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Squirreled away in my attic somewhere you’ll find a handful of my spiral notebooks from college. I covered them with brown paper back then; pasted colorful collages of magazine photos on the outside, sometimes with handwriting in black ink edging the photos. I was an assiduous note-taker during all those college chapels. Didn’t want to miss a thing. (Which has its advantages, though I could have stood to be a bit more discerning.) I still vaguely remember one of the lines my mind latched on to: something about letting our lives be an example for others.

And we see that all over in Scripture, right? The city on a hill. Paul’s words to be wise in the way you behave toward outsiders.

But the other day on a blog, I read a question parents were to pose to their kids in times of discipline: Are you being a good example? I gotta admit. I cringed at that one a little bit. Honestly, it’s probably a fine question. But my mind flew back to that line in my notebook. I remember reading it years later and thinking, I got that one wrong. 

I Want To Be “That Person”

For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved to be appreciated, loved to achieve, loved to be a good example. (I make a fantastic firstborn.)

Nowadays I don’t call it a “good example” in my mind. In the last few months, I’ve realized it looks like me wanting to be that person. 

You know, that person: The one who’s a good listener. Or the one whose kids behave. Or the one who is thoughtful and remembers to text after a prayer request. Or the mom who can be counted on in the sign-ups at school and serves a hot breakfast before sending her kids off.

Of course it’s good to establish goals for the kind of woman I want to be, what I want to do–and actually take steps to achieve that. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a good mom or wife or friend and following through!

But let’s say you’re the woman sitting across from me when I want to be that friend she can turn to. Or let’s imagine you’re my husband when I hand him a lunch I packed so I can be that wife.

See my problem? Instead of loving the other person first, I’m loving me just a bit more. (Or a lot, depending on the day.) Even more than my love for her or him, my ambition and lofty thoughts of myself are driving me.

And honestly, that was my personal problem with being an example. Talk about getting the cart before the horse: I was often cleaning up the outside in lieu of cleaning up the inside–which Jesus loathed (Matthew 23:25). Or I was loving myself more than I was loving the people for whom I was “modeling” (which, when I put it in quotes like that, is just as runway-ish as it sounds). Most of my horizontal problems with my “example” are first vertical problems.

Unfortunately, Christians are getting a bit of a bad rep for this. As I talk to some non-Christians, I hear stories where they felt like Christians were more focused on the appearance of their morality than really listening or understanding; than really caring. Or they got the definite vibe that someone’s agenda to “win them to Christ” trumped a loving concern for the person in front of them. (You might check out this post on How Not to Share Jesus with Your Friends.)

At times, I have been one of them.

To Shine or Not to Shine?

Yeah, we do want to “let our light so shine that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). But I’ve always wondered how that verse juxtaposes with not letting your right hand know what your left is doing (Matthew 6:3-4). Which is it, already? Should I keep it secret, or let it shine?

So I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s pretty much…both at the same time. The focus of letting a light shine is so God gets every last shred of the kudos. The point of keeping acts of generosity secret is to keep my own self from tooting my own little horn.  The point on both is to shuttle all the glory to one place. Any light shone proceeds from me being lit from within first.

What I’m thinking: If I start with loving God and others well “earnestly, from a pure heart” (1 Peter 1:22), the rest–like walking in a manner worthy of all that’s been done for me–falls in line. If I start with wanting to be a good example, it could very well start with loving God and others. (Hopefully you’re not as prone to, uh, self-worship as I am?) Or it could start with loving myself a critical smidge more.

 

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