Take Brave, as an example. I saw this film with my eldest in the movie theatre when it came out, and the message, the take away, was that you should be true to yourself, that the world just needs to be able to handle you, in all of your awesomeness. That's the issue, not that you need to change, but that you need to be true to yourself.
If that was true, then why is the world so busted up? What is the issue? If we're all so great, and realizing ourselves was what was standing in the way, then now that we've all realized ourselves, why have we not gotten any better? Why has this world not improved by leaps and bounds?
Well, simply enough, Paul seemed to have something worked out, that he is not as good as he ought to be. And nor are you. But it goes deeper than that, of course, which is that you are not only not as good as you ought to be, but you're not as good as you believe other people should be. This is so incredibly key, and yet we seem to overlook it all the time. You have in mind the way people ought to behave, and then you don't do those things. You rationalize it away, of course, and dismiss it. But in every way, it's like the last few lines of the trailer for the movie Frost / Nixon (a presumably good movie that I didn't see, because I have young children). Nixon saying 'I'm saying if a president does it, it's not illegal.' We look at that line, and are a bit shocked, shocked by the ability of Nixon to say and believe that as a president, he can do what he likes, and it's not illegal because he does it. And that's exactly where we are too, understanding morality as we do. Not that it's okay for us to do stuff, but stuff becomes okay because it's us doing it. Strangely, though we work through this on our own ,we remain surprised when other people feel the same way.
It's a bit of a bonkers world, one in which everyone is the same, but we all rush to tell the same lie, because it makes us all feel better. It's the same lie that all of us tell ourselves, tell each other, tell the world, because it comforts us all - that we are the exception, and everyone else is the rule.
You can believe this for a long time, to be sure, until something happens. Until you get a thorn in your flesh. And this is what happened to Paul, who really did believe that he had cause for boasting, as well he might. Paul's words changed the world, formed the doctrine for church bodies, gave a framework for the belief of billions, and his words are memorized, recited, and believed all over the world. Very few people enjoy that kind of distinction, really almost none. And yet, here is Paul, with all the reason in the world to boast, to call attention to himself and his achievements, who could summon attention to his activity, and his excellence, and yet here he is talking about boasting only in his weakness. The usual internet term for this is the humblebrag, in which you mention something great about yourself in the guise of humility, but it has zero humility attached to it, or perhaps fishing for compliments, but here, it isn't. It isn't, because Paul mentions, and confesses, his thorn in his flesh. His weakness. His illness. His sickness. Paul is here to confess that he has some problems that need to be addressed, and these problems make him humble. What is his thorn? Perhaps only Paul knows. He knows, and he's not sharing exactly what it is. It could be a temptation, it could be an illness, it could be a proclivity for a certain type of sin, it could be anything, but whatever it is, it keeps him humble.
There's a good chance that you need a thorn in your side too. There's a good chance that you need something poking you every once in a while, to remind you that you are a frail child of dust. You need this reminder because you're tempted to forget. That temptation is there in your mind all the time, and you probably tend to want to follow the path that leads to you feeling better without having to be better. It's a problem that affects all sorts of people from you all the way to the clergy, none of whom want to grapple with their own imperfection, and almost all of whom will lead a double life, whitewashed on the outside, and death and spiders on the inside.
But to paraphrase Hardy, if there's a path to the better, it begins with a full look at the worst. When Jesus speaks to us in the New Testament, as he does, he says 'be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.' - And he means it! Jesus does have in mind for you to be perfect, that's what he lived and died for, is for all your sins to be forgiven, and for you to be presented to God as whole and blameless. That's the plan, it's the idea, and for that to happen, your sins, the real ones, must be confessed, which you're not going to do if you believe that you're perfect. So God has likely sent to you a thorn for your flesh, an irritant, a sickness, an illness that will remind you that you're not as good as you think you are, or as good as you believe other people should be. You may not want this thorn, you may feel as though you were better without it, but you weren't. You were ignorant, and you were likely a liar.
The thorn has been placed there to humble you, and you may not want to be humbled. But you need to be. You need to be reminded, on a regular basis, that you're not as perfect as you'd like to be. You already know everyone else is far from perfect, and it's useful to be reminded of the fact that you yourself still have a long way to go. It will remind you of that, and it will also point you towards the only source for your salvation, the one who had no sin, who is in fact perfect, and promises to take away your sin. The thorn in your side should point you to Christ, for when it illustrates your weaknesses, it should remind you of the presence of Christ, who forgives sins, and cleanses us from unrighteousness. Then you can say, as Paul does, that when you are weak, then you are strong.
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