Humility: A 2024 Resolution
I have been leading a class at our church for several months, going through the book of Genesis. Because I enjoy completion, I refuse to skip over any chapter. This past Sunday, we talked about Genesis 36. This chapter is mostly a list of the descendants of Esau, but we do not know very much about many of them. Their names appear one time in the Bible and never appear again. Even the “most popular” names in that chapter become relevant for who their descendants are rather than for what they did. For example, in verse 15, you meet Amalek. There are future references to the Amalekites. In verse 11, you meet Teman, who may be connected to the tribe of one of Job’s friends, Eliphaz the Temanite (although there are varying opinions on when Job occurred and if it fits into this timeline).
When I lead a class, I like to encourage discussion rather than lecture. I would rather ask questions and facilitate than deliver a 30-minute lecture. Chapters like this make that a little bit difficult because what do you ask people about people we don’t know very much about?
What developed was a discussion on why the Bible even includes genealogies like this. Why would God feel it was so important for us to remember names and nothing else about many people?
There are a few obvious answers.
For one, the Bible is a religious and historical document. Why would a book about history not include details about history? When I read a history textbook, it tells me who lived when, so in that regard, it is not surprising that the Bible might include such details under divine inspiration.
For another reason, we cannot forget the original audience. In this case, Genesis was written by Moses. It was written in a culture that valued lineage, remembered lineage, and was much chronologically closer to the people in question. For example, in this chapter, there is a man named Anah. There are some translational differences regarding what he actually did; perhaps he discovered hot springs if you read the NIV or discovered mules if you read the King James Bible (from what I understand, the versions translated to English from the Latin Vulgate will have the latter). However, whatever he discovered, it seems to be a story that the audience would have known at the time. Perhaps it was like how many of us would know the story of Paul Revere or Davy Crockett. The context we wonder about today might not have been needed in that time and place.
Thirdly, most of the people mentioned in these chapters were prominent chiefs. Mentioning a United States Senator or Governor might ring a bell for many people in our culture in our time and place. We always need to remember when reading the Bible that while it is eternally relevant and absolutely true for us today, it was also written for certain people who would have read it or heard it soon after it was written. From our perspective, we do not have all of the cultural background knowledge that the original audience of Genesis would have had about the descendants of Esau in this case.
However, beyond these obvious reasons, I was struck by something that will be especially relevant for 2024. I didn’t think about it while preparing the lesson, but it came to me while we talked about it.
We wonder who these guys were, and we conclude that they were unimportant because the Bible never talks about them again. However, they are in the Bible. We are still talking about them thousands of years after they lived. Most of us will not be remembered thousands of years after our lives on earth. Even those who have a great deal of fame in 2024 can be easily forgotten by 2050; it does not take thousands of years.
The inclusion of these names and their relative lack of detail should evoke a sense of humility in each and every one of us. These people we are tempted to write off will be remembered a lot more than just about all of us will be. We think we are so important, but when faced with the immensity of world history, we are not. In an age of egocentrism, humility is in short supply. I struggle with it, and I have a feeling that most of us struggle with it from time to time. We think we are the center of the world or at least the center of something.
In reality, most of us are likely much less significant in our time and place than every one of these chieftains mentioned in Genesis. These powerful men only get their name listed in the Bible, and that’s it. They did a lot by earthly standards, and while they will be remembered for all time in the Bible, all they did is largely forgotten. We are likely less significant than that and would be more like the thousands of people who also lived as part of these men’s tribes, who may have been good or bad or smart or talented, but no one remembers.
The beautiful thing about God, though, is that our value is not determined based on a competition. We are absolutely loved by God, whether we do great things or minor things. Much like the widow who Jesus pointed out for giving all that she could, our hearts are what matter to God, not the outcome. We don’t need to be remembered for the rest of time to be infinitely valuable to God.
Very few of us are going to change the world.
“Thankfully, God does not love world changers any more than He loves obedient, Average Joes.”
We forget this, and I think that is why so many of us lack humility. Sometimes, we think if I am doing great things, God and everybody else will love me more. It is true that the world can be fickle; they will likely value you based on what you can do today and forget about you tomorrow. Therefore, we have to pump ourselves up and pump ourselves up to other people to keep that love flowing in our direction.
That is not God’s game, and God speaks many times against pride. If we think that we have to pump ourselves up to earn God’s love, we are not only failing to improve ourselves in God’s eyes but are actually sinning against Him.
As we enter 2024, I understand we are still social creatures who want to celebrate good things with those around us. There is nothing wrong with that. If something great happened to you, I am all for getting excited about that. One of my friends has been absolutely killing it with his startup company lately, and I am so happy to see his updates. I actually told him he needs to tell even more about what is happening because so much more is going well than what everyone actually knows. Again, it is good to want to celebrate things with those around us. It is not wrong to share your victories. Please tell me about your victories. I like the encouragement.
However, let’s always keep humility in our hearts. Celebrate the good things because they are good and because you are thankful. Do not celebrate the good things because you want to inflate yourself in front of others or think God will love you more because you do “great” things (that will likely be forgotten in a relatively short time as well). Building your value on whether or not the world loves you is a fool’s errand bound for failure. God loves you infinitely regardless of the great things you have done, whether you are just a name in a genealogy or if you don’t even get a mention in the history book of your era. Humility and obedience are the true pursuits that we should be after.
Everyone is making resolutions today. Perhaps humility would be a good one for so many of us.