Pedestals
Many of us have one person in particular we look up to. The one who’s the kind of wife we want to be. The one who’s the kind of friend we want to be. The one who’s the kind of mother we want to be. The one who’s our best earthly picture of Jesus.
In this social media age, we often see the best of people, the parts they want to show us. We see a friend and her husband out on a date where everything looks perfect, but the photo fails to mention the fight they got into on the way. We see another friend’s kids all smiling and cute, but the photo fails to mention Joey punched Bobby five minutes earlier. So it can easily appear people are the perfect [fill in the blank]. We might know they’re not, but it feels like they are. We’ve put them on a pedestal.
I’ve gone to church my whole life, and the first person I remember making a huge impact on me spiritually was my youth pastor’s wife, Rachel. I always aspired to be like her. Rachel has a great marriage. She has an amazing voice and uses it for God’s glory. She’s beautiful inside and out. She is wise and led me closer to Jesus in my youth. No question, I had her on a pedestal.
Later on, I had a pastor whose wife had erected walls around herself. Despite years of attendance at her church, I never really got to know her, and so I don’t truly know her story. But here’s my best guess: people had put her on a pedestal, and when she displayed her humanity over the years, they acted hurtful and judgmental when she fell off, so she put up walls and boundaries. By the time I met her, she had too many walls to allow herself to be known.
There are so many things wrong with pedestals, but I understand how building them happens. [Tweet “Though we have a perfect example in Jesus, we still crave something tangible to which we can aspire.”]This is our first mistake. Yes, we’re trying to follow Jesus; we’re trying to be more like him. But if we fix our eyes on someone else and then elevate them above their capabilities, we’re destined for trouble.
One-on-one discipleship makes the disciple look like the person who is doing the discipling. Community discipleship, many to one, makes the disciple look more like Jesus. Everyone in the community can point the person to Jesus, and one person has strength where another has weakness. Community discipleship keeps everyone on an even playing field. Avoiding pedestals makes more room for Jesus to rise up in the midst of community.
We erect pedestals (most often without the other party’s knowledge) and then get mad or frustrated when the people we put on them fall short of our expectations. How unfair is that? In most cases, people are simply trying to follow God’s call. They didn’t ask to be on our pedestal. They may not have wanted a spotlight because of God’s call. It should convict us when we judge those we’ve placed on a pedestal.
I am a pastor’s wife. I haven’t always held that role, but as of three years ago, I knew we’d be planting a church. As we dreamed about the church and its vision and direction, I thought about the kind of pastor’s wife I wanted to be. The answer came easily: I want to be real. I want to knock down any pedestals others might try to erect so I stay on even ground with those with whom I’m in community. I want to be open about my weaknesses and faults. I want to tell my community about how God is changing and shaping me through my weaknesses and faults and what I learn about him as I grow.
During our most recent Missional Community meeting night, guess who had the most questions and struggled with the text my husband was teaching? Me! I don’t have it all figured out, and if someone asks a question I don’t know, the answer is just that: I don’t know. But, I say, God does.
It’s not that we can’t admire and look up to others. But let’s all stay on the same solid ground together and, instead of building pedestals, point each other up to Jesus. Our gracious Savior will never fall off his well-deserved pedestal.
Amy Wiebe is a Jesus follower, wife, mom of three, church planter, finance director, and lover of sarcasm and deep conversation with friends. She also loves camping, rafting, skiing, sewing, and having people over. Amy blogs with her husband at fringechurch.com.
