Checking Your Motives at the Door
Let me tell you a little-known story about Leonardo da Vinci. (It’s little known because I made it up.) When Leo was a young buck, he landed an after-school job mopping the floors of a local art gallery, dusting the old Greek statues, and attempting to glue the arms back on Venus de Milo. (His dusting was a little rambunctious.) After a while, Leo decided he could paint just as well as these medieval paintings of dogs playing poker, so one evening he hung up a picture of his high school girlfriend, Mona Lisa. (She had two names because she was from the South.) The next morning, the gallery owner saw the artwork, declared Leonardo a genius, made him famous, and the rest is history.
That story is chock full of more inaccuracies than a presidential debate, but one element is not too far from something that actually happened. The Pinakothek der Moderne is an art museum in Munich, Germany, and one employee thought it was missing something. Sure, it had pieces by Pablo Picasso, René Magritte, and Salvador Dalí, but what it needed was one of his paintings! So, he took it upon himself to hang up his own painting. Surely, as people stared with wonder at some of the 20,000 pieces in this museum, they would become equally enamored with this guy’s work.
He certainly got noticed—and fired.
I do not know if he was fined for really bad art, but the fact that he drilled holes in a wall to hang his picture is being investigated as property damage. [Source]
Culture encourages such behavior to do what it takes to get noticed and make a name for yourself. If you don’t “toot your own horn,” who will? There is no room for that in the church. Believers are called to a higher standard: to live humbly and not make life all about ourselves.
I’m not speaking against doing our best. I’m not against speaking up and offering our gifts and abilities or letting someone know what we can do. But such actions need to be done with humility and with a focus on serving Christ and His church.
Church is not about you.
If you’re going to church to get noticed, you’re missing the point. If you’re looking for a church that will let you showcase your talents and gifts, let me say it again: you’re missing the point.
It’s about Jesus.
We are made for relationships, and God wired us in a way to need others, to be interdependent on one another. But if you’re only going to church simply to meet people and build relationships, you’re missing the true connection: it’s about Jesus.
When I make Jesus the center of my life and attention, these other things fall into place. I build strong connections with other believers. I have opportunities to use my spiritual gifts for the glory of Christ. But my starting point and my focal point must always and forever be Jesus. I am not there to get noticed.
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility consider others as more important than yourselves. Everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:3-4).
In the church, we do not lift up ourselves; we lift up Christ. Whatever we do, we are to do with humility with no self-serving motives.
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This post supports the study “Haman” in Bible Studies for Life and YOU.
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