~ Tall Poppies Are Made not Born

“What are mere mortals that you should think about them, or a son of man that you should care for him?” 

It is a quote from the writer to the Hebrews Chapter 2 verse 6.  It is also a reminder to us of the wonder of Father’s love of us that He does not simply pull the rug out from under our feet when we forget our place.

We know from God’s history, the Bible, He has done it before. The list would include Noah and the flood, the Tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah, and of course the catastrophe of the Red Sea.  There are others of course where, as in the mark on Cain and the Town of Nineveh, God protected the person rather than extinguished them when they overstepped the mark.

This article is not however about God’s actions. Rather it is about our responses and responsibilities.  What is man that God has regard for him is a bit like you and I having regard for ants as we walk about.  It isn’t that ants are unimportant, they are. God wouldn’t have called them into existence if He didn’t think so.  You and I were not called into existence like the ant.  We are God’s handicraft, He fashioned us but we can still get ourselves out of His perspective and forget our origins.

Australians and I guess must other nations have a similar concept called the “Tall Poppy Syndrome”.  It is all about someone who stands out above the crowd, someone who excels beyond the average and who, for just cause or not, needs to be brought down a peg or two.  Often the person is just above the norm and we decide through jealousy that he or she is “full of it”.  Sometimes it is simply a case of natural, or supernatural, talent and/or ability and at one level we recognize that, but at an entirely other level feel, given the opportunity, we could do it too.

George Whitefield, the ugly evangelist, is a man who could have been, but I doubt it, just one such “Tall Poppy”.  He was a contemporary of the Wesley’s and Jonathon Edwards and has been called “one of the greatest evangelists of the revival”, but it has been said of him that people went to his meetings just to see his face.  You see George had a squint that was the result of childhood measles and as I recall a pock marked face that had to be seen.

This topic developed from an online discussion this afternoon about another prominent evangelist of the century just gone by.  What struck me the most was that this man who was God’s mouthpiece was on the one hand almost venerated to sainthood but on the other hand was deemed to be personally responsible for every failure of the mass evangelism movement. 

I prefer to think that this person was so in touch with Father that he knew he was just a mouth for God and was mistakenly as unsociable by not being pulled into the adulation that every other believer ascribed to him.  He knew he was nothing special and refused to be put into situations where he would be treated as a superstar and develop an overblown assessment of himself.

I would like to think that this article may help to foster an attitude among the Community of Faith that gives credit where it belongs for any move that brings the cause of Christ to the forefront of those who are yet to decide to believe.  I also hope that we can aim to accept it is God who gives talent, ability, and more importantly success to each of us and it is Him we should ascribe the glory to.