Jordan Powell
Most Self-Congratulatory Man of the Year
Presented by Jordan Powell
But I never placed the order. The ninety dollar price tag gave me second thoughts, it is true, but what really dissuaded me was a conversation I had with my mother. The conversation itself had nothing to do with my ridiculous award idea—it was the gravity of our conversation that changed my mind. Suddenly, spending money on such a silly, self-focused gag felt unbearably frivolous and hollow.
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| Would anyone mind if I gave these to myself? |
I might still order my own award in the future because it is a pretty funny idea, and I have a penchant for the absurd, the clever, the self-referential. In any case, the scenario made me think of this quote by C.S. Lewis:
"Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him."
In our digital generation—not that the basic facts about man's nature have changed in recent years—we seem to live by this idea that the telling of something is what creates value. The sunset is beautiful, but I tend to care less and less about the actual phenomenon and more and more about what I have to say about it or which Instagram filter I will apply to the photograph.
I am not saying that ancient, iPhone-less eras were any better on this point. They still had iPapyrus. Everywhere and in all generations we can witness this move away from God as the locus of value to the self. But Facebook makes the move oh-so-easy. My family reunion is not valuable unless I tweet about it. The meal I fixed for my family is not valuable unless I snap a photo and share it with the world.
I always think about when Jesus says not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. If you ask me, that means not letting your left hand snap a photo when your right hand serves someone.
Most of us are just really interested in what we have to say. It is a writer's trap for sure, one of which I try to be wary—and mostly unsuccessfully, to tell the truth. Instead of using language as a toy with which to amuse myself and fashion inane jokes, I ought to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. This means, at times, keeping a great joke to myself. It means being more concerned with giving God glory than how well I can sculpt a sentence about it.
If the art glorifies God and draws others and myself to Him, let me still practice it. Otherwise let it fade away. Let the award sit in the online shopping cart, unordered.
photo credit: Paulgi via photopin cc
"...that means not letting your left hand snap a photo when your right hand serves someone." Well said!
ReplyDeleteYour last sentence was a very effective tie-in with your beginning anecdote. I always want to read a piece that begins with a story (particularly an interesting or quirky one). And a reference to it at the end is a great reward for the reader.
Buy yourself the trophy; it's funny. And there is a guy on television with a really bad haircut (hairpiece?) and a tendency to speak of himself in the third person who will never, ever let you win it fair and square.
ReplyDelete