Joe asks Jamie: What's with the peacock? This is in reference to Jamie's first sermon, in which he uses the imagery of the peacock, which then took off making its rounds, even starring in a few memes.
Jamie: Hey everybody, I'm Jamie Dew.
Joe: I am Joe Fontenot.
Jamie: We want to welcome you to a new podcast, The Towel in the Basin.
Joe: Today I'm going to ask Jamie, what's the deal with the peacock?
Jamie: Yes, so I hate peacocks. I've hated them all my life, evidently.
Joe: Evidently.
Jamie: Yeah, no. It was this first sermon I preached here at New Orleans and I guess it was... No, it wasn't our convocation, it was just the first chapel service of the year. I preached from Philippians 2 and I picked that passage because Paul sets forth a model for us there in that chapter about what our life is supposed to look like as a follower of Jesus Christ. Where he holds up for us this model of Jesus who is God himself, humbles himself by taking human form, and then humbles himself even further by being a servant, and then humbles himself even further by dying, and then humbles himself even further by dying via crucifixion. He does that of course, as we all know from the gospel, he does that because he loves us. He does that because he cares for us and he puts us before himself.
That has been in chapter two of Philippians, the very thing that Paul is getting at. He calls us in verses two and three to think more highly of others than ourselves, to look out for the interest of other people before ourselves. And then here's the whole point of the passage, he says, "Let this mind be in you," which was also in Christ Jesus. And then he gives us that example of Jesus of course, laying down his life. So essentially what Paul's doing is saying, "Hey, watch what Jesus does. Jesus has this mindset. I'll think about other people's needs more than myself and therefore I will humble myself. Now he's calling us, as his followers, to do the exact same thing." So when I preach that passage of scripture, I preach that for a variety of reasons. If I can just be straight and honest about it, number one, I have been an arrogant punk so many times in my life.
Joe: What's an example?
Jamie: Well, so a real life example, I have a great theological training and I've been fortunate to-
Joe: You're a doctor, doctor.
Jamie: I'm a doctor, doctor. That's right. I've had great fortune there and I've published books and just like anybody else perhaps, as I beat this drum within our family and even broader in the SBC, I don't want any listener to ever think that, "Hey, I've nailed this humility thing." I'm beating this as one who is laboring myself to embody the humility of Christ. God has broken my heart very deeply in the last five to six years over the arrogance and the pride in my own life. As I've examined this in my own life, I'm concerned not just for myself and for our immediate tribe here at an NOBTs and Leavell College, but for the broader family of the Southern Baptist Convention.
There's so much that's right about the Southern Baptist Convention. You think about the way we collect our resources and pool our resources and what that enables us to do to leverage ourselves for the cause of Christ. You think about the good things that have happened in our history and the strong leadership that we even have today. There's so much that's right, but it seems to me we have this uncanny ability to taint all of that when we insert our own egos and our pride and all those things. So in my mind, when I've thought about myself and my own arrogance and in my mind, when I've thought about the arrogance that I've seen within our family, it's like a bunch of peacocks strutting around.
Peacocks are, as I said in that sermon on Philippians 2, peacocks are actually little birds that have really big feathers that they spread out and then they strut around acting bigger than they are, acting more significant than they really are, and in the worst version of ourselves I think that that's what we do. It's completely antithetical to what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. This is what Paul is saying in Philippians 2.
Joe: Okay, so this is a real practical question, if we have God's spirit in us as Christians, how do we get to this point? How do we get to the point of being peacocks?
Jamie: Yeah. I think, two things I would point to. I think number one, it's just part of the curse itself. We are still-
Joe: We struggle.
Jamie: ... We are fallen creatures and that affects everything about us. It affects the physical stuff. It affects the spiritual stuff. This is the very reason we need salvation because we are prone to worship idols. In this particular case, idols have taken so many different forms throughout history, Old Testament, New Testament and in contemporary settings like us. Your idol could be money, your idol could be power, your idol could be sex, your idol could be alcohol. I think for a lot of us that struggle with pride, it's the idol of our own name. We love our name, we love recognition. We love a pat on the back. Don't get me wrong, all of us need encouragement. I know that.
Joe: There's a thin line between that.
Jamie: There is.
Joe: Being validated.
Jamie: There is.
Joe: Being trusted.
Jamie: There is, that's right. The enemy has this uncanny ability to take any good thing and pervert it and twist it. Like sex for example, sex is clearly a beautiful, wonderful thing that God gives us, not only as a gift for communion, but also to procreate and all these other things. But of course, it gets so gnarled up and twisted by the enemy. You could do that with money, you could say that with influence. It's just how the enemy works. He takes good things like encouragement and he twists it and converts it into something that's actually an idol force.
You asked the question about, well how does this happen as those who have the spirit of God living inside of us? We do, but our sanctification is still being worked out. So, there's this fallenness that we're still recovering from. Then second of all I'd say, I think it probably has in large part due to our neglect of spiritual disciplines. I don't at all think that our spiritual life is formulaic, but I do think that maintaining and preserving the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life is absolutely essential to crucify this idol of pride and arrogance in our lives. That's the call that Paul places on us there in Philippians 2. He shows us Jesus, "Watch what he does now, follow him, follow him not just in words you speak," which we care very deeply as Southern Baptists about the words we speak, right?
Joe: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Jamie: The whole conservative resurgence was born out of this, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 was born out of this. Let me be very clear, we have to preserve what's been handed to us. We absolutely have to maintain a right doctrine. But what we don't want to do is think that to be faithful as Christians is simply to have right doctrine. I would argue it's not really Christian until it is Christian in both word and in deed. Christ calls us to follow him, which does include maintaining what he's taught us. But it also means behaving the way he taught us to behave, acting the way he taught us to act, loving the way that he taught us to love. Paul is showing us that in Philippians 2, so I titled the sermon that day Kill the Peacock because there is a little peacock in all of us where we like to strut around and make sure that everybody knows how important we really are.
Joe: How do we spot the peacock? I mean like in our own selves. We can find it in others, but how do we spot it in ourselves so that other people are not finding it in us?
Jamie: Yeah, yeah. Good question. I like the way you framed the question. I think our tendency will always be to see it in other people first, and yet Jesus teaches us to look for the log in our own eye before we look for the speck in somebody else's. So, I like that you turn it to us. I think a number of things here. One, honesty with ourselves, which I think for me personally, I don't know that this would work for everybody, but there are some spiritual disciplines in the Christian life that I think we as Southern Baptists, maybe even evangelicals more broadly, are just not real good at. So for example, we're really good at things like, "Hey, make sure you read your Bible, make sure you pray, make sure you share your faith." Those three spiritual disciplines, but there's not much of a place in our life for our spirituality, at least for silence and solitude, for meditation.
We tend to think of meditation as some Eastern thing. For me personally, these have been some spiritual disciplines in recent years that I've discovered or stumbled upon that have been a deep, deep well. There's things that the spirit of God is able to impress on me in silence and solitude that I don't hear or I don't see in the midst of all the noise of life, so there's that for me. There's this uncanny phenomenon that happens whenever I just stop and still myself for a season of time and let the Lord speak and let the Lord address me, so to speak. That's deeply refreshing. I think another thing, close friends and accountability, but here I want to say a word of caution. I've learned over the years that sometimes your best friends and your family members will be honest with you, yes. But a lot of times they won't.
Joe: They want to preserve the relationship.
Jamie: They do. Our friends tend to... So for example, maybe you've got tension with somebody at work or you've got tension with somebody in the church and you're telling your friends, "Man, they're doing this, X, Y and Z." It will always be your friends tendency, it seems to me, to say, "Yeah man, that's wrong. You're right." Because of that, your friends often won't tell you, "Hey dude, but you're actually being a donkey here, so stop." I learned as a pastor, I pastored one church in particular in North Carolina for eight and half years, I learned that sometimes your enemies are the only ones that'll shoot straight with you.
Your enemy will look at you and say, "You're arrogant." Your friend might not, or somebody else or your family might not. Of course, I have had plenty of friends that will do that but we're always careful in those situations. Sometimes that's all that to say when you get critiqued by your quote unquote enemy, it will be our disposition to dismiss it, but I think in many ways because it's hostile because it's vitriolic, there's a lot there that does need to be dismissed.
Joe: Intent.
Jamie: Yeah, but sometimes I do think it's worth combing back through that to just make sure that there's not actually anything to it.
Joe: Any truth to it.
Jamie: Yeah.
Joe: So last question on this, say you are a peacock and you realize you're a peacock through this kind of spiritual reflection and this space to understand. What do you do about it?
Jamie: Yeah, good question. Well, the simple answer to that is repent. The more detailed fine-grain answer to that is maybe a little more complicated because I think that that may actually look different for every, for different people. For me, it's just being able to acknowledge publicly and openly, "Hey, I'm a... I can be this. I have found myself to be this way more times in my life than I like to admit."
Joe: Is that something you think people should do from the pulpit? If they're a pastor?
Jamie: Perhaps. If they're peacocking, if their arrogance and pride has been something that's caused discouragement in the body, then yes. This makes sense given what Jesus teaches. Jesus calls us to repent from our sins. Jesus is also the one that teaches us that he himself is working in our lives to give us life and give it more abundantly, which would mean any instruction that he has for us is always for life. Obedience to Christ always brings life.
We're afraid to repent because, or we're afraid to confess something like that publicly because we're afraid of what people are going to say about us, but actually it's going to be life-giving. Actually, it's going to be life-giving to the people that hear it. It's going to be life-giving to you as well. Now of course, that might not always be the case that you'd have to say something like that publicly, it could be something that just in your own quiet crevices of your heart. There's an arrogance there that maybe doesn't flesh itself out, but it's something internal. In that case, I'm not sure you need to stand up and say anything publicly about it. In short, we have to be vigilant. Peter tells us this in 1 Peter, "We are to be watchful, we are to be sober and vigilant because we have an adversary roaming about us seeking whom he may devour."
The image there is a really important image because it's a lion and he is crafty, he's quick. He's also going to focus on the vulnerabilities that are unique to me or you or whoever else, and that's the thing. Paul says it this way, "There's schemes of the devil," in the book of Ephesians. So, our enemy is one who does not just have these generic one-size-fits-all attacks on us. No, no, no. He studies you. He studies me. He studies every individual believer in Christ and he finds their soft spot and their vulnerability and he's always lurking right there, so there's a vigilance that's due to that. There's a dependency that we now depend on Christ for him to weed this out. Again it fits, Jesus says, "Abide in me and I in you, you bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing."
I take it here that fruit bearing is not just evangelism and people coming to faith in Christ, though it certainly could include them. I think it might actually be getting at what Paul's referring to in Galatians chapter five of the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, those types of things. That when we are properly connected and in communion with the living Christ, then there's going to be certain kinds of fruit that flows from us and humility is going to be one of those things.
Joe: That's really helpful. I feel like there are two planes that this exists on. There's the peacocking and like, "This is my life. I'm known for this or internally, I'm always like this." So that's obviously something, like you said, repent and start to get to work on fixing that. But then I also hear you talking about this other side that even if you're really doing really well by everyone's standards, however you judge that, there's always going to be this opportunity for the devil and for our own corruption.
Jamie: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Joe: Do jump into that.
Jamie: Therefore, you never really, these aren't lessons that you learn one time and then just move on.
Joe: They're lifestyles.
Jamie: There's some lessons like that you do. A child puts his hand on a stove and he likely will never do that again, but a child will punch his brother in the arm and he's likely to do that again. I think that the pride and the arrogance will be something, at least for me, that is like a weed in a garden that always has to be tended to, that always has to be pruned, always has to be plucked up and cast out because the devil is always going to lodge that little thought, lodge that disposition. He'll do it when I'm tired, he'll do it when I'm grumpy, he'll do it when I'm frustrated, those are going to be the places. We all need to study ourselves because our enemy is certainly studying us. We all need to study ourselves to find where and when we are most prone to turn aside and be watchful and mindful in those moments especially.
Jamie: Hey everybody, this is Jamie and Joe again.
Joe: If you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts? That helps other people find it.
Jamie: If you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to jamiedew.com/questions and send them in that way and we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.