Something to Prove

Imagine waking up one morning, pulling out your wallet, flipping it open to your driver's license, and then reading your name. "Huh, so that's who I am," you say to yourself. And then you repeat these last four steps throughout the day, constantly needing to know your name. You also show your license to everyone else, very eager for them to know your name and realize you still are who you say you are. Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?

It's unfortunate that this is pretty much what we do. It's not that blatant, but the compulsive urge to prove ourselves permeates almost everything we do. We kill ourselves at work, we bend over backwards in relationships, we stay silent because we don't want to be looked at as fools or rock the boat, and we buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like. All of it says, "I don't think I'm valuable enough. I still have something to prove."

Why do you feel that way? Because you feel it is not yet proven, not yet believed by those around you, not yet believed by yourself. You don't look at your license several times a day because you already know your name. You don't have to prove it to yourself and you don't feel the need to prove it to others. If they doubt it, you have the proof on you if you really need to show them, but you don't shove it in the face of everyone you meet. Whatever doubts they have don't shake your faith that your name is what it is, either.

With our value, though, we often feel compelled to whip out whatever we think gives us value and show it to everyone because we're so afraid it doesn't really exist, that we're not good enough. I used to use big words all the time and do math in my head at every possible opportunity and bring up arcane facts, all to show that I was smart. I couldn't just rest in knowing I was smart, much less in knowing that my value doesn't come from my intelligence. Everybody had to know...all the stinkin' time.

I developed a reputation as being arrogant, especially as a college freshman. And that brings up another point: arrogance is not having a high value of yourself; it's having an opinion that you're better than someone else. You're not. You're worth no more to God than Stalin or Judas. You're worth no less than John the Beloved. But it is not arrogant to have a high value of yourself; God wants you to have a much higher value of yourself. He wants you to see yourself as a son or daughter of God, more valuable than anything you could ever do could possibly make you. Our problem is not just that our current value of ourselves is too low, but that our goal for our self-value is really no higher. If we were to prove to the world we were the best person out there, that proof is never final. It would have to be proven over and over and over and over both because there would be challengers to your claim and because you don't believe it yourself. Nor should you, since it isn't true. Even if it was, though, the value you should be aiming at is higher above this than an elephant is above an ant. God decided you were worth His Son's life. Do you really think having a nice stock portfolio or handsome husband is going to add more value to that?

Getting back to the main point of this post, if you have true confidence, if your value is based on how God sees you and not on yourself, then you don't have to prove a darn thing because you know your value is even more certain and unchanging than your name. You don't have to question it. You don't have to prove it to yourself or others. It is part of who you are. Because half of having this self-confidence is knowing God, there is work involved in maintaining this confidence because there is work in maintaining that relationship, but there's no burden of proof that you bear to the world that you have it. You know you do.

On Monday, I'm going to back up a tad and start going over the masks of false self-confidence we so often see and use.