An environment of humility makes pride stick out as it should. Holiness is marked on the citizens of the Kingdom. Against a backdrop of love, selfishness is stripped of all its excuses and shown to be the implosion of a desire that eats you alive. When a life marked by the mind of Christ is the way of a People, sin is exposed as a leech to be crushed by The Heel. It is a deadly thing, but it is also very dull.

I recently picked up C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. While reading it, I noticed the dissonance between Edmund's behavior and those who follow Aslan. His behavior is distilled into the refrains of a child reaching out for all it can find while smugly screaming "Mine!" His mind is driven by the promise of more Turkish Delight and a position of power to hold over the heads of his siblings. He reasons away all warnings he has received about the witch in an effort to fulfill the desires and the dreams he has entertained about them. When he reaches the Witch's home, however, his visions of grandeur begin to fade. He is fed water and dry bread and commanded to join the Witch's hunt for his siblings in the snow.  Sin, the temptations of the Witch, promises to give glory and pleasure but only drains us dry. We become shrunk down and bent over, pinning after trinkets that dissolve into water and stale crumbs.

As the Witch and Edmund proceed on their journey, they are stopped by the emergence of Spring. Aslan has come "shaking his mane", breaking the silence of eternal winter with birdsong and crocuses. The Witch becomes frustrated as the mud forces them to get off her sledge and continue on foot, while Edmund's running siblings cannot contain their delight in the beauty of the changing landscape as they flee. The Witch held a degree of power over Narnia for a time, but Aslan is the real ruler over the land. Satan, like the Witch, has had some form of power over this land we inhabit. He would have us believe he is the true ruler, but we have the real King Jesus who came and will come again. He has brought the Spring of the New Kingdom, with a promise that it will be the "normal" of a New Heaven and a New Earth. The power of the enemy will melt away, and all who run to his castle will be disappointed. 

The marvel is that the true King has been the most humble one. While we were making fools of ourselves, fighting over moth and rust, Jesus came to earth and made us stick out. We were the grumbling selfish children, He was the selfless perfect servant. In His light, we are shown to be the blind, sick, deaf, and lost people we are. We would walk into our own destruction.  Except for when He comes to our rescue. Except for when His holiness exposes us, and instead of condemning He comes to cleanse and to cover with His blood and His righteousness. 

 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 

Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, 

did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, 

being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the 

point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is 

above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 

and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

(Philippians 2:3-11 ESV)