For
me, most especially status means that one has the tremendous asset of
influence. As a Christian one of the first things I consider is the
role of Christ on earth. Jesus has had tremendous influence on
society. But the question immediately arises—if he originally did
not have a group of apostles among which he had great status, would I
know anything about him at all? Jesus as a complete loner with no
group within which he had significant status would have been a death
sentence far surpassing in importance his crucifixion. Too often, I
think people like myself who were gifted with much love as a child
tend to belittle the importance of status. Love, after all, is an
important source of status itself and can bestow upon us an inherent
and unforgettable measure of it. One of the most important insights
stemming from the love of God is that each and every human being is
endowed with the grace of status and its favor. God's love provides
significant if not—for many of us—sufficient status.
Certainly,
one of my desires in doing this blog is to attain (maybe with a
little sense of desperation) a following of readers among which I can
hope for some status and ultimately influence. As I have said
before, is there anything (including my marriage) that did not
at least share somewhat in this aspect? I have three masters
degrees—to what extent does this represent a search for truth and
to what extent a search for status? I have “adopted” children
that I love dearly—but to what extent did my original befriending
of them derive for a need to achieve some measure of status? Here
again I return to the thought that one of the most important of all
sources of status is love which can be seen as “deep regard” or
“unconditional status.”
Where
does this line of thinking take us in the end, to cynicism and a
yearning to free ourselves from such selfish objectives? Well, to
the extent that status equates with love (special
regard), the desire to escape its pursuit will be fruitless. And the ultimate
catch-22 is that achieving the status that is based upon being above the need
of it would take us to a sad and desperate state. We all need status
(special regard) as is clear from the existence of a God of love who
endows each of us with infinite amounts of it. God when devoutly believed in substantially frees us from other status races by showing us that they are races we need not run. We are all equal before God, and that's the end of it. Our role becomes through love to give status to others (and thereby to gain it through the esteem of others and through enhanced self-esteem). But that is the whole point of love—unlike withering snobbery it is mutually elevating and reinforcing. Yet no one should underestimate the skills required to effectively show love.
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