Reputations

Somewhere recently I read that little children have no reputation to earn, keep or lose. They are oblivious to the whole concept of reputation, and totally unconcerned about what others think of them. The author suggested that this was what Jesus meant when he said that if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven we must become like little children (Mk 10.15).

This lack of concern or even awareness of their own reputation is perhaps what also distinguishes "fools for Christ". Such people are free to do whatever God calls them to do because they have nothing to lose. It doesn't matter to them that others might think them foolish for acting or speaking as they do.

If little children have no concept of reputation, how does it develop? Why are most of us so concerned to protect our reputations? I suspect it comes from constantly hearing phrases such as "What will people think?", "You look very silly when you do that", "How do you expect to make friends if you behave that way" and so on.

Even if parents avoid using such phrases themselves, their children soon hear them elsewhere. They observe how older children and adults constantly assess, judge and condemn other people. "She really shouldn't wear those colours with hair like hers", "He's such a lazy so and so," "Have you seen the weeds in their garden?"

Children soon realise that they, too, are being assessed. Besides having to learn what is right and wrong, they discover another set of behaviours they have to learn; 'acceptable' and 'unacceptable'. Failure to comply leads to disapproval and exclusion from the group. And fear of exclusion is a basic human fear.

That is not to say that children shouldn't be taught to treat others with consideration and to behave in an acceptable and gracious way. No-one wants to raise a child who is obnoxiously inconsiderate. But might it be possible to teach good manners and consideration as an aspect of loving one another, rather than using the threat of exclusion?

It seems the majority of us grow up instead with a strong sense of the importance of keeping our reputation untarnished, and have an often-unrecognised but powerful fear of disapproval. How, then, do we move from there to being like little children, "God's fools"?

Do we need some re-training process? Anxious people can be taught to listen to their own thoughts and recognise when their fear of disapproval is becoming irrational. With the help of a therapist, they can learn to answer "Who cares!" when that inner voice says "What will people think?"

But my impression is that those who are fools for Christ don't need such therapy. They instinctively answer "Who cares!" Their grasp of what it means to be a child of God is so strong that they can't be moved by fear of exclusion and loneliness. They are so convinced that they are approved by God, so sure that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, that human approval is of no consequence to them.


This post is one of a series on what it means to be free in Christ:

Free in Christ - introduction

Choosing the right master

God's freedom and ours

Jesus and freedom

Going beyond personal freedom

Freed from the fear of death

Fools for Christ

Reputations

Fools for Christ

I spent a morning recently wandering over the Internet, chasing the theme of "fools for Christ". It had occurred to me that this was an important aspect of what freedom in Christ means. Those who are truly free are happy to appear foolish in the world's eyes for his sake.

Perhaps it was a result of reflecting on the difference between what I see in myself and something I perceived in a young woman I heard speaking at a morning tea recently. She and her husband and their children live and work in China, and were about to return there after a break. So much of what she said about hearing and obeying God would seem foolish even to Christians, let alone non-Christians. And yet she seemed so close to God, and he ministers through her and others like her so powerfully. Nothing stands in the way of loving obedience to her Lord. She aroused that "Whatever she's got, I want it" feeling in me, and I suspect, in others who heard her.

"But" we ask, "how can we be like her when we have homes to look after, children to educate, careers to keep up, mortgages to pay?" And the answer is, she could have all those concerns too, if she chose to. She chooses not to. She and her husband live in rented accommodation, teach their children themselves, and do whatever they believe God is calling them to do. Sometimes they make mistakes and mis-hear him, they acknowledge that. But most of the time they live in a very intimate way with him. They are utterly convinced of his love and care for themselves, their children and for those around them. Their life is difficult, and yet it's also a grand adventure. Their children know nothing else, so feel no loss, as far as I can tell. They're free people.

Perhaps too, I was reflecting on what Luther said about the Christian already having all that he (or she) needs, so they have no need to seek things for themselves. They are free to expend all their energies on 'being Christ' to others.

Here is the truly Christian life, here is faith really working by love, when a man applies himself with joy and love to the works of that freest servitude in which he serves others voluntarily and for nought, himself abundantly satisfied in the fulness and riches of his own faith....

Thus from faith flow forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a cheerful, willing, free spirit, disposed to serve our neighbour voluntarily, without taking any account of gratitude or ingratitude, praise or blame, gain or loss. Its object is not to lay men under obligations, nor does it distinguish between friends and enemies, or look to gratitude or ingratitude, but most freely and willingly spends itself and its goods, whether it loses them through ingratitude, or gains goodwill. For thus did its Father, distributing all things to all men abundantly and freely, making His sun to rise upon the just and the unjust. Thus, too, the child does and endures nothing except from the free joy with which it delights through Christ in God, the Giver of such great gifts.

My Internet trawling led me first to an article about the place of the holy fool in history and literature, with many other leads that I could follow there. Another site quoted Os Guiness about what it means to be a fool for Christ.

I also came across material on Dorothy Day, and the Catholic Workers' movement in New York during the depression, which I'd never heard of before but which is quite fascinating. Dorothy Day described herself as a "fool for Christ", unconcerned about what others thought about her, because only God's opinion mattered.

This is a facet of freedom that I would like to follow further.

This post is one of a series on what it means to be free in Christ:

Free in Christ - introduction

Choosing the right master

God's freedom and ours

Jesus and freedom

Going beyond personal freedom

Freed from the fear of death

Fools for Christ

Reputations

Going beyond personal freedom

How does Christian freedom at a personal level relate to freedom at a political level? Or to put the question another way, is concerning myself with what it means to be free at a personal level a form of escapism, which ignores the problems of the world? When so many Christians face persecution on a daily basis, when the world is lurching from crisis to crisis, is it justifiable to be concerned about what it means to be free at an individual level?

Sometimes it does seem that such concerns are selfish and introspective. Does it really matter how my freedom in Christ affects my intimate relationships with my relatives and friends? Shouldn't I be more concerned with evangelism, or fighting against poverty or global warming? Is the minute attention to personal details found in various forms of prayer ministry really justifiable and worthwhile?

People in the past seemed to just get on with life, without much introspection or self-analysis. Jesus didn't spend time discussing the disciples' childhood griefs with them. It seems he didn't ask many questions at all before casting out demons from people.

It has been interesting to read Luther's "Liberty of the Christian". The liberty he talks about wasn't something he came up with by cool and rational philosophical thought. He struggled with the issue at a very personal level even as he dealt with it academically. He wasn't using conjecture when he described the amazing relief of discovering the freedom that Christ has won for us.

He has been accused recently of leading the western world into it's love of introspection. Yet at the same time, his response to discovering his freedom in Christ was hardly confined to personal relief. It gave him the courage to stand against the whole edifice of the Catholic church, at times to face the threat of death. His personal conviction of liberty gave him a very public ministry and mission. Could he have done what he did without that conviction of what freedom in Christ really meant to him personally? Somehow I doubt it.