I was sitting on the beach a few days ago and started reflecting on some of my personal insecurities. As it tends to do, my mind continued to wander and I found myself with a journal full of thoughts as well as a sunburn. My cognitive meanderings eventually led to the following thoughts.

If I really want to call myself a follower of Christ, I have to understand that the only thing that makes me anything other than completely mediocre and unspectacular is the fact that Jesus came to Earth in order to die for me. Not only is that a rather revolutionary statement, but it’s also kind of offensive if you think about it. The only thing that makes me anything other than completely unspectacular is the fact that I need saving on a universal scale.

I’ve done much to deserve this death he is saving me from but nothing to deserve the actual saving. He did not come because of my individual talents, abilities, achievements, appearance or interests. That would be rather futile considering all I have and am is from him and because of him. Rather, he came to die for the ugly, the unloved, the unaccomplished, the failures, the mediocre. He must chuckle at our self-imposed notions that we are anything other than extraordinarily unimpressive. This means that there is nothing I can do to become any more or less unspectacular than I already am. For a striver like myself, this concept is quite frustrating.

However, according to the gospel, should one choose to believe it, the only thing that matters is Christ and the fact that he went through the whole ordeal of death and resurrection for us. Therefore, it is laughable to attempt to attribute our own prestige to arbitrary and marginal differences in the human condition. A condition, I must constantly remind myself, created and controlled entirely by him.

There is, however, a most confusing contradiction between our immense mediocrity and the fact that the God of the universe decided to join us in this broken world of ours in order to redeem us from it. This concept is completely illogical and I can’t blame non-Christians for thinking Christians foolish or mad. Why would he do that? I know the “right church answer” is that he loves the beings he created and he desires for them to spend eternity in the joy of his presence.

And yet, especially for someone unfamiliar with the church and the corresponding “right church answers”, that response is rather unsatisfying and leaves room for a plethora of unanswered questions. If we are so stunningly mediocre, what would possibly compel the creator of the universe to die for us? Where the hell (pun intended I suppose) did this abundant love come from? And, on the other hand, if we are indeed so valuable to him and he is indeed so powerful, what is to stop him from simply bringing us into his kingdom without going through the whole sacrificial death ordeal?

From my extremely limited understanding of the universe, it makes sense to me (as much as cosmic mysteries can make sense) that we are so broken and unimpressive that the presence of the glory of God would be too overwhelming for us to encounter. We could never come to him, so he came to us. Through his death and resurrection, he heaped all of our sinful mediocrity onto himself so that we could enter his kingdom.

There is much I don’t understand about God and the universe, but I have concluded that that is probably a good thing. I am finally starting to understand (and maybe even embrace) the concept of communal human mediocrity as an institution that reflects the glory of God. If I, an unexceptional drop in this bucket of mediocrity, were to be able to comprehend the creator and maintainer of the universe, then I don’t think I would really buy into the whole concept of God’s glory and the need for his death and resurrection. Who would desperately need to be saved by one they could conceptualize as their potential equal?

Therefore, I must assume that no matter how intelligent or wise I believe myself or someone else to be, that level of wisdom or intelligence is simply a drop in an infinite ocean. Maybe one specific drop is larger than other drops. However, a drop is a drop – a miniscule and limited part of a vast and powerful body that would take an eternity to explore.

Attempting to grasp this ocean feels pretty overwhelming, so I am thinking of submitting to my own mediocrity. Submitting to my own mediocrity sounds pretty hopeless, but I am willing to consider an alternative perspective. What if my constant striving for Earthly achievement and recognition, continuing to hit the next benchmark our society has deemed “successful”, is actually the hopeless scenario? Are the fleeting feelings of personal satisfaction and self worth that come along with each achievement worth the sacrifices we make for them and the eventual need for more that come along with them? Honestly I’m not sure. Remember, I’m pretty hopelessly mediocre.

a consideration of the concept of communal human mediocrity