Lie #2 You Deserve it.
Take a moment and examine the slogans these brands have used over the past years and consider what the overall message of them is:
L’Oréal Paris: Because you’re worth it
McDonald’s: You Deserve a break today
Häagen-Dazs: Because you deserve it
Bath & Body Works: You deserve a little luxury
Herbal Essences: Because you deserve it
Okay, maybe that was a bit too easy. Obviously, they are all centered around you “getting what you deserve”. If we broaden the scope of our search to ads that simply imply you are worth or deserve something, you’d get just about every ad campaign that has ever existed. Why? Because companies are trying to sell you a product and they want you to know (or at least think) that their product is made for you, specifically. Worried that it may be too frivolous of an expense? No way!!! You deserve it! Treat yourself!
Of course, when we expand this beyond simply advertising, we find that our society is built upon the premise that every human being has the right to life, love, and the pursuit of whatever they would define as happiness. While this mentality is beneficial for the functioning of society, it is wholly incompatible with the faith life of a Christian. Let’s hold that thought for a moment though, and, before we jump into what we do and don’t deserve, let’s look into what it means to be human.
“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’ And God said, ‘Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so.” -Genesis 1:28-30
So here we are, on the 6th day of creation. God has spent the last 5 days weaving this creation into existence and daily declaring it to be very good. He completes His creation by making man and woman and immediately He does what? He gives them work to do. Remember, this is the pre-fall world, and, like all of the other creatures in God’s creation, He has a task for man and woman.
First, He instructs them to populate the earth, then He informs them that they have dominion over all the creatures on earth as well as all vegetation. But what exactly does this “dominion” entail? We go on to chapter 2 to see exactly what this means.
“The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it… Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him.” – Genesis 2:15, 19-20
This dominion is work! God doesn’t create man and say “ah, my beautiful creation, what can I do for you?” He created mankind for a purpose and immediately tasked them with serving that purpose even as early as the day He made them. Let’s get the record set straight then: perfection is not kicking back in a chair, throwing the feet up, and relaxing with a big ol’ glass of lemonade… or scotch… ah scotch… anyway! Perfection is working to the specification that God has designed us to work. And, it bears noting, perfection is to be in a perfect fellowship and communion with God (as we see portrayed in the first two chapters of Genesis).
Now, obviously things aren’t the same as they were. It doesn’t take much extra reading in Genesis to discover where we are at now. Chapter three records the fall of creation due to Adam and Eve’s sin. But the differences in our purpose as humans post-fall is not all that different from our purpose pre-fall, consider this:
“To the woman he said, ‘I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.’ And to Adam he said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return’”
Notice that the task has not changed. The woman is still expected to bear children (i.e. increase and multiply) and the man is still expected to exert his dominion over the earth by working the land. However, now the primary thing we see is there will be pain involved in this work. It will now be a struggle to produce food and bear children. In addition, we see that the earth is linked to the fate of Adam and Eve. Their actions not only impacted them, but it cursed the earth as well.
So what is the big takeaway from all of this? We have never, either pre or post fall, deserved anything. It is as simple as that. We have been given life by a loving Creator and work to do with the expectation that we will complete that work. Prior to the fall, that work was enjoyable and wonderful and free of pain. Post-fall that work is difficult and a struggle and includes a conflict between us and others, but to be a human to the fullest capacity is to live in the way we were designed: to populate and serve God [work] as the stewards of His creation.
Here is a new element, post fall, however that creates a bigger problem for us: we now are no longer capable of operating at our full design specifications. We can no longer “human” to the fullest extent that God created us. We are broken creatures and, of all the things, the primary thing we lost in the fall was the ability to be in fellowship with our creator. Our work did not go away, but the beauty of fellowshipping with God and living in a relationship where we trust and fully rely upon Him is no longer present with us, it is impossible. As St. Paul puts it,
“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” – Romans 3:23
Who? All. We are all born into sin (Psalm 51). And what is this sin? It is disobedience to God. It is not acting as we were created to act and the only thing that sin deserves is death (Romans 6:23). So let’s recall again our original discussion. Here is the lie that the world tells you: you deserve it. And that “it” is a break, good things, and to serve and please yourself because man, you are worth it. But what do we actually deserve? Death and eternal damnation. That is it. Each and every one of us deserve nothing but destruction.
Now, if we left it at that, the entire idea of being a Christian would be useless. Life would be futile; we would be broken creatures that simply live out our miserable days pursuing “happiness” (whatever that means) and waiting to face the judgement we deserve. Here is the beauty of it all, however: we don’t get what we deserve. Our God did not choose to give us what we deserve, but instead He chose to take our punishment upon Himself.
“but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
-Romans 5:8
What does this mean for us? Friends, our God gives us what we don’t deserve. Not only does He sustain us and daily provide for our needs, He also made a way for us to have a restored relationship with Him. Christ came to this earth, humiliating Himself to become part of the very creation He created, and faced the full torment of a world that acted as though they deserved better. Those in authority treated Him poorly because He wasn’t “at their level”, yet when His teaching threatened to upset their social status they sought to kill Him. Why? Because they had “earned” their position and no crazy prophet from Nazareth had any right to take that away from them! He spent most of His ministry working with the people that didn’t “deserve” His presence: sinners and tax collectors and the like.
Christ was the only one who truly deserves all glory and honor and praise, yet He received what He didn’t deserve, so you can receive what you don’t deserve. He did not deserve mocking, and ridicule, and shame. He did not deserve the cross. He did not deserve to be forsaken by God, yet He willingly subjected Himself to all of that so that you could also receive what you do not deserve: the ability to be called a child of God. Through Christ, you have been made right and can be restored to be the creature God created you to be, entirely apart from any action of yours or anything you can or ever will deserve. This is the love of our God for us: that He gives us what we don’t deserve.
What does this mean for our lives today? It means that we need to condition ourselves to have a mentality of gratefulness rather than entitlement. God owes us nothing, yet He gave up everything for us and continues to sustain all of our daily needs. We are also to use this new life He has given us in Christ to love and serve Him and love and serve our neighbors. The goal in life is not to get to a point where we can be done working and pursue the things we think will make us happy because “we deserve it”. The goal in life is to live for God and serve Him wherever He has placed us, shining the light of Christ and making known the promise of the Gospel of Christ so others may also believe in it and receive forgiveness of sins, salvation, and life everlasting.
So, for our daily lives, we can eat our Häagen-Dazs and enjoy a glass of lemonade (or scotch) on occasion. The point is not to say this is wrong to do, nor that it is not God pleasing for us to rest (in fact, rest is even commanded by God). The point is also not to say that we should treat other humans in any way less than with dignity and respect. The point is to say that we are daily receiving far more than we deserve from a Creator who loves us dearly. On the days where we have more than we could ever want: we rejoice and give Him thanks for His provision. On the days where we suffer and experience pain and the effects of the cursed world, we give Him thanks that He too suffered in this way so we can look forward to a future where the curse is over and suffering comes to an end. In all of these things, we can be grateful to God for all that He has done, is doing, and will do for us. This is what it truly means to be human. How beautiful it is to know we don’t get what we deserve.
“For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.” - Romans 5:10-11
Coming up next week: Lie #3 “You complete me.”
