6 – Do not exalt yourself in the presence of the king, and do not stand in the place of the great;
7 – for it is better that he say to you, “Come up here,” than that you should be put lower in the presence of the prince, whom your eyes have seen.
As I was re-reading this particular chapter of Proverbs this morning, I was immediately struck by how applicable this perspective is to non-believers and to believers.
I’ve always read this verse as an admonition to avoid arrogance, keep my head down, do good work and I would be recognized. I still believe that to be true. Then I was struck by a slightly different interpretation. What if the above verses were printed like this:
6 – Do not exalt yourself in the Presence of the King, and do not stand in the place of the Great;
7 – for it is better that He say to you, “Come up here,” than that you should be put lower in the Presence of the Prince, whom your eyes have seen.
What would exalting ourselves in the Presence of the King look like? Wouldn’t it be elevating ourselves (or at least our intellect) to His level of understanding and knowledge.
For instance, non-believers typically justify non-belief along the lines of, “I can’t conceive of a God who (insert justification here: acts in the affairs of men/created the Universe/allows evil in the world/is perfect/sent His Son to die for all sins/etc.). In essence, what they’re saying is: “Since I wouldn’t or couldn’t do or allow those things, there can’t be a God who would or could do or allow those things. So, He doesn’t exist.”
Essentially, they’ve elevated their reason to the level of God, at least for themselves.
Unfortunately, Christians do the same thing. We just tweak it slightly. We justify our personal exaltation along the lines of: “I believe God sent His Son to die for my sins, but since I don’t understand what He’s doing in my life right now, He must not care enough about me to handle “x” in my life, so I’ll have to handle it myself.”
Sound familiar? It does to me. Faith is a journey of learning and understanding His heart, so we can trust more fully. Fortunately, we’re forgiven our failures and shortcomings as He works in our lives.
And, we are assured that when it’s over, He will say to us, “Come up here.”
