Tagged: self-assessment

Romans 12:1-8

This text is used for the Lectionary Year A on August 27, 2017.

In his book, The Heart of Whiteness, author and professor Robert Jensen recalls an encounter he had with Les Payne.  The two men were on a panel to discuss the chapter that each had contributed to the book, When Race Becomes Real (2004).  Payne is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, an accomplished author, and columnist, and was at that time the editor of Newsday.  As Jensen recalls, Payne was by all accounts the more experienced and seasoned of the two, especially on a complex subject such as race.  And yet as the two men sat down together on stage, Jensen remembers doing what came “naturally” to him: he felt superior to Payne.  It seems strange that a person would begin to feel superior to another whom he knows has a more accomplished record.  But, in Jensen’s own words, the feeling of superiority stemmed from one fact: Jensen is white, and Payne is black.  This superiority complex is a feeling that Jensen would later have to acknowledge and confront.

Feelings of superiority need not be limited to race relations.  One’s race may lead a person to feel superior to others outside that race.  But people may also feel superior to others on the basis of a whole host of reasons.  People feel superior on the basis of the level of their education or the institution from which they obtained their education.  People feel superior to others because of their earning power.  People feel superior to others because they reside in a “better” neighborhood.  People can feel superior because of the successful careers of their children; the list goes on and on.  Feelings of superiority seem as “natural” to the human experience as the air we breathe.  Paul’s words, then, in our passage seem unnatural: “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3).  Paul is asking believers not to think too highly of themselves, but rather to think of themselves in a way that would lead to “sober” understanding.  How can believers have sober judgments of themselves?  How can believers escape this seemingly “natural” feeling of superiority to others?

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