An old fable tells of a frog who envied his pond friends, the geese, when they prepared to fly south in the winter and escape arctic temperatures. The more he pondered, an idea formed in his head. The frog asked two geese to hold a stick between their beaks. He would clamp onto it with his mouth and thus be transported with them when they departed for sunshine and warmth.
This plan worked fine until some geese from another tribe flew near.
“Wow! What an idea,” one goose exclaimed. “Who thought of this?”
The frog opened his mouth to say, “I did,” and a farmer in the village below had frog legs the next day for breakfast.
I thought about this fable recently in a real-life situation.
A gentleman I know grew angry after reading a tribute to another colleague in our hobby organization who had died. He claimed that he alone was the one who should be getting credit. I thought this was a rather petty response to a nice word given to a grieving family. But this is the lure of ego. We want people to notice us more than they notice others.
It’s true that we all have esteem needs, as Abraham Maslow taught in 1954. We yearn to believe our lives accomplish good and sometimes we need to hear this is so from others. But esteem can become a trap if we simply do things for the praise of others and grow jealous when attention is focused on someone else.
Jesus warned of rampant ego in the Sermon on the Mount. He commended praying and giving and fasting—these are all good spiritual practices. But he said if we only do these things for the praise of others, we have no right to expect the affirmation of God.
“They have their reward,” he said.
In other words, the show boaters get the praise of man, but no praise from God the father.
As the old hymn states, “Winning the smile of God brings its delight. Do then the best you can, not for reward; not for the praise of man but for the Lord.”
The late Dr. Frank Tupper was the major professor in my doctoral program. In class one day he cautioned us about our graduation.
“Let your church call you ‘doctor’ one time,” he said, “and then get over it!”
Ouch.
President Reagan kept a sign on his desk that read, “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”
In the church, and in life, we must learn to say more often “we did it” than “I did it.”
