I just finished the book Servant of All: Status, Ambition, and the Way of Jesus by Craig Hill.
Here are a few quotes from the book well worth thinking about:
“The brain devotes considerable resources to determining one’s place in the group. Maintaining high status is something that the brain seems to work on all the time subconsciously. Increases in status release rewards of serotonin, dopamine, and testosterone. The opportunity to increase status is therefore a potent motivator. People are willing to make extraordinary sacrifices in the hope of winning acclaim.”
Hill goes on,
“It is a rare organization of any size that does not experience tension, if not open conflict, around matters of status, often under the guise of other, more seemingly legitimate concerns.”
And then quotes C.S. Lewis, who said,
“We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”
Hill then reminds us of the attitudes and behaviors that Jesus values.
“Job applicants are known by their references. Note in Matthew 11 those whom Jesus cited as his own are the blind, the lame, lepers, the deaf, the dead, and the poor. Indeed, God’s favor toward the humble and the marginalized is a persistent theme in the Gospels.”
“And when Jesus went up to the seat of power in Jerusalem for the last time, he made a public demonstration in fulfillment of the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9…Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”
“The irony is surely intentional. Jesus is a king, yes, but the sort of king who enters Jerusalem on a donkey, accompanied not by an army but by a motley retinue of common folk.”
Finally, the last point I’ll mention from Hill’s book is that the attitude that Jesus most frequently challenged during his life and ministry was the desire for worldly recognition.
Jesus challenged us,
“When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12b-14).