Despised – Lamentations 1:8

⁸ Jerusalem sinned grievously,
so she has become a mockery;
all who honored her despise her,
for they have seen her nakedness;
she herself groans,
and turns her face away.

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), La 1:8.

One of the problems of having a high opinion of oneself is that people may eventually find out that you’re human after all, that you have failings and limitations like anyone else. It’s good to figure this out as early as possible and avoid overrating yourself.

Jerusalem was confident in God’s favor, even though the prophets had told them repeatedly that they were offending their God, and that trouble was coming. There came the time when those who had given Jerusalem and Judea honor came to despise her.

All of us have this very potential. We come to consider ourselves superior, better than others. Then something happens and we find that honor has turned to contempt. Those who thought well of us now look at us as an example of failure.

“All have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory,” says Paul (Romans 3:23). This gives special meaning to the idea of glory for a Christian. The goal, the standard is God’s glory. “Eye has not seen, neither has the ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, the things that God has prepared …” (1 Corinthians 2:9). In the face of sayings like this we seek our own honor, our own glory, and may even get the praise of others for some time. But against what God has planned, our attainments are always small. The person who jumps three feet into the air in trying to jump over the moon is not superior to the one who jumps two feet. Both failed.

When I moved from my undergraduate school to the University to go to graduate school I had an opportunity to learn this lesson. It’s a really minor event that has stuck with me ever since. My brother and I attended church at the visitors’ center at Old Faithful. Everyone there was a visitor to the park, so we all introduced ourselves and said where we had come from and where we were going. I was headed to graduate school after receiving my BA in Biblical Languages. I was headed to the Graduate school, co-located with our denomination’s seminary, to study further. After the service someone brought a text to me to ask about the “original Hebrew.” I don’t recall the specific verse, but it was a piece of poetry from Job. I talked to him about it for about five minutes. After we left, my brother and I were walking around Old Faithful and it suddenly hit me. I said to my brother, “Do you know that I talked to that guy for five minutes, and I never answered his question? In fact, I have no idea what the answer is!”

I wondered whether he realized how empty my “answer” was, or whether my many words around it satisfied him. But I knew the glory was empty.

I wish I could say I learned my lesson and expressed my level of knowledge with more humility from then on. But that would be a lie. Nonetheless, I have valued that lesson.

It only takes time for praise and glory to turn to failure and shame. But there is always a remedy. That is for later. First, in this book, we learn to lament honestly, to recognize where we are, so that we can turn from there to the real glory.

(Featured image generated by Jetpack AI.)