You Are Not All That
Today I want to focus on Psalm 49 in particular because it set the tone for the rest of the Psalms that I subsequently read. During my reading, I experienced a sense that I was judging David both negatively and positively because I know the many surprisingly great things, as well as the genuinely disgusting things he did. Reading the 49th Psalm, I realized that David felt the same things about himself as I had felt about him. He knew how it felt to be exalted by his people and simultaneously troubled by the inevitable negative consequences of his iniquitous acts that constantly nipped at his heels.
The first three verses set the stage for the following admonishment to follow:
1 Hear this, all ye people; give ear, all ye inhabitants of the world:
2 Both low and high, rich and poor, together.
3 My mouth shall speak of wisdom; and the meditation of my heart shall be of understanding.
What follows in this Psalm is twofold:
- That regardless of a person’s status, death is the great equalizer, and
- That God will redeem our souls from the power of the grave.
With the proceeding as a backdrop, I would like to discuss four emotions that we feel that evoke thoughts that make us feel superior or inferior to others. One surprising thing about these emotions is that the same event or circumstance can simultaneously make us feel good and bad. These four emotions are anger, disgust, surprise, and awe. The first and last two emotions can be grouped as they evoke similar thought processes.
From the abstract of a study done by Pablo Brinol in 2018 entitled, Affective and cognitive validation of thoughts: An appraisal perspective on anger, disgust, surprise, and awe, comes the following excerpt:
“Anger, disgust, surprise, and awe are multifaceted emotions. Both anger and disgust are associated with feeling unpleasant as well as experiencing a sense of confidence, whereas surprise and awe tend to be more pleasant emotions that are associated with doubt.”
When we see or interact with others, which we consider to be at opposite ends of the spectrum, either rich, poor, great or small, mean or kind, desperate or well-to-do, we tend to experience one of the emotions mentioned earlier. These emotions evoke a series of thoughts.
If you see violence perpetrated on an innocent child, for example, you probably experience anger and simultaneously are confident that you could never act that way. If you see a drunk, passed out on the sidewalk that looks and smells like he hasn’t bathed in a month, you experience disgust and think, that is not me, and I would never let myself be like that. You hear of an unscrupulous businessman or scammer who preys on the uneducated or naive, and you get both angry and feel disgusted at the same time and say, I could never do that to someone.
On the other side of the equation, you may meet someone accomplished and brilliant and experience a sense of awe and think, I could never accomplish what they have. You see a magnificent work of artistry that moves you and think, I could never do that. You meet a person of high status or great religious leader and think, I will never be like them. You have an encounter with your favorite actor or musician and get all twitterpated and think, no one thinks of me that way.
We are not above or below any of the people I mentioned in both of these examples or scenarios. We are not better or worse off than any of them when all is said and done. We are all capable of being the best or worst human beings that ever lived. That probably makes us uncomfortable to admit, but it is true. Having said that, we are probably somewhere in the middle of good and evil, rich or poor, mean or kind, able or unable, and we act that way. Can you change? Yes!
When you come to realize the truth of who you are, you are less disgusted by the drunk on the street and less in awe of the great leader. You realize that they are more like you than you think. You also recognize that you are not all you imagine yourself to be, for better or worse.
The redeeming message of the Psalm is that Christ will redeem our souls from the power of the grave and hell. So, if you look in the mirror and see someone who is awesome or disgusting: You are not all that.