The smartness of refraining

". . . Though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me" (2 Corinthians 12:6).

This is a bit of counsel I have learned the value of. It is not smart to slip into your conversation little boasts about yourself-the college you went to, the degrees you earned, the plum positions you held. First of all, it sounds proud and diminishes you ever so slightly in the eyes of the other person. Secondly, it sets a trap for your own feet, because eventually (think about it), if you develop a relationship with the person you are speaking to, he or she will find out your true measure. If you have presented yourself too highly, your fall in his esteem will be the worse.

If, on the other hand, you have wisely refrained from boasting, your new friend will be continually delighted with pleasant discoveries about you, which will be all the more pleasing to him because you did not brag at all. This is just another application of Jesus' parable about taking the lowest versus the highest seat at a formal dinner (Luke 14).

Chapters 11 and 12 of the second letter to the Corinthians are totally out of character for Paul. He is so very not inclined to boast that he seems out of his element doing it here. This will be the first and last time you see Paul engaging in this alien exercise, which he has finally resorted to as a calculated risk to shake recalcitrant people.

The guy who led me to the Lord decades ago had a history of remarkable experiences-both remarkably bad before his conversion and remarkably wonderful afterward. And yet, when I used to observe him in the early 1970s, as he would speak to hippies who wandered into The Living Room coffee house on Main Street in Hyannis, I noticed he would never mention these exploits. He would speak only about Christ, with great meekness and according to the particular need of the person he was conversing with.

Personally, I thought it was a mistake, and I told him so. If he would only tell people some of the dramatic stuff God had done in his life-especially the people who came into coffee house with an attitude about how cool they were-surely these stories would wow hearers into the kingdom. But evidently Bob didn't see it that way. He seemed to have no interest in talking about past "glory days." The gospel of Jesus Christ, spoken in plain, clear spiritual words (2 Corinthians 1:12-13) was all Bob ever gave the coffee house visitors. These "weapons" (2 Corinthians 10:4) he deemed effective enough.

The little boasting we sneak into conversations is not especially powerful weaponry for the kingdom. In the end, it is better "to refrain from it, so that no one will think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me." Interestingly, the truth of who we are always comes out somehow, without our having to promote ourselves. That is the beauty of being in God's universe: He sees to it. The glory of His holy ones cannot be hidden, nor can the inglory of the vainglorious.

The Apostle Paul adopted the same policy as my friend Bob. He confined himself, in conversation, to the gospel of Christ and refrained from going on about his past. The fact that he blurts out a list of hair-raising episodes for two chapters is notable because it is an anomalous departure from his usual practice. It is not that he has here succumbed to weakness, but that he is resorting to something he is loath to do and finds distasteful, if perchance it will shake up the Church for their good.

The Apostle Paul could boast with the best of them if he wanted to. But he didn't want to. Everything that comes out of his mouth has to pass through this filter:

"It is in the sight of God that we have been speaking in Christ, and all for your upbuilding, beloved" (2 Corinthians 12:19).

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