Boasting

“So then, no more boasting about men!”
1 Co 3:21

I have always thought this popular Chinese saying pretty funny. “It’s a fearful thing for men to be famous and for pigs to be fat (人怕出名豬怕肥.)” Why is this case? We understand that when a pig become fat, it will soon be turned into bacon and pork, but there is no harm for a person to become famous, is there? Do we all harbor a secret desire to become some sort of celebrity?

We want people to boast about us, don’t we? Not many of us can become rich and famous, therefore we attach ourselves to people who have achieved the desirable status and boast about them and worse off, we even bow down to them.

I don’t know which position is more precarious. To worship or to be worshipped. If I venture to make a guess, I think the letter is in a more severe peril than the former. One put himself in danger by practicing idolatry, but a person puts the masses in danger by allowing himself to be worshipped. We ought to do all things possible to keep ourselves from being idolized. We may think otherwise, but deep in our heart, we all have a secret yearning to be adored and admired, and we are constantly do things to make it a reality either consciously or unconsciously. Put us on stage before a group of people, and immediately our instinct kicks in and we start to draw attention to ourselves by performing. That’s why we become self-conscious in such occasion because we want to look good, to be well-thought of, and to be considered as a celebrity.

Those of us who are in “performing” ministry are specially susceptible to this kind of temptation. How many golden-tongue heroes have we created after the Protestant reformation when the pulpit was lifted high in our worship services? Church hopping has become a popular phenomenon because Christians seem to leave no stone unturned searching for a star preacher with oratory skill when they get to a new town, and many of them go to church not to worship and to listen to the voice of God, but to hear the voice of men.

What do we do to avoid this deadly peril?

We need to know there is such danger before we take any measure to avoid it. Unfortunately very few Christian workers are aware of this risk and continue to do things to promote themselves in their ministry. In the name of serving the Lord, they in essence are serving themselves and gratifying their secret desire of which they may or may not be conscious.

We Christian workers need to go through the cross before we step behind the pulpit to speak or to sing for God. We will always be egotistic if our ego isn’t crucified. As laypersons, we must avoid idolizing men and creating heroes to be worshipped by abstaining from boasting about men. Glorification of men is a very dangerous thing.