Chuck Ryor

“Baby look at me and tell me what you see.  You ain’t seen the best of me yet, give me time I’ll make you forget the rest.  I got more in me and you can set it free.  I can catch the moon in my hands, don’t you know who I am?  Remember my name.  Fame.” – Irene Cara

Living in L.A., being a human being who thirsts for affirmation and being a professor of American media culture, I can attest to the fact that the desire for fame is alive and well.  Whether it’s American Idol, America’s Got Talent, or the stand up comedy class that I take at the Ice House Comedy Club (where Steve Martin got his start), we’re all hoping that people will remember our name.

Somewhere in our DNA is the thought that to be known worldwide is the penultimate of experiences.  This will make us feel important.  Valuable.  Loved.  My comedy professor says this horrible sense of self-worth is what makes people go into show business.  Funny, I’ve seen the same thing in ministry.  We serve because we need to be needed and we desire to find satisfaction in people knowing our name.  And they may.  But for how long?

On my east coast trip I visited the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Do you know who Harvard is named after?  No points for answering “Mr. Harvard.”  Previous to my visit to the campus that bears his name, I had no idea who John Harvard was.  While I knew about Harvard University’s reputation as a preeminent academic institution, I stood looking at the statue of John Harvard wondering, “Who is this guy?”  Turns out he was an English clergyman and the first benefactor of the University named in his honor.  He directed that half his money, along with his extensive library, be given to what was then Harvard College, at the time led by his good friend Nathaniel Eaton.

Whatever his accomplishments in this life – and I was stoked that he, too, was a minister – John Harvard is now dead.  According to a Harvard staffer who spoke with me, John Harvard’s statue is at the same time a good luck charm and the site for a perpetual student prank.  For good luck, people from all over the world come and rub the left foot of the statue.  Almost predictably, drunk Harvard students will late at night go to this landmark and urinate on the same foot.  Disgusting, I know, but emblematic of what being famous really has in store for those who pursue it.

As far as accomplishments are concerned, the thrill we get and the glory we receive from whatever we achieve in this life will be short lived at best.  When it’s all said and done, most people in the next generation won’t remember our names let alone our accomplishments.  Even if we manage to have a world famous college named after us.  In fact, they may end up peeing on our statue, symbolizing the eternal value of fame as a means of satisfying our need for affirmation.  This isn’t something that ever was part of my “fame” dreams.

Since I was a kid I dreamed of being “someone.”  It’s sad when I think about it because I’ve chosen a vocation where I’m commanded by my boss (Jesus) to become “nothing.”  It was John the Baptist that said of his ministry in John 3:30, “He must become greater; I must become less.”  Theoretically, I work for Jesus’ fame.  But in vocational ministry, as in your line of work, there is a tendency to make it about us instead of Jesus.  I want to be the best lawyer, richest guy, #1 soccer mom, etc…

The promotion of Jesus’ fame is not just for vocational ministers, it’s supposed to be the central passion of every Christian regardless of what they do for a living.   The problem is that  putting Jesus first by letting others go in front of us (how Jesus defines greatness) doesn’t come naturally to us.  Spend a little time on L.A.’s freeways and you’ll know what I mean.  It didn’t come naturally to Jesus’ disciples either, who were jockeying for position in Jesus’ kingdom before he even had the chance to suffer death, be resurrected and ascend onto the throne of heaven.  Read this account from Mark 10:35-45:

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”

“What do you want me to do for you?” he asked.

They replied, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.”

“You don’t know what you are asking,” Jesus said. “Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with?”

“We can,” they answered. Jesus said to them, “You will drink the cup I drink and be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant. These places belong to those for whom they have been prepared.”

When the ten heard about this, they became indignant with James and John.  Jesus called them together and said, “You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

A mentor of mine asks the question this way:  “Do you want people to say of you ‘What a great servant of God you are’ or do you want them to say ‘What a great God you serve?’”  I’m embarrassed to admit that at too many moments in my life, my principle motive has been my own name recognition.

While staring at the statue of John Harvard (with his shiny left foot), I remembered these words of Jesus.  Greatness is being the servant of all.  In being the servant of all, people will see the Great Servant, Jesus Christ.  In the end, living for His fame will be the only thing that satisfies our soul.

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

– 2 Corinthians 12:7-9

As I ran today I was lamenting an ongoing reality in my life.  When things are going well, I too easily forget how dependent I am on the Lord.  I very easily am led into patterns of worldly thinking and behavior, all because there isn’t a pressing need drawing me into the presence of Jesus.  This past week at the Installation Service of one of my best friends, Dr. Tom Clinkscale, the regional pastor who was addressing the assembly cited one of my favorite and most quoted scriptures, Jonah 2:8:

“Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.”

It saddens me that this tendency to cling to idols exists in me because of how often I forfeit the much better grace of God that is offered.  “Slacker Syndrome” is as old as God’s people and can be seen time and again in the nation of Israel’s unfaithfulness, sometimes right on the heels of a miracle that you’d think would change their lives forever.  Listen to this startling account of the human condition from Exodus 16:1-3:

The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt.   In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.  The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

A month and a half.  That’s how long it took for God’s people to lose their focus on His goodness and their need for Him.  40-50 days after God parted the Red Sea in front of their very eyes and destroyed the nation that had oppressed them for four centuries.  Just a month and a half later they wished they were back in Egypt.   I read this and my first reaction is one of self-righteousness.  “After seeing that kind of miracle,” I assure myself, “I would trust God and have a great attitude about the difficulty in front of me.”

Then I take a good, hard look at my track record.  When faced with an enemy that will certainly destroy me and my anxiety is running at an all-time high, I am particularly attentive to my relationship with God.  When things are going well and the difficulty of the past is neatly behind me, I so very quickly return to self-reliance, which has an uncanny ability to manifest itself as complaining.

Perhaps you’re a super-Christian and you have no idea about that which I speak.  Perhaps, like me, you erroneously were taught at some point in your Christian life that truly “spirit-filled” Christians never  wrestle with their idolatry as I’ve described.  Worse yet, you may have been falsely taught that God has nothing to do with allowing these seasons of struggle to exist in our lives.  This certainly isn’t Biblical and a struggle free existence wasn’t the life of the Apostle Paul (who wrote most of the New Testament).

In fact, it is Paul’s tendency toward pride that causes God, in His wisdom, to give Paul a struggle that would be impossible for him to overcome by his human strength.  As recorded in the 12^th chapter of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, Paul was privileged by God to see heaven.  He actually was taken by the Spirit to the place where God and the angels reside, and was enabled to see things that he wasn’t even allowed to tell others about.  This honor was given to Him by God’s grace and sovereign choice, not because Paul was such a good guy or was deserved to see the vision.

But Paul was human, and there is evidence that pride in his own spiritual accomplishments was a central besetting sin for him (not only was he a Pharisee but Paul could very quickly rattle off his resume of accomplishments – see Philippians 3:4-6).  In response to these visions, and to protect Paul from himself and his self-dependent tendencies, the Scriptures say, “To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.”

Paul might have had an arsenal of spiritual gifts and natural abilities, but fighting a demon that tormented him would require day by day, minute by minute dependency on God.  There was very little chance of pride in Paul’s life so long as he had to perpetually call out to Jesus for relief.  He pled with God for the messenger of Satan to be taken from him, to which our Lord replied, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

My point is that the Israelites struggled with forgetting how much they needed God, the Apostles struggled to remember how much they needed God, and we must expect that this will be an ongoing struggle for us, too.  So – and I can’t believe I’m about to write this – thank God for struggles and suffering.  It brings us closer to Him.  It effortlessly reminds us of our need for Jesus and His grace to survive each day.  Suffering makes us realize that life is truly all about knowing and enjoying Him.  And at no other time in my life is the fruit of the Spirit known as “Self Discipline” so evident as it is during times of suffering.

In the absence of difficulty, I fear (I know) that I would glory in myself, seek my own best interests, and very rarely express the kind of dependence on Jesus that He knows is a reality and we must remember if we’re to truly know the joy of the Lord.