Big Boast, Small Numbers
If you visited a Pontiac showroom in the late 1970s, you would have seen an imposing figure emblazoned on the hood of certain Trans Ams: 6.9. That big displacement – just a few years ago it might have said 400, as in 400 cubic inches; automakers transitioned to metric units of displacement throughout the 1970s – meant big power. 1979 Trans Am 10th Anniversary coupes with the 6.9-liter V8 were worth 220 SAE net horsepower, although that engine is capable of much more when it’s not wheezing through emissions equipment.
Imagine wandering over to one of these machines, with all its fins and scoops and decals, and seeing the giant “6.9” decal, only to squint at the window sticker at a much different number: 14. That’s its EPA-estimated average fuel consumption, in miles-per-gallon.
Pontiac didn’t put “14 mpg” in large decals on its Trans Ams. The number is accurate, and important in some ways, but it isn’t the most important measurement.
We all measure ourselves and measure each other. Sometimes we’re quite aware of our embarrassing measurements – how much time we spend on social media versus how much time we spend with our families, our inability to break bad habits versus our ability to make excuses for them, our success with gaming versus our failures in the classroom or the boardroom – and take great effort to hide them, perhaps by boasting about our more impressive measurements.
Maybe we should ask ourselves who we’re hiding these things from, and why. For inspiration, consider Jonah. He attempts to hide from God and God’s plan for him throughout four short chapters, and the book ends with God challenging Jonah to just quit running and do what he knows he’s supposed to. That’s how it ends. We don’t see a fifth chapter, where Jonah gets his act together. Yet, as Biblical commentators have pointed out, Jonah had to make his embarrassing unfaithfulness public in order for this book to appear in the Bible. He either wrote about it himself, or told it to a different prophet. He had a change of heart, empowering him to publicly move forward with God’s plan and in fact reveal his stubbornness, reluctance, and pride in the most public way possible.
Jonah could boast about his failure after he knew how boast-worthy God’s power is. God’s power, and his plan by which he uses it, includes knowledge of our shortcomings. God already knows our weakness, yet he is ready to empower us. “The Lord knows the thoughts of man; he knows that they are futile. Blessed is the man you discipline, O Lord, the man you teach from your law.” (Psalm 94:11-12) Because God knows how unreliable our thoughts are, he teaches us how trustworthy his law is, and encourages us to meditate on that law.
This is where God wants us to be: to know that we’re empty. In addition to Jonah, we can draw inspiration from The Beatitudes of Matthew 5 and Luke 6, specifically Luke 6:21: “Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.” When we are hungry and know how hungry we are, and know that only God can fill us, we are already blessed by having faith in God and not ourselves. We look to him to provide what we need, and we know that even though we don’t know when or how he’ll provide, we know he’ll do it. We think about times in the past when he’s filled our emptiness or empowered our weakness, and that’s the important stuff to boast about:
I started a Bible study/Cars & Coffee hybrid meeting in my town even though I wasn’t a Bible expert and my Mk3 Supra wasn’t that great, but God has used it to do pretty powerful things.
I made a mess of some really important relationships in my life, but God showed me how powerful forgiveness can be.
I admitted to a friend that I don’t really pray that often, and she recommended a book that God has used to really help me.
The Trans Am doesn’t try to raise its fuel-efficiency ratings and boast about that. That isn’t its purpose. It definitely has its shortcomings, but the power it’s been given is the more important, exciting, boast-worthy part. People are attracted to it. So let’s talk about our shortcomings, and the abundant measure of God’s goodness, and see what happens.
