasting about all the horrible things that happened to him. He was teaching. He was pointing the Corinthians to the Spirit. It was his way of trying to highlight this whole other realm of the Spirit where a richer conversation is taking place. We welcome the ruin of our self, and then boast in it, as a way of testifying to the LORD’s own testimony about us by the Spirit.
This is incredibly freeing. When I struggle to accept ruin, I remember this. The LORD defends me by commending me to others. I can let go of my need to ensure others respect and listen to me. I can let go of the burden of guarding, defending, and boasting about my self. Instead, I can find great comfort from the LORD when I notice other people experience the LORD’s commendation of me in their own hearts.
How might you let go of defensiveness and boasting about your “self” and trust in the LORD’s commendation of you?