Today’s Scripture Reading (July 14,
2014): Ezra 9
I recently read
an article which talked about the “Double Curse of Incompetence.” Technically,
the Curse is called the “Dunning-Kruger Effect.” Dunning and Kruger suggest
that people who are incompetent at a job actually believe that they are better
than they really are. In other words, incompetent people rarely understand that
they are incompetent making it a double curse. They believe that they have the
skills needed for the job and therefore they attempt to complete the task
without understanding how they are failing. And because of that lack of
understanding they also make no effort to improve their skills. The only way to
counteract the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” is for the incompetent person to become
more competent at the task. Evidence shows that as the person becomes more
competent, they also become more realistic in their evaluation of their own
performance. But the problem is that they seldom see the need for improvement,
and therefore seldom have the drive to attempt to move from incompetence to
competence.
There seems
to be similar problem with our spirituality. It is easy to come to the belief
that the actions we are involved in are God honoring, or at the very least
actions to which God does not have a reaction or an opinion. To those who are
spiritually incompetent, Paul’s notion that “… all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) makes absolutely no sense. They are as good
as most people and better than a lot. Why should they bother to change? But as
people become more in tune with the spirituality of God, they also begin to
better evaluate their own behavior. Thus those who have been in faith for a
long time tend to have a more severe reaction to the events of their own lives
than those who are new to the faith.
This is the
message of Ezra to the exiles. Somehow they had to be brought to a point where
they understood how deeply their actions had hurt God. They needed to
comprehend that the punishment that the nation had received from God, as severe
as it was (and there can be no doubt that the punishment had been severe), was
less than the punishment that they deserved. Ezra’s task was to make the exiles
more competent in the ways of God. And only through this instruction would they
be able to grow to the point where they could effectively evaluate their own
behavior – and find the areas in which they needed to grow..
Ezra’s
teaching begins with a form of general confession – a crying out to God of
praise that he had not punished them as deeply as they had deserved, and a cry
of contrition for the ways that the nation had fallen short in the past – and
continued to fall short in the present. And Ezra wanted to impart the knowledge
that God had saved them as a remnant – and how well they did in their spiritual
walks would have a great impact on everything that they would accomplish in the
future together as the new Kingdom of Israel.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezra 10
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