Egos and Community

When you've worked hard and done a good job, it's quite natural to have some pride in your accomplishment.  It also makes good sense to appreciate and thank those who have worked hard and done a good job. Never to hear a "Well done" makes such effort feel pointless, and even the Bible gives us that phrase, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

But then there is this line from today's epistle reading. "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast."  So that no one may boast... I take it that boasting marks some sort of line where recognizing hard work makes an unfortunate transition into egoism.

The warning in today's epistle is far from the only one in Scripture.  It seems that ego can be a real problem for people of faith.  This problem is the central one behind another epistle, First Corinthians. The Corinthian congregation was very animated and motivated by their faith.  The people diligently tried to hone and improve their spiritual gifts, but they also thought some gifts superior to others. They looked down on those who didn't have them and felt puffed up if they did have them.

The gifts of God became things that divided and destroyed community rather than building it up, which is why Paul tells them that the greatest gift is love. Paul's words about love being patient and kind and bearing all things are heard primarily at weddings these days.  Egos can cause problems in marriages, so that is not inappropriate, but Paul isn't speaking about romantic love. He is reminding the Corinthians that the greatest gifts do not puff up one's ego, they diminish it as the good of the other becomes more important than self.

This problem with ego continues to bedevil people of faith. Those who diligently strive to work out their theology in great detail so that it will guide them in faithful living look down on those whose theology is different. Those who have expended great energy and effort to worship God with the very best music and liturgy they can muster, look down their noses at others who are "less sophisticated" and do "bad worship."

You can probably come up with countless other examples where our egos lead us into ways more apt to produce division than unity, that create categories of "us" and "them." We Presbyterian clergy have any number of these. We like to point out our "educated clergy" who are required to take Hebrew and Greek, often with an implied slight to those uneducated clergy of some denominations and churches. And we don't always leave the slight implied.

I do think we should try to encourage hard work, and we should acknowledge the efforts of those who work hard. But when such encouraging or acknowledging moves into egoism and begins to create "us" and "them," when it fails to build community but instead creates division, something has gone amiss. And the cure, if Scripture is to be believed, requires gratitude, and it requires love. That's the Jesus kind of love.

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