You Are Not That Special

“I knew I was special.”

Those were the words a young Tom Riddle, eventually the horrible Lord Voldemort, whispered to his own quivering fingers he learned that he had magical powers. The great wizard Albus Dumbledore heard it, and later told the story to Harry Potter, with the commentary, “Yes, Riddle was perfectly ready to believe that he was—to use his word—special.”

All of us have a similar itch deep down: to be special. And it has not been helped by one of the prevailing messages of our day: “you are special.” Surely, there’s a place to hear it from well-meaning parents and grandparents. But it also can be a dangerous message to preach to a young sinner. There is a specialness worth highlighting but it is a specialness we recognize with others, or above others.

There is a specialness as humans, and in Christ, that Christians should appreciate — not only as God’s image-bearers but also as redeemed, chosen before the foundation of the world, loved at Calvary, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And this is a specialness together, not a specialness that’s over and against each other. This is important. There is a declaration of “you are special” that is true and humbling, and another one that cultivates pride, depending on context.

In our age of self-focus and self-expression, many of us love to feed our minds the elixir of “I am special. I’m a cut above others. I can bend the rules when I want, even though others shouldn’t. I know better than others.” It’s a deadly potion.

One of the main ways that God humbles his people, and sifts such deadly pride from our lives, is by giving us each other in the life of the local church.

As many of us can testify, some of the most humbling situations in life come in the context of the local church, particularly when we’ve covenanted together with each other to be the church to each other, warts and all.

We covenant in marriage, for the hard times, not the easy times; this is why we covenant with each other to be the church to each other.

The church is a gathering of strange folk unlike any other community we’re part of in modern life. We are not a collection of the world’s wisest and most noble and strongest. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:

Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God (1 Corinthians 1:26–29).

That’s who we are, by and large: foolish, ignoble, and weak in the world’s eyes — that God, through his church, might shame the wise, noble, and strong. Which means we can be an odd and challenging collection of folks — and that’s exactly what God means it to be. We are not a people who are special over and against each other. In Christ, as his church, redeemed and sustain by his grace, we are special together.

This reminds us of our need to confession our sins.