Greatness (or how to handle a new life).

Dealing with a new life.

I’ve found myself struggling with the strangest things since recently taking a position at my home church.

An example

The church is 30 miles from our home. Kia and I both drive gas-hogging SUVs. For our own sake, we needed to purchase a more economical car. I went back and forth between super inexpensive and a little more luxurious.

I finally fell on a little more luxurious – a used 2001 Infiniti with 157,000 miles. I probably paid a little too much for what I really needed, and this is part of my struggle.

I’ve lived in a world where my greatness, my status, my worth has been found in things like the car I drive. It’s funny how important, truly non-important things are in life.

I might act like I don’t worry about amount of followers I have on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but I do.

It doesn’t…or at least it shouldn’t…matter. It has.

What is greatness?

I just finished reading the book Who Is This Man? by John Ortberg. Ortberg challenges the preconceived ideas we have about who Jesus of Nazareth really is and was.

An entire chapter outlines why Jesus wasn’t a great man. Here are the opening words about greatness + Jesus:

Jesus was not a great man.

There are two ways to think about a meaningful life, says Georgetown University professor Francis Ambrosio. One is the way of the hero, the other is the way of the saint. In the Greco-Roman world, what was admired was the hero. A hero is somebody who overcomes obstacles to  achieve his full potential of excellence and therefore to receive status, honor and recognition. Life is striving for this recognition.

Doesn’t sound too different from the American ideal does it? Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, overcome all challenges, maximize your strengths, minimize your weaknesses and achieve… (you fill in the blank).

Personally, I add on my natural pre-disposition to achieve and fall into the trap of measuring my greatness/hero status based on the car I drive, the number of Twitter followers I have, or how much I sold in October.

For the past few years, all of these things have defined my status – my greatness.

RISK + FREEDOM = GREATNESS?

My word for 2011 was FREEDOM. My word for 2012 is RISK. Consider my last post the summary of what I’ve learned about RISK so far, but let me add to it a few more words.

RISK is the willingness to define what it means to be great in different terms.

Back to Jesus for a moment, On the night he most needed served, he became the lowest on the totem pole – the foot washing servant. He washed the feet of those who were his students, followers…his fans.

It didn’t stop there. Adding insult to injury, Jesus knowingly washed the feet of a close friend who literally minutes later would leave to sell him out to his enemies (Judas). All of this Jesus knew.

That was humility. That was not any culture’s definition of greatness.

That was a risk. It led to true, impacting freedom.

FREEDOM and RISK are held closely together. It’s hard to take true risk if you aren’t free. It’s near impossible to find freedom without taking risk.

Being great versus doing great.

Maybe what I’m learning right now is how others perceive me just isn’t important. As obvious and basic as it sounds, it’s a hard truth to realize. My greatness will never be determined by what I achieve. My greatness will be because of the great things I do with what I’ve achieved, and it may not look all that impressive to the world around me.

This week I heard the story of a college professor who began a lecture by asking her students to write on a piece of paper a one sentence description of what they would be doing in 10 years. “I am…”

The answers were exactly what you would expect of any 18-25 year old:

I own my own business, have developed a name in my profession and have 1500 Twitter followers and 5000 Facebook fans. 

The teacher asked a few students to share their dreams, and then she moved on to her lecture for the day.

At the end of the class she asked a very similar question, only this time she asked her students to write down what would be said of them in 60-70 years at their funeral. Again, they wrote very typical responses:

Andy was a man who loved and invested in his children and others around him. He lived what he “preached”. He made a difference in the world he lived in.

The professor asked a few students to share their answers, and again several read their hopes aloud. Finally this teacher asked her students to compare the first answer with the second answer, and asked this question:

Does the first piece of paper get you any closer to the dream you have on the 2nd piece of paper?

The answer was obvious.

No. My car, my Twitter followers, my status, my achievements means nothing if what I am doing with what I have been given don’t lead to greatness…true greatness.