As I sit with my thought, and take a closer look at the unique qualities of each and every person that I call my friends and family, I always delight in their unique and amazing qualities. Each person in my life has a different and unique talent or ability that makes them so special and meaningful in my life. Each one has an intelligence that sets them apart from each other, and yet each one, on some occasion or another, has believed themselves to be unintelligent.
What is intelligence really though? The dictionary says its the ability to easily comprehend. It says that an intelligent person has the capacity for thought and reason especially in a high degree. The capacity for thought and reason it says. Does it say for what though? Does it say that someone is intelligent if they have the capacity for thought and reason about a specific thing or subject, and that only then can they be considered intelligent? No. It doesn't. Why, then, does our society make us to believe that some are intelligent and others aren't, depending on the things they can think and reason about? Is one person more intelligent than the other if they can ramble off spelling words in a spelling bee? Is one person more intelligent than the other if they can multiply and divide faster than you can say your name? Who knows?
Why then does the world have an obsession with trying to classify our intelligence, forcing us into little boxes that ultimately are supposed to classify our future and our worth? Do you think when God designed us he said I am going to make this person way more intelligent because I wanted him to be way more successful at life. No. He created everyone uniquely to edify the body of christ. (Romans 12)
With out the fingers the hand suffers and cannot do the work its meant to do. Without feet the legs cannot balance. With out the body the head can’t move and without the head the body is lost. So, which part is more important? Is it the head, the foot, or the finger? We can ask this same question with ourselves. Are we more important if our degree that we hold is in finance or in art? Which person is more intelligent. Is it the one that has the capacity to produce organization out of a chaotic mess of numbers? Or, is it the person that can create beauty out of something that we never even knew had the capacity to be beautiful. Is it the person that can recite history and facts easier than you can tie your shoes or is it the person that can organize a home in a split second of a thought? Is it the person who thinks of new and innovative ideas to change the world, or is it the person who helps them to organize their thoughts and make them into a realistic view?
Can you pick? Can you really classify these people into little boxes and rate them on a scale? Then why do we try? The outcome can only be production of people who strive to find worth in a classification that cannot even be defined. The evils of our world have created a mess of intertwined systems to inherently make people feel unworthy and not good enough, when in reality we were created by God with a purpose far greater than what our systems can define. We are all intelligent. We were all made special and unique by God himself to edify his body. We were not a mistake. (Psalm 139 15-16)
I realized this just recently when I thought of how many times I or my friends and family have felt unintelligent by the classifications of this world. The world says to me on occasion, “you are a hairstylist so you must be too unintelligent for college or a real Job, when in reality that is far more false than one can even begin to know. Hairstylists are uniquely gifted with an ability misunderstood by many. We have been entrusted with the intelligence to make people feel on the outside how they know or hope they feel on the inside. We have the unique gift of intelligence in the field of design, shaping millions of tiny strands of hair into structures others marvel at and structures that in turn make people feel beautiful. I can't tell you the amount of times I have heard lawyers, doctors and politicians say, “wow, what you do is amazing and I would never be able to create that”, and yet I also could not tell you how many time I have seen the pretentious stairs of judgement when my profession is brought down to the level of dirt. How then, can we feel justified in classifying people by their Jobs status, degrees or intelligence?
Our society insists through these classifications that some people are dumb, some people’s professions are not worthy, and the things they are good at is some how not good enough.
I almost ager at times when I realize what destruction these systems of colleges and rankings in degrees cause to the human heart and sole. Not to say that college is wrong, obtaining a degree is pointless and having a good job doesn't matter, but to say that these things should not classify our worth as individuals. I love learning, college is fantastic and being able to work in a field your passionate about through consistent education and training is amazing, but to make it a goal to prove your worth will be a means with no end.
How sad that the world has succumb to making each other feel unworthy of our own unique gifts, by means of flimsy pieces of paper with black ink that says degree and an underlying message that whispers failure to all that do not possess it. How sad that we wander thru life trying to receive our worth from a piece of paper and prove our worth by our title, but how joyful that there is another way.
God says we don't have too. He says we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:15-16). He says “for you are my treasured possession ( Exodus 19:5). We were created in his image (Genesis 1:27), and so we are loved for who we are by our creator. We are wonderfully made and in all our glory we are loved and unique despite what our world tells us and despite what the evils of this life try so hard to make us believe. In His eyes, our intelligence is beyond what even we can comprehend, and only through relationship with Him can we truly know the full extent of the amazing potential we possess.
No comments:
Post a Comment