(This post is a cut and paste from my Friday night sermon notes, but I’m sure you can piece it together.)
It’s a fundamental mistake to think that life is about achievement and accomplishment. It’s not. Life (as our Creator intends it) is primarily about becoming. The journey through life is not primarily about where you go, or even what you do; the journey through life is mainly about what you become.
Today I came across this in The Week:
Mike Tyson has been humbled by life, said Ivan Solotaroff in Details. The former boxing champ—known for his savage brutality in the ring and his destructive behavior away from it—feels real remorse for the way he’s behaved over the years, from his 1992 sexual-assault conviction to biting off a chunk of another boxer’s ear in 1997. “Objectively, I’m a pig,” says Tyson. “The first stage of my life was just a whole bunch of selfishness. I thought I was a god. Now I’m 44 and I realize my whole life is just a f—ing waste.” Ruled by rage for most of his life, Tyson was finally broken last year when his 4-year-old daughter, Exodus, died after inadvertently becoming tangled in an exercise cord dangling from a treadmill. “If you’re not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you,” he says. “After I lost my daughter, all these people reached out and I realized: I just want to be of service to people. I need to help. I need to have something, finally, that I can offer to people in this world. I’m a really damaged human being and it’s still such a struggle, but I’m going to fight to the end this time. I’m just trying to be a man.”
It seems to me that Mike Tyson is on the journey of becoming. Becoming poor in spirit. And that’s where the journey begins. Realizing we are a “really damaged human” with “a whole bunch of selfishness” is the first step toward rethinking our lives and seeking to become something else. Is Mike Tyson a follower of Jesus? I don’t think so. Not that I know of. Not yet. But that doesn’t mean Jesus isn’t at work in his life. Jesus is Lord…and he is Lord of the whole world!
In his brilliant book Practice Resurrection Eugene Peterson warns us about the tendency to casually refer to certain aspects of life (ours and others) as “B.C.”
The Christian life is too often treated in our culture as an extra, something we get involved in after we have the basic survival needs established and then realize that things aren’t yet quite complete. So we become a Christian. That is all well and good, but there is no B.C. in our lives, no “Before Christ.” Neither is there any B.C. in anyone else who is not a confessed Christian. Christ is always present, for all of us. Just because we have no awareness of the presence and action of God previous to our knowledge of it does not mean that God was absent. We must not naively assume that the Christian life begins with us. As long as we think in those terms, we are apt to judge everything and everyone else by our experience and circumstances. That kind of thinking is understandable in adolescents. But we are called to grow up.
There was a time in my life before I had made a definite decision to follow Christ. But that doesn’t mean my life was B.C. Christ has always been at work in my life. Christ has always been at work in your life…and in the life of everyone you know. Including Mike Tyson.
Mike Tyson and the Journey of Becoming
Life is a journey.
A journey of becoming.
Life is not so much about where you go or what you do.
Life is about what you become.
You are either moving toward full humanity or moving away from it.
This is what Mike Tyson is beginning to understand.
He doesn’t want to be a selfish pig anymore—
He wants to become a man.
The “baddest man on the planet”
Wants to become a man.
Amen.
He may not yet understand that Christ is already part of his journey of becoming.
But he is.
Because Christ is the man, the true human, the fully human one.
Mike Tyson was the Heavy Weight Champion of the World.
But Jesus Christ is the Savior of the World.
And Christ announces good news to those who are poor in spirit.
He says: The kingdom of heaven is for the likes of you!
We begin to enter this kingdom, this other way of being—
When we begin to become…
Humble.
The journey of becoming (when traveled faithfully)—
Will make us fully human, like Jesus Christ.
For Christ has given us a totally new way of being human.
But the first step in becoming fully human
In the Christlike way
Is to begin to become
Humble.
To say things like:
I thought I was a god.
But I was a pig.
My life has been a whole bunch of selfishness.
My whole life has been a waste.
I’m a damaged human being.
I need help.
I need to help others.
I’m just trying to be a man.
I’m just trying to be human.
I’m convinced that a burned-out boxer
Who can say these things
Is closer to the kingdom of heaven
Closer to becoming
Fully human
Than the smug and self-satisfied “Christian”
So sure he’s totally saved and already arrived.
So what is the lesson to learn?
If you’re not humble, life will visit humbleness upon you.
So stay humble.
And stay on the journey.
The journey of becoming.
BZ
PS: Say a prayer for Mike Tyson
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
true beauty and excellence in the making.
thank you.
Wow, that’s awesome. I was never a fan of boxing, but it’s a treat to see all these well known “tough guys” falling on their knees at the cross.
Praise God
Great post. Kudos
I was going to post that I thought this is the stuff you’ve been saying all along, but you beat me to it. Excellent, Pastor. Everyone should read this whole post.
just said a prayer for Mike..great blog..thank you Pastor
This phrase in your opening encapsulates the thoughts I have been wrestling with for months:
“It’s a fundamental mistake to think that life is about achievement and accomplishment.”
It is just so ingrained in me that Christ came to accomplish something therefore we should go into all the world and accomplish things as well.
I think I need to listen to the sermon…
If I understand correctly it’s when we put accomplishment and achievement before Christ. We are nothing without Christ. In the end it doesn’t matter about achievement and such-it’s our journey and love for others that is important. Isn’t it okay to be successful as long as we remember we don’t get there on our own? That Jesus is and always has been with us? Am I correct Pastor or am I making a mess of what you’re blogging?
Mike is a product of our social and cultural creation, we built him step by step, stone by stone just as his trainer did. Mike made some bad choices, as we all do. We educated him, we failed. The poverty he came from is our fault, the violence and rage he felt we caused, socially and morally. The only way he ever got up was by knocking somebody down, and the crowd roared in approval. People justified and applauded until we lost control of the animal we all helped to create. He paid the price for all he has and hasn’t done, we demanded it,’ our pound of flesh’.
The poor, under educated and hungry, have police that are only here to suppress ‘this’ segment of humanity. What about the white collar crimes not against the single person but the whole of mankind, there are no police to watch the rich and powerful and they get to go to special prisons with special treatment if they are ever caught at all. Equal justice is a joke. Mr. Tyson was set up to fail from the day he was born. If you don’t think so you can call Ms. Lohan for the next few days and discuss it from her suite or cell which ever YOU believe it is.
The pitiful thing about it all is HE still thinks he owes society a ‘yes sur, boss’.
thank you Michael,
i appreciated reading your comments…
true, the sum is never the result of simple equations, and rarely, if ever, will we find true and complete justice on this journey.
in the end, we are each in need of all kindness, mercy and forgiveness available, and so should strive (by every possible means) to make those things our lives offerings as well…
maybe that is true beauty and excellence in the making?
perfection is on the other side from here.
sincere blessings.
just got done listening on line… still marinating. good message.
Luke 14:26 thru Luke 15, John 3:16-17, IJohn 8-10. May He find peace!
Well done. From the Holy Spirit.
I do not presume to use the “word” of God as a battle-axe,but solid ground,shield and buckler even if attacked with “it”.
I do not presume to use the “word” of God as a battle-axe,but solid ground,shield and buckler even if attacked with “it”.