Monday, December 19, 2011
Luke 1:5-25

"That isn't your honor, Costis. That's the public perception of your honor. It has nothing to do with anything important, except perhaps for manipulating fools who mistake honor for its bright, shiny trappings. You can always change the perception of fools." - The King of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner

I read that today, and it stuck in my mind when I read a long passage bracketed with two things that should be opposing. Zechariah (sorry for yesterday's spelling of this name) and Elizabeth had led upright, faithful lives - then at the end Elizabeth thanks God for finally taking away her shame before others.

It makes me think of a moment in The Chronicles of Narnia for an intentionally parallel discussion. In Prince Caspian, the mouse cadet Reepicheep spends a page or so trying to explain to Aslan why it's important for his tail to be restored after the battle because it shames him to be standing without it. It shames him - standing before Aslan, the Son of God, having just been restored to life by the greatest prophet of his world after fighting nobly for his country in a battle that was eventually won by divine intervention - he thinks any scar can take away his honor. He refuses to accept Aslan's word that his honor is just fine.

Elizabeth and Zechariah's honor was perfectly fine, thank you very much. They were faithful, Zechariah was a priest, Elizabeth was a good enough friend to Mary that she knew she could come there for help - but they had no child. And so they had shame. In the public eye, they must be some kind of sinners. They must have failed God in some way to be denied an heir.

Why do we do this? And I don't even mean why we shame people - we do that because we forget we can all be good and glorious without other people having to be low. We do it because we are human and we like hierarchies. We do it because we have rules and things that we think are important enough to be worth using shame as a tactic.

What I mean is - why do we let there be one thing that defines our goodness in the eyes of God and the world? Why do we, in ourselves, mistake honor for its bright, shiny trappings? Something as silly as our tails or as out of our control (at some point, at least) as our reproductive capability? It's particularly silly when it's those things. I don't think that Elizabeth was thanking God, when she said, "So has the Lord done for me at a time when he sees fit to take away my disgrace before others" just for that baby she's always wanted. In fact, this is a kind of glorious acceptance of the fact that her disgrace was put by God to use. And as she is God's servant, He used her temporary disgrace to make His Grace clearer in her life.

And the public perception part of that is fair. We live in the world and God uses all the tools He can through us - but we are not of the world, so we don't have to let it affect our personal sense of our honor. Elizabeth and Zechariah knew that they were virtuous in the eyes of God. I'm sure it was hard all of those years, but that doesn't change the essential truth. When we give other things - especially when we give arbitrary or singular things - the right to define the kind of person we are in our own eyes and the eyes of God, then we've lost our way. We've forgotten that we are called to think as God does and not as human beings do.

We are in the world, so we have to deal with all the people who want the bright, shiny trappings, but we are not of the world, so there's no reason to let it affect our own personal sense of our worth before God. Our own personal honor. What is at stake when we don't meet the world's criteria for a good person is not our honor - it is the public perception of our honor. And we can live without that, if God so calls us to do, for a time or for all time. Because we know the truth of our relationship with God.