I Didn’t Do Nuttin!

I just happen to find the word “deserve” very interesting. In an age of both chronic injustice and perpetual entitlement, I think it has some profound implications.

At first glance “deserve” means, “do something or have or show qualities worthy of reward or punishment.” Or perhaps, “to be worthy, fit, or suitable for some reward or requital.”

It is not a Biblical word at all in the sense that “there are none righteous (or worthy) not one.” The rain falls on the just and the wicked alike. And to really throw a wrench in things, salvation suggests don’t get what we deserve, we get what Jesus deserves. He suffered and died for us so that we, the unworthy, might reap the reward. It is unmerited favor because it is unmerited. Undeserved.

If we dig a bit deeper however the word “deserve” actually comes from the Latin deservire which means, “to devote oneself to” or “to serve.” Now we are getting somewhere! The world is just plumb full of injustice and unfairness, but to some extent, we really do get what we serve, what we devote ourselves to.

A lot of musicians probably easily understand this truth. If you want to play well, you have to practice. The same is true of writing. Writers simply write. That’s all there is to it. You devote yourself and you serve.

I run into a surprising number of people who lament and bemoan about what they don’t have…..because it hasn’t just magically landed in their lap yet! I suspect this is not about the rational brain at all, but rather has something to do with deprivation, entitlement, feelings of unworthiness, and not understanding the real definition of “deserve.”

One big problem I see in the world today is avoidance, a false notion built on the idea that we aren’t serving anything, therefore our hands are allegedly clean. It’s kind of like being lukewarm, we spiritually assume we can just kind of go with the flow and hover above the fray in some kind of suspended animation where we aren’t accountable for nuttin.

There really is no such thing, no such place. Doing nothing is still doing something. As the saying goes even, “Silence is the voice of complicity.” Or perhaps, “evil thrives when good men do nothing.” There is certainly a time to step away from things and refuse to play, I am just saying there is no such thing as a, “nonparticipation trophy.” I kid you not, we somehow went from participation trophies too, it’s not fair that the people who didn’t even show up didn’t get trophies, too!

The problem really arises when we try to insist we aren’t serving anything and we aren’t devoted to anything or anyone when in fact we actually are and don’t even realize it. Kind of like how fish don’t even realize the water is wet. I’m actually not very fond of Bob Dylan but he really did nail it with his, “Gotta Serve Somebody.”

Probably a few dozen times a day I have to stop and ask myself, what are you devoted to and what are you serving? We don’t have to entertain every thought, we don’t have to enter every argument, and we don’t have to follow every rule. A rule is like, “make your bed” not a legally binding bit of morality. I know people who are slaves to dozens of made-up rules, lies basically. An obvious one is, “I can’t cook” and you are now 65, forced to eat cold canned chili over the kitchen sink with a fork while feeling dejected. “I can’t cook” is a self-imposed rule that you now serve, that you have now devoted yourself to.

Since this is what you serve, since this is what you have devoted yourself to, technically this really is what you now deservire, or deserve.

Jesus came to set the captives free. All these lies, false rules, and imaginary non-participation trophies are forms of bondage, chains that keep us stuck, things that serve to make us feel not accountable for what we do or don’t do.

Keep in mind I am not a big fan of “grinding” or being driven or perfectionism or busyness. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is just, “be still and know that I am.” That is actually “doing” something. That is being devoted to or serving. The Bible tells us to be perfected in love, perhaps because so many of us get all tangled up in these notions of punishment and reward, deserving and undeserving, and we forget that, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”