August 30, 2005
Deserve
It was only a casual exchange when my friend and I met, and he asked, How are you doing, and I said, Better than I deserve. And he said, Well, you must have a mighty low opinion of yourself.
And I thought, why did I say that Better-than-I-deserve thing? Why do I always say that when someone asks after my well-being? And there came to me an answer something like that I was trying to be humble, maybe. My friend knew me, though, and I knew that he was probably pretty sure as was I that humility and I didn’t have all that much in common.
So maybe he was right. Maybe I do I have a low opinion of myself. Maybe it’s justified, and maybe it’s not. But who am I to say?
Could be that I, least of all, know what I deserve and what I don’t deserve. Could be that God knows better, a lot better, than I. Could be that if Jesus died for me (though sometimes I wish he hadn’t), it was partly to make me better, so maybe if I am worth that, I am worth a lot more than I can ever imagine even without trying. Maybe my saying that Better-than-I-deserve is an insult to God who imagined me into being and thought pretty well of his imagination and of its product like he said in Genesis about Creation in general and, of course, also gave his only-begotten son to show that he meant it. I had only one begotten son die, and I was far from willing about it. I’ve never got over it, nor do I expect ever to. I wonder if God has.
I’ve noticed over the years that there are folk who when you say nothing more than Hello to them, they answer, Fine. I always thought that rather strange, but maybe it’s not when looked at in the long, Judaeo-Christian scheme of things dating back beyond and before the Big Bang — somewhere back in God’s imagination.