Today’s Scripture Reading [August 21, 2011]
Thus saith the LORD, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the LORD which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the LORD. [Jeremiah 9:23-24. KJV]
Boasting seems to be in every body’s blood. It is in mine, and it is in yours. The difference is the extent or the degree to which we all boast and often it is of our achievements, our wealth, our health, our might. I remember on one occasion I was invited to a dinner and one of the guests who was from overseas was a world-class soccer player. In fact, his team came out second in one of the world-cup events. When I met him, I saw him hanging a World Cup silver medal. He was so proud of his team’s achievement even though it was won several years ago that he still worn the medal wherever he went even he was traveling on the airplane. Certainly, this man needed to be recognized after all how many soccer players could really be awarded with a World Cup medal but when we boast and brag about our achievements, we may find ourselves walking against our godly way of living which God has instructed us to live. Boasting or bragging is one of the call-up images in our minds of someone thumping his chest, saying, "Look at me! Aren't I something! What I have achieved is no mean feat!” As believers, when we glorify we must be careful because all our glories and achievements belong to God and all must be given to Him and no one else.
In another real story that I knew about was a very wealthy businessman who owned a large conglomerate of companies. One of my friends was working as a senior PR officer for him. To show recognition to his employees’ contributions, he would hold an annual company dinner for all his employees. My friend, being in the PR department would help him to draft the speech that he would deliver during the company dinner. My friend told me that if you really knew exactly his very personal character, you could literally ‘vomit’ after you have heard of his message. What my friend meant was this, the message that he delivered to the employees was to simply impress the employees and other invited business guests. He would boast of how loving, kind and generous he himself was and the whole message was simply so hypocritical and unreal that you could leave the dinner with a deep feeling of nausea. His message was simply incompatible with his true character. Like all stories we hear, they might or might not really be true or exactly the way it was made out to be and we all must listen to all ‘third-party’ stories (including mine here) with a ‘pinch of salt’ because we know that, for some reasons, sometimes the story-tellers could just simply bad-mouthing others people. Nonetheless, the only thing we can do ourselves is just to make sure we, ourselves, mean what we say, and say what we mean because Jesus really hates hypocrites (Matthew 23:13) and boastful people.
The question you may be asking is: Is it sinful to boast and brag? In James 4:16, we are warned that to rejoice in our boasting is evil, it thus implied that boasting in God’s eye is sinful. Additionally, there are many verses in the Bible that tell us that God is not pleased when we boast (Proverbs 20:14; Proverbs 25:14; Proverbs 27:1; Psalm 94:4; Jeremiah 9:23; Romans 1:30; James 3:5; Ephesians 2:8-9; 1 Corinthians 4:7.) After all, what can we boast other than our knowledge, our skills, our riches, our wealth, our power, our authority? As someone has observed, you can build the fastest car but you can create a tiny ant which is one of the most fascinating and interesting insects of the natural world. For example, ants have wonderful sense of direction. They can travel great distant and yet they can find their way back to their nests; they are one of the most social animals of the natural world and have the nature or rather God-given instinct and abilities to organize into groups to increase their chances of survival. We often look to great men for wisdom but King Solomon has told us that we don’t need to look far enough and by examine the social behaviour of ants, we can learn much about the danger of being a lazy and an idle person (Proverbs 6:6-11). The tiny ant can teach us many life-survival lessons that are in fact taught by some management gurus who charged expensively for their courses.
We must be warned that one of the greatest hindrances in our walk with God can be success which will inevitable give us the desire to boast. These successes creep into the most innocent hearts and can even transform the most humble man into the most proud man. When our success becomes our source of significance whether they are our skills, our wealth or our might, they can compete against our Lord for glory, and this is really tragic because all glories belong to God and no one else! Furthermore, as we can see in Jeremiah 9:23-24, we must not let our achievement to be the source of our happiness. Rather, only by knowing God can then be the source of our happiness. If we want to be happy and stay happy, we must know and understand God personally in three key areas: His lovingkindness, His justice and His righteousness. As long as we recognize this, we can’t help but to see God as our source of happiness because no one on this earth could have greater lovingkindness, greater justice and more righteousness than God.
Over the last few days, you all must be heard, read or watched the debates and the forum of presidential candidates who are eyeing for the office of the President of our country. Our very own presidential debates have indeed reminded me of the U.S. presidential election where candidates were debated live on their TV networks. The final message to the voters from each of the candidate was simply this: “I am the best of the best! You are going to repent for the next six years if you vote other candidate other than me as your president!” If this is not boasting and bragging, frankly I don’t know what boasting is. One really has to be ‘thick-skin’ to make such declaration! Like Singapore, while debates are not constitutionally mandated, it is often considered a de facto election process in the U.S. for many decades. Without exception, all debaters will try to impress and boast the audience (or voters in the case of political elections) of their knowledge, their promises and sending out the final dictum that only they know what is the best of the industry, for the environment, for the society, or for the country (as in the case of political debates).
The message from Jeremiah 9:23-24 is not to condemn people who are knowledgeable of the things of the world, who are rich or who are entrusted with power and authority. But rather, we are cautioned by the message that we must not boast them to glorify ourselves. We see in the Bible, they were many people of God and they were knowledgeable like King Solomon, they were rich like Job and Abraham, and were powerful like King Josiah and King David. As we listen to the presidential debates and some of us here may feel like having some goose-pimples after listening to their declaration of their ‘capabilities, abilities, integrity, honesty, etc’ it boils down to what we want of ourselves. We can’t control what others want to boast or declare but we must make boasting and our declaration on our God’s righteous characters. Such boasting and declaration must be part of our daily witnessing and let people know about our God because true happiness can only come from knowing God.