It has come to my attention that God humiliates himself. He is a God who chooses to bind himself to the most embarrassing types of people. He is a God who likes to hang out with the un-cool kid in school. He is a God who chooses the Israelites because they are a weak people. He is the God who chooses to marry the prostitute who promises to be unfaithful. He is a God who is born to peasants. God chooses humiliation by associating with the most embarrassing types of people.
What does that say about me? I try my hardest to appear to have my act put together. I hide my flaws. I lie about my foibles. I deny my disabilities. I flee from those who are broken and needy. I run from those who are embarrassing. I do my best to avoid suffering, and I hide my eyes from the suffering of others.
If God is near to the outcast and the broken, is he far from me? Does God despise me? If he chooses to humiliate himself by marrying the destitute, would he marry me? Is he near to me?
“The history of the world develops out of a series of divine self-humiliations and it is these that it represents: the creation, the choosing of the patriarchs, the covenant with the people, the exodus and the exile are all forms of this self-humiliation on God’s part….The Almighty humiliates himself to the end of the world. He is high and lifted up—and looks upon the lowly. He reigns in heaven—and dwells with widows and orphans. Like a servant he bears the torch before Israel in the desert. Like a slave he carries the people with their sins. In this way the One who is high and lifted up encounters men and women in what is small and despised. These self-humiliations are to be understood as God’s accommodations to human weakness. But as the accommodations of eternal love they are at the same time already anticipations of the universal indwelling of God’s eternal glory.”
Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, pg.27-28