My reading for today was, unusually for me, a Guilded Age-era romance, and there was an aspect of the novel that particularly bothered me. In pairing an eccentric and complicated gentleman with a beautiful and strong-willed former hat girl and tenement inhabitant, the novel felt it necessary to posit an elite origin for the humble young woman. Such a concession to snobbery bothered me on a deep level, even if the novel was itself a pleasant and enjoyable read. After all, there are not all the noble and aristocratic houses in England, or all of the high society families in the United States, that would suffice to adopt all of the worthy young women with their noble status such that they would be suitable companions for a decent, if eccentric, gentleman. Status is something that has always bothered me on some level. One of the aspects of both being an American as well as being a Christian that is of huge personal importance is my belief that the dignity of a person is not tied to their wealth or to the elevated status of their background. Part of the reason for my particular ferocity on this point is mere selfish interest—I come from a pretty disastrously poor family background myself, and any such dignity as I possess is largely in spite of and not because of my background and upbringing.

But part of the reason is scriptural in nature, or at least one of those happy cases where personal bias and biblical doctrine happen to coincide. The most radical basis of egalitarian belief that I have springs from Galatians 3:26-29: “For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Put bluntly, we are children of the Most High God as believers, and as potential children of the Eternal simply by virtue of being human. We do not deserve this dignity and honor any more than a child of the royal family of England or Thailand or anywhere else deserves their pampered position, nor is there anything we can do that would pay us for the gift. Yet we do not act like others are the children of a king, and we certainly are not generally used to being treated with such dignity and honor in our lives. Yet, as God has said, so we are. There are no commonfolk, no demimonde, no hoi polloi unworthy of our attention and regard. From the most powerful ruler to the most helpless and pathetic street urchin, from the most popular and honored celebrity to the most abused and degraded and neglected among us, we are all royalty. The differences between rich and poor, between male and female, between different cultures and generations and ethnicities shrink into nothingness when compared to the great gulf between ourselves and our Father above. And yet God has adopted us, and promised to be with us as we become more like Him. Why do we not respect our fellow brothers and sisters as we ought to do, seeing as we are all very intent on making sure that we are respected and honored as we should be.

Perhaps the statement that we are children of a king does not seem real because it is not a status we now enjoy. Could it be that we are the greatest barriers to people feeling loved by God, in that we cannot conceive of God’s love without the more tangible love of others around us? Combined with our longing to be seen as more than we think we are comes with it a sense of fear and disorientation, because we know where we come from and the inglorious and scandalous nature of our upbringing and background. We are torn between our knowledge that we are fit for more than we have seen and enjoyed over the course of our lives and our complete lack of familiarity in knowing how to act according to the status and dignity that we know we deserve. Most of us believe, in contradiction to our avowed belief in the equality of mankind under God, that if we admit our brokenness and trouble that we will be disqualified from the love and respect of others that we so desperately and deeply want. For we know, as much as we would wish it otherwise, that if we seek to reveal ourselves and be loved and known for who we are, that the great majority of people will not particularly care. Others will care, but will use that knowledge to malign us and discredit us. The real question is, is there anyone who will know us and still love us, even knowing all that we are?

Yet God delights in making us more than we think we are. Every Passover, the first song in the Haggadah for the Seder is taken from Psalm 113, a psalm that has always brought a great deal of encouragement to me. The song opens up with praising God and blessing Him continually, and then goes on to provide the reasons why. One of those reasons is that God is high above all things but humbles Himself to know what goes on in the heavens and the earth. This happened, most notably, when Jesus Christ humbled Himself to become a person of no reputation and give His life as a payment of the debt of sin that we all owe and cannot afford to pay, on Passover, no less. The second set of reasons as to why we ought to praise God so consistently that is given in Psalm 113 is the fact that He continually reverses our expectations. He takes the poor out of the ash heap and seats him among princes, having adopted Him as His own child, and gives to the barren woman who longs for children the longings of her heart. The proper response to such an elevation of status, or to the granting of the deepest longings of our heart, ought to be praise, and remembrance of that favor in the future, given the ups and downs of life. And yet we too should be far more willing than we now are to show kindness and consideration for others, seeing as they too have been elevated to our status by our common Father. The honor we have been given is not an honor to hoard for ourselves, but rather an honor to share as widely and promiscuously as we dare. Most of us do not dare nearly enough.