Stop the Lifeboat, I Want Out

I am still reading Donald Miller, although I have finished Blue Like Jazz and have moved on to Searching For God Knows What. In this book he speaks of a "lifeboat mentality," where basically throughout life we are operating as though we are all on a lifeboat and someone has to be thrown overboard, so we are trying to decide who is worthy and who isn't. And in the process we are trying to move ourselves up higher, justify ourselves and show that we are better than others. We are looking for redemption from our peers, rather than from God.

What's funny is I read all of this about a day after I had started pondering some things about myself. One, that I often base my sense of whether I am special or valuable on my perception of whether other people think I'm special or valuable. And two, a lot of the time I try do or believe certain things not because I wholeheartedly embrace them, but because I want to find my identity in them and gain acceptance from the people who do wholeheartedly embrace them.

Then I opened up this book, and there's Donald Miller saying that we look to other people to tell us who we are and what we are worth, instead of finding our identity and our value in God.

Yet, for some reason, the fact that God values me greatly didn't make me feel much better about it all; it sort of felt like the phrase "a face only a mother could love." You know, everyone else may dislike me or think I'm weird, but hey, Jesus loves me so it's all good. The thought that God loves and values me didn't feel as comforting as being loved and valued by people. That is horrible, I know, but I am being honest. That's how I felt.

Then I thought that maybe the reason it doesn't feel all that comforting is because I am approaching it all from the lifeboat mentality Miller speaks of; when other people affirm me and tell me who I am, there's a chance to move up, a chance to be more special than others. But God doesn't operate like that; God values me just the same as everyone else; with God I am no worse, and no better, than anyone else. There's no edging my way up, no hierarchy of importance. And it struck me then how firmly entrenched I have become in the lifeboat mentality.

I talk a good game about loving everyone equally and all people being valuable, and I do believe that, but somehow when it comes down to applying it, I am still struggling.

So I started thinking about how I would live if I truly operated out of the belief that everyone is equally valued, that I am no better or worse than anyone else, and no one is any better or worse than me. Jesus did not operate under the sham of a popularity contest, and so I think I probably am not supposed to either.

I think that, perhaps, if I can escape the lifeboat mentality I will be able to see the beauty of each individual, myself included; maybe I can be confident in my own skin, in my own beliefs, in my own talents, and appreciate the person God created. He didn't create me to be anyone else, he created me to be me. And perhaps I will also be able to celebrate people's unique differences, rather than comparing myself to them to see where I stand.

And I think that our equal value before God means not only that we are all equally beautiful, but that we are also equally broken. The specific things we struggle with may be different, but we are all broken. So, then, there is no room for judging or looking down on others, because I am just as screwed up as they are, and God values them just as much as he values me.

C.S. Lewis wrote this poem, and I identify with it all too well:

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through.
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.
Peace, reassurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin;
I talk of love-- a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end up where I begin.

I'm not really sure how to wrap this up, because honestly, it's not all wrapped up neatly in my head yet either. All I know is that I am more self-focused than I thought I was, that I have unconsciously bought into this lifeboat mentality and it is preventing me from loving people the way I should and living my life the way I should, and I want out of it. I want to trade in the lifeboat for God's way, because it is so much better, but I don't know how.

I don't know how.