(Look, I promise I’m not going to make a habit of this, but I found a post on my old blog that I thought was interesting enough to just cut and paste, so here it is. This one comes from April 2011.)
When thinking about being a servant of others, I’ve often wondered about being taken advantage of. How far do you go without becoming a door mat? I know I’m not the only one who’s wondered about this, and I’ve read some discussion about this in the past. Sometimes this question revolves about being a ‘man’ and how much rubbish you have to take from someone. A couple of years ago I read Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster and he writes this:
“…[W]e must see the difference between choosing to serve and choosing to be a servant. When we choose to serve we are still in charge. We decide whom we will serve and when we will serve. And if we are in charge we will worry a great deal about anyone’s stepping on us, i.e., taking charge over us. But when we choose to be a servant we give up the right to be in charge.”
So to Foster, if you are asking the question ‘How far do I go in serving without being walked all over?’ you are not truly serving. You are still thinking about protecting yourself rather than serving others.
It’s hard to think like this, but I have to say that Foster’s understanding fits the tone of the gospels far better than the “Serve others…but don’t be taken advantage of” motif that I find seems more acceptable to us. I just can’t imagine Jesus, carrying the cross to Golgotha, thinking to himself, “Gee, I hope these guys don’t take advantage of my servant nature.”
As Foster goes on to say:
“There is great freedom in this. If we voluntarily choose to be taken advantage of, then we cannot be manipulated…the fear that we will be taken advantage of and stepped on is justified. That is exactly what may happen. But who can hurt someone who has freely chosen to be stepped on?”
Once again, the truth of Christianity is found in its paradoxical nature. We fulfill the self by denying the self. We find freedom in slavery. We find life in dying, for what fear does life hold for someone who is already dead?
