They Think We Are Comfortable Now

Your cousin asked you about the car in August.

Not for money. He would never. He asked what you thought about a particular model, and in the middle of it he said something like, well, you would know these days.

And you laughed and said something, and the conversation moved on, and you have been turning that sentence over ever since.

Then at your aunt's in September somebody said something about how well you are doing. Then your mother told a woman at church that you had bought a house, in a voice you recognized from your childhood, which is the voice she uses about a thing she is proud of.

And none of them are wrong about the house. You did buy a house.

They are wrong about everything that they think it means.

They think there is a position behind it. Comfort. Room. A man who, if somebody needed something, could probably do something about it, which is the thing that has always been true of the people in your family who got there.

And what is actually behind it is a smaller number than there was two years ago, an insurance letter that arrived on a Tuesday, and a furnace that is making a sound.

The gap they cannot see

Let me describe the gap, because it is the thing this house is standing in and it does not have a name in your family's vocabulary.

There is the visible fact: a house, with your name on it, which in the world your parents come from meant one thing reliably. It meant a man had arrived.

And there is the actual position: the same job, less in the account than before, and a set of costs nobody in that world has ever had to think about because they rented all their lives.

Your family are reading the visible fact using the only key they have, and the key is thirty years old, and it does not fit this lock any more.

You have a fact that everybody can see and a position nobody can, and a set of keys has never once been the same as the thing your family thinks it means. The Holy Spirit is the one standing in that gap with you at your aunt's house in September, and it is written in Romans 12 that we are to be not wise in our own conceits.

And here is the cost, which is the part that has been growing since August.

Every one of those sentences that goes uncorrected builds the picture a little higher. And the higher it gets, the more it will cost to correct, and the more embarrassing the correction becomes, until eventually there is a version of you in your family that you are maintaining.

You have been maintaining a picture rather than telling anybody anything, and a few uncorrected sentences have never once stayed that size for long. Romans 12 tells a whole church to mind not high things and to condescend to men of low estate, and the Spirit of God is the one who put those in the same instruction.

Be not wise in your own conceits

Here is the verse, and the last clause is the one aimed at you.

Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate. Be not wise in your own conceits. (Romans 12:16, King James Version)

Mind not high things.

That is not about money in the usual way it gets preached. Paul is writing to a mixed church, with wealthy people and slaves in the same room, and he is telling them to be of the same mind one toward another, and to not let a difference in position get into the room between them.

And then: be not wise in your own conceits, which is an old phrase meaning do not be wise in your own estimation, do not carry an idea about your own standing.

You are being asked to let go of a position rather than to hold one, and a picture other people have of you has never once been a thing you were required to keep up. The Holy Spirit is the one who refuses to let a difference in position sit between two people, and the written word puts the same mind and the low estate in one sentence.

And there is a second thing in that verse that is directly useful to you.

Be of the same mind one toward another. That is a two way instruction. It is not only about how you regard your cousin. It is about the room between you, and a room with an uncorrected picture in it does not have two people in it who are of the same mind. It has one man and a version of him.

You have a room with a version of you standing in it, and a picture nobody has corrected has never once been the same as being known. Romans 12 asks for the same mind one toward another, which takes two, and the Spirit of God is the one who wrote it in both directions.