Hello everyone, my name is Charles, the lead pastor here. Welcome to the Zoom Sunday service at The River. We’re in a sermon series called, “Invisible Beliefs that shape life and country.”
The idea is to examine different invisible values and beliefs that powered different cultures throughout history, and still exerts influence on our life today and compare them to Agape Love, the one core foundational value for all Christians.
How would our life and country look different, if Agape Love was our foundational value as opposed to some other value, good they may be? This is the theme of our current sermon series.
And today, I’d like to talk about the Power of Ideals in our heads that we try to live up to that can become oppressive and enslaving, actually. Recently, I was struck by articles about the daughter of two famous actors.
Her name is Amelia Hamlin and she was making headlines last week because she shared openly about her battle with eating disorder disease. She was in so much trouble that her family had to stage an intervention and a doctor told her that at this rate, you will be at 45 pounds in 4 months, and you will die. This woke her up, and happily she’s doing much better now.
What struck me is, just how powerful some of the ideals in our heads can be. Amelia is this beautiful, white, teenage girl. I mean, she won the Genetic Lottery right? Her parents are these impossibly gorgeous actor and actress, she’s young, she’s rich, she’s impossibly beautiful, she’s got celebrity parents. How can it get any better?
Yet, she had an Ideal of Beauty in her head that made her feel ugly, that made her feel like she’s worthless. So much so that it overwhelmed EVEN her instinct for survival! Just think about that for a sec. She was starving herself to death towards 45 pounds. What could be so powerful as to suppress your desire to eat and survive?
There was this arbitrary standard of beauty that enslaved her, an ideal in her head that judged her inadequate, that judged her worthless, and it was so powerful, it overcame even her instinct to survive.
The scary thing is, we ALL have such Ideals that judge and rank us according to these arbitrary standards. This is a very powerful force that shapes our life and country today. It is descended from Greco-Roman understanding of Virtue: Arete. The Greeks thought that there is an ideal form to everything that exists. Some of you may recall Plato talked about this ‘Ideal Chair’ somewhere “beyond the veil,” in the ideal plane of existence. And all chairs on earth are simply expressions of this “Ideal Chair,” and the closer the chair gets to look and function like the ideal chair, the more worthy the chair is. And that applies to everything that exists, including us, so the purpose in life is to get as close as possible to the perfect form.
Another word to describe this belief is “Excellence = Worthy.” Nothing else matters. So for example, in Homer’s Iliad, Achilles is a hero. Why? Not because he’s such a great human being. It’s because he’s so good at war. He’s “the perfect killing machine.” He comes very close to the ideal form of a warrior, so he has Arete. It doesn’t matter that he’s an impetuous, petty, vicious rapist and murderer. Right? None of that matters. He’s a ‘hero’ to be lifted up. He’s “virtuous” because he’s so excellent at killing.
So, whatever value or ideal or functions there are, if you get close to that ideal, you’re excellent, you’re worthy. That’s why back then, when babies were born with genetic defects, say a baby was born with four fingers, they were considered hopelessly unworthy. Because such a baby could never hope to get close to the form of ‘Ideal Human Being”, that’s what made it easy for them to throw away such babies to die. They even had a valley designated for such throwaway babies. Early Christians went there and took in the babies to raise them as their own, because Christians believed in Unconditional Worth, Agape Love.
Now, the reason why I mention all this is because the idea that you’re worthless unless you meet some standard of excellence; this invisible belief STILL has tremendous power today. THIS is what causes beautiful young teenage girls to starve themselves to death.
The Gospel stands against such destructive beliefs. ALL human beings have infinite worth and value because Jesus died for ALL of us regardless of whether we have defects or not, pretty or ugly, rich or poor, how educated, how “excellent,” it doesn’t matter. Our worth and value come from God who confers infinite value and worth to EVERYONE. There is NO outcast in the Cross. This is the Gospel. Amen!
Now, I was asked recently, well, what about motivation? If you’re not motivated by excellence, then what would drive you to achieve and perform? I am ALL for achieving and performing and excelling, but, there IS a difference between thinking you’re worthless unless you meet some standard -the Greco Roman way of thinking, which results in society wide depression and anxiety- versus you see yourself as innately, infinitely valuable. So that’s why you want to do right by yourself, this is a difference in why we do what we do.
So. Exercise. There’s a difference between exercising because you’re valuable and worthy, so you want to take care of yourself right, versus, “You’re worthless unless you get to a certain weight.” You see the difference? One is life giving and the other will trap you in a hell of misery.
This past week, I was talking with someone who struggles with weight issues. She said she counts every calorie, and if she burns more calories than she takes in, that’s a good day. She’s done well. She feels good about herself.
But if not, she feels guilty, ashamed. She condemns herself, ‘you don’t have self-control.’ So, eating right becomes more than just a health issue, it becomes a MORAL issue. Right and wrong, good and evil, worthy and unworthy. This comes from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It’s NOT from the tree of life, the cross.
If we don’t get this right, we’re always going to be enslaved by some ideal which is good on it’s own, but, when they become tools to judge a human being’s worth? These are all fig leaves that are inadequate to truly cover us. They are all arbitrary constructs.
Beauty, how we think of beauty, it changes from society to society, culture to culture.
For thousands of years in Western Europe, and everywhere really, a skinny, tanned person was NOT considered beautiful. It signaled a “poor peasant who has to work in the field all day.” You had to have some weight to be beautiful, just look at all those classic paintings from Renaissance.
But today, people risk their lives to become skinny and tanned. I mean, tanning machines are known to cause skin cancer, but countless people risk their lives to look tanned. Do you see? This is all B.S.? Excuse my language. We’re driven to rank and judge each other’s worth, and how we look is often a tool to slot people into categories of different worth. It's all a result of the CASTE mentality I talked about last week, and we are driven to risk even our lives to get into higher positions.
The Gospel can free us from this mentality that enslaves us. The Bible tells us:
20 What is considered wise by the world? Where is the Bible scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 Worldly wisdom cannot understand God. So, God was pleased to use the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Believers demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Believers and foolishness to Non-believers, 24 but to those whom God has called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you began to believe in Christ. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our worth, our standing before God, and our salvation. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:23-31
What a powerful passage!
Greek pursuit of excellence and success, and believers pursuit of righteousness, influence, wisdom, strength, nobility, things that are tools to judge people’s worth in this world. The passage declares God has made them all just a big nothing. Everyone pursues them from Bible scholars to nobles, from wise non believers, to righteous faithful but ALL of this has become NOTHING before Christ crucified.The Cross has blown away all fig leaves, it has nullified ALL judging and ranking of worth by what is good and strong and noble so that NO one can boast, NO one can base their identity and worth on some good characteristic of theirs.
Instead, we are ALL unconditionally welcomed and accepted and beloved, the weak and the strong, the ugly and the beautiful, the rich and the poor, the black and the white, the brahmin and the untouchable, the straight and the LGBTQ.
Christ crucified is the power of God and wisdom of God for us who are being saved unto the unconditional love of God. Only Christ is our righteousness, the ONLY solid rock for our worth, this is our only boast. Hallelujah! Amen!
IF we can take this in, IF we can truly believe in this Gospel and live by it, the practical difference this will make is so powerful. It will free us from the oppressive drive to be ‘worthy’ and ‘strong’ and ‘beautiful’ in order to find acceptance and peace. Of course, it’s good to be strong and noble, but, we do not boast in them, we do not base our identity in them. Then and only then will we be free to enjoy ourselves and our lives even as we pursue these good things in life.
In last week’s sermon discussion group after the Zoom service, one of the members commented how she looks at pictures of her past young self, and she thinks, “I was so beautiful!” But back then, I didn’t know that. I was so unhappy with myself. All I saw were my flaws, so I couldn’t enjoy myself back then. But now, I think, what was I thinking? I look at these pictures, I was so beautiful, why couldn’t I just enjoy who I was?
THIS is how Satan robs us of our life through deceit. We can’t enjoy our lives today, because of these ideals in our heads that make us see our flaws, to judge us. But, the Bible tells us:
This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! Psalm 118:24
THIS is the way you’ve been made. Let us rejoice and be glad in ourselves for the Cross has accepted us AS WE ARE. Let’s not waste our life obsessing over our weaknesses, as if our worth depended on them, for God has lifted up the weak in the Cross. Let’s not waste our life with regret either. Don’t look back and think I was this or that. We are ALL beautiful NOW. The Cross has made it so. Amen!
To sum up: ideals are good things, but, when they become tools of judgment to rank and judge people’s worth and value, they become oppressive to the point of killing. The mentality behind it is the same as the Caste mentality I talked about last week. It is the Original Sin. It is in our blood. That’s why we must fight it tooth and nail. This is our good fight of faith.
Let’s be free in the beautiful Gospel that invites us into life of Unconditional Love, and heaven will open up for us. This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! Amen!
Now please stay for our Zoom interaction and prayer starting at 11:40 AM.
If you haven’t checked in yet, please do so, even just as a favor to me. I would love to see you and hear from you. Discussions have been great, you can get one on one prayer, if you like these sermons, please check in for our Zoom discussion and tell me what you think. This is one great favor you can do for me. OK? See you soon!
The idea is to examine different invisible values and beliefs that powered different cultures throughout history, and still exerts influence on our life today and compare them to Agape Love, the one core foundational value for all Christians.
How would our life and country look different, if Agape Love was our foundational value as opposed to some other value, good they may be? This is the theme of our current sermon series.
And today, I’d like to talk about the Power of Ideals in our heads that we try to live up to that can become oppressive and enslaving, actually. Recently, I was struck by articles about the daughter of two famous actors.
Her name is Amelia Hamlin and she was making headlines last week because she shared openly about her battle with eating disorder disease. She was in so much trouble that her family had to stage an intervention and a doctor told her that at this rate, you will be at 45 pounds in 4 months, and you will die. This woke her up, and happily she’s doing much better now.
What struck me is, just how powerful some of the ideals in our heads can be. Amelia is this beautiful, white, teenage girl. I mean, she won the Genetic Lottery right? Her parents are these impossibly gorgeous actor and actress, she’s young, she’s rich, she’s impossibly beautiful, she’s got celebrity parents. How can it get any better?
Yet, she had an Ideal of Beauty in her head that made her feel ugly, that made her feel like she’s worthless. So much so that it overwhelmed EVEN her instinct for survival! Just think about that for a sec. She was starving herself to death towards 45 pounds. What could be so powerful as to suppress your desire to eat and survive?
There was this arbitrary standard of beauty that enslaved her, an ideal in her head that judged her inadequate, that judged her worthless, and it was so powerful, it overcame even her instinct to survive.
The scary thing is, we ALL have such Ideals that judge and rank us according to these arbitrary standards. This is a very powerful force that shapes our life and country today. It is descended from Greco-Roman understanding of Virtue: Arete. The Greeks thought that there is an ideal form to everything that exists. Some of you may recall Plato talked about this ‘Ideal Chair’ somewhere “beyond the veil,” in the ideal plane of existence. And all chairs on earth are simply expressions of this “Ideal Chair,” and the closer the chair gets to look and function like the ideal chair, the more worthy the chair is. And that applies to everything that exists, including us, so the purpose in life is to get as close as possible to the perfect form.
Another word to describe this belief is “Excellence = Worthy.” Nothing else matters. So for example, in Homer’s Iliad, Achilles is a hero. Why? Not because he’s such a great human being. It’s because he’s so good at war. He’s “the perfect killing machine.” He comes very close to the ideal form of a warrior, so he has Arete. It doesn’t matter that he’s an impetuous, petty, vicious rapist and murderer. Right? None of that matters. He’s a ‘hero’ to be lifted up. He’s “virtuous” because he’s so excellent at killing.
So, whatever value or ideal or functions there are, if you get close to that ideal, you’re excellent, you’re worthy. That’s why back then, when babies were born with genetic defects, say a baby was born with four fingers, they were considered hopelessly unworthy. Because such a baby could never hope to get close to the form of ‘Ideal Human Being”, that’s what made it easy for them to throw away such babies to die. They even had a valley designated for such throwaway babies. Early Christians went there and took in the babies to raise them as their own, because Christians believed in Unconditional Worth, Agape Love.
Now, the reason why I mention all this is because the idea that you’re worthless unless you meet some standard of excellence; this invisible belief STILL has tremendous power today. THIS is what causes beautiful young teenage girls to starve themselves to death.
The Gospel stands against such destructive beliefs. ALL human beings have infinite worth and value because Jesus died for ALL of us regardless of whether we have defects or not, pretty or ugly, rich or poor, how educated, how “excellent,” it doesn’t matter. Our worth and value come from God who confers infinite value and worth to EVERYONE. There is NO outcast in the Cross. This is the Gospel. Amen!
Now, I was asked recently, well, what about motivation? If you’re not motivated by excellence, then what would drive you to achieve and perform? I am ALL for achieving and performing and excelling, but, there IS a difference between thinking you’re worthless unless you meet some standard -the Greco Roman way of thinking, which results in society wide depression and anxiety- versus you see yourself as innately, infinitely valuable. So that’s why you want to do right by yourself, this is a difference in why we do what we do.
So. Exercise. There’s a difference between exercising because you’re valuable and worthy, so you want to take care of yourself right, versus, “You’re worthless unless you get to a certain weight.” You see the difference? One is life giving and the other will trap you in a hell of misery.
This past week, I was talking with someone who struggles with weight issues. She said she counts every calorie, and if she burns more calories than she takes in, that’s a good day. She’s done well. She feels good about herself.
But if not, she feels guilty, ashamed. She condemns herself, ‘you don’t have self-control.’ So, eating right becomes more than just a health issue, it becomes a MORAL issue. Right and wrong, good and evil, worthy and unworthy. This comes from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It’s NOT from the tree of life, the cross.
If we don’t get this right, we’re always going to be enslaved by some ideal which is good on it’s own, but, when they become tools to judge a human being’s worth? These are all fig leaves that are inadequate to truly cover us. They are all arbitrary constructs.
Beauty, how we think of beauty, it changes from society to society, culture to culture.
For thousands of years in Western Europe, and everywhere really, a skinny, tanned person was NOT considered beautiful. It signaled a “poor peasant who has to work in the field all day.” You had to have some weight to be beautiful, just look at all those classic paintings from Renaissance.
But today, people risk their lives to become skinny and tanned. I mean, tanning machines are known to cause skin cancer, but countless people risk their lives to look tanned. Do you see? This is all B.S.? Excuse my language. We’re driven to rank and judge each other’s worth, and how we look is often a tool to slot people into categories of different worth. It's all a result of the CASTE mentality I talked about last week, and we are driven to risk even our lives to get into higher positions.
The Gospel can free us from this mentality that enslaves us. The Bible tells us:
20 What is considered wise by the world? Where is the Bible scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 Worldly wisdom cannot understand God. So, God was pleased to use the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22 Believers demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Believers and foolishness to Non-believers, 24 but to those whom God has called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. 26 Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you began to believe in Christ. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of God that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our worth, our standing before God, and our salvation. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:23-31
What a powerful passage!
Greek pursuit of excellence and success, and believers pursuit of righteousness, influence, wisdom, strength, nobility, things that are tools to judge people’s worth in this world. The passage declares God has made them all just a big nothing. Everyone pursues them from Bible scholars to nobles, from wise non believers, to righteous faithful but ALL of this has become NOTHING before Christ crucified.The Cross has blown away all fig leaves, it has nullified ALL judging and ranking of worth by what is good and strong and noble so that NO one can boast, NO one can base their identity and worth on some good characteristic of theirs.
Instead, we are ALL unconditionally welcomed and accepted and beloved, the weak and the strong, the ugly and the beautiful, the rich and the poor, the black and the white, the brahmin and the untouchable, the straight and the LGBTQ.
Christ crucified is the power of God and wisdom of God for us who are being saved unto the unconditional love of God. Only Christ is our righteousness, the ONLY solid rock for our worth, this is our only boast. Hallelujah! Amen!
IF we can take this in, IF we can truly believe in this Gospel and live by it, the practical difference this will make is so powerful. It will free us from the oppressive drive to be ‘worthy’ and ‘strong’ and ‘beautiful’ in order to find acceptance and peace. Of course, it’s good to be strong and noble, but, we do not boast in them, we do not base our identity in them. Then and only then will we be free to enjoy ourselves and our lives even as we pursue these good things in life.
In last week’s sermon discussion group after the Zoom service, one of the members commented how she looks at pictures of her past young self, and she thinks, “I was so beautiful!” But back then, I didn’t know that. I was so unhappy with myself. All I saw were my flaws, so I couldn’t enjoy myself back then. But now, I think, what was I thinking? I look at these pictures, I was so beautiful, why couldn’t I just enjoy who I was?
THIS is how Satan robs us of our life through deceit. We can’t enjoy our lives today, because of these ideals in our heads that make us see our flaws, to judge us. But, the Bible tells us:
This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! Psalm 118:24
THIS is the way you’ve been made. Let us rejoice and be glad in ourselves for the Cross has accepted us AS WE ARE. Let’s not waste our life obsessing over our weaknesses, as if our worth depended on them, for God has lifted up the weak in the Cross. Let’s not waste our life with regret either. Don’t look back and think I was this or that. We are ALL beautiful NOW. The Cross has made it so. Amen!
To sum up: ideals are good things, but, when they become tools of judgment to rank and judge people’s worth and value, they become oppressive to the point of killing. The mentality behind it is the same as the Caste mentality I talked about last week. It is the Original Sin. It is in our blood. That’s why we must fight it tooth and nail. This is our good fight of faith.
Let’s be free in the beautiful Gospel that invites us into life of Unconditional Love, and heaven will open up for us. This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! Amen!
Now please stay for our Zoom interaction and prayer starting at 11:40 AM.
If you haven’t checked in yet, please do so, even just as a favor to me. I would love to see you and hear from you. Discussions have been great, you can get one on one prayer, if you like these sermons, please check in for our Zoom discussion and tell me what you think. This is one great favor you can do for me. OK? See you soon!