The church I served before retiring held an early morning prayer meeting. One Friday, I arrived at the prayer room and waited for others to join me. After several minutes, no one had come.
Rubbing my hands together, I looked up to heaven and said, “Okay, God, it’s just you and me.” I was looking forward to a meaningful time of prayer.
Just as I was about to begin with “Our Father,” I heard the familiar sound of a rattle-trap truck pulling up. I immediately knew who it was—a man with a serious learning deficiency. He often brought three or four dogs with him, and his presence tended to disrupt my focus during prayer.
As I began thinking negative thoughts about him, God quietly spoke to my heart: “What makes you think you’re so interesting to me?”
That story happened many years ago, but it still lingers in my memory. In the grand scheme of things, I am no more fascinating to God than a snail or a rabbit. His intellect is infinitely beyond mine, and it is solely by His grace that I am welcomed into His presence.
It is humbling—and tragic—to realize that I once compared myself to another person, thinking I was somehow more important to God, like His favorite pet, or more interesting because of my so-called intellect.
Reflecting on my experience in the prayer room years ago, I see why Jesus shared a parable to stop people from comparing themselves to others in God’s presence.
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’
But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 18:9-14).
The word that best describes my attitude toward the man in my story, as well as the attitude of the people Jesus addressed, is “contempt.”
Contempt is defined as viewing someone as insignificant, inferior, or without value, and showing disregard or dismissiveness toward them. That’s exactly how I treated the man in my story, and it was also true of the religious authority in Jesus’ parable.
Jesus has a way of turning the world upside down. When God looks at people, He focuses on their hearts, not on the intellectual, moral, or spiritual advantages they might perceive themselves to have over others.
In the parable, God saw a tax collector, an outcast of society, but because of his humble plea for mercy, someone who received God’s approval.
Meanwhile, the religious authority, confident in his own righteousness, walked away disappointed.
Instead of parading our righteousness before God, we would do well to ask Him to help us see others through His eyes and to pray, alongside this world’s modern-day tax collectors, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”
YouTube Discussion:
Rudy Ross, Bruce Kirby, and I discussed this passage on YouTube today.
Real Voices 