Week 47 Philippians
Paul stacks up a pile of his life-accomplishments in chapter three…then just knocks the pile down.
I think if I was a clinical psychologist I’d likely discourage Paul’s critical and unnecessarily negative self-view. I think I’d try to cautiously steer him in the direction of a little credit-where-credit-is-due. I think if I was administering a Retrospective Personal Inventory with a client like Paul I’d try easing him away from comments like this: I once thought all these things were so very important, but now I consider them worthless…Yes everything is worthless… If I was counselling Paul I’d hope to get him off this worthlessness-track. More look-on-the-bright-side.
On the other hand it’s not like Paul ended in a gloomily depressive place. His point wasn’t that his past accomplishments were worth absolutely zero-value. His point was that his past accomplishments were worth absolutely zero-value by contrast to what he had traded-up to. Which is different.
I think Paul’s main point was that he had an impressive portfolio of Self-Generated Goodnesses that was – let’s face it – pretty enviable. But on the road to Damascus he discovered he needed to be invested in Non-Self-Generated Goodnesses. He needed to piggy-back on someone else’s goodnesses because no matter how hard he tried his goodnesses weren’t good enough.
Paul described his trade like this: I’ve discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ and become one with him.
Note: quotes from Philippians 3:8-9 (NLT)