There is no ladder

This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring a conversation between spirituality and living out some form of sustainable life in our modern world. To start from the beginning, click here.

There’s a story about a first century Jewish prophet whose followers would argue among themselves about who was the greatest. At one point, two of them tried to privately negotiate positions at his right and left – positions of power – for the time when they assumed he’d become King. All the others were upset with them, not necessarily because it was an inappropriate request but because they’d gone behind the others backs to do it.

What desires sat behind their request? From their perspective they were already on the inside of something special, so why would something like this be so important to them?  I think in part it relates to what this meant in their standing to those around them. Did they really just want to be close to their leader in His kingdom – or did they want to be closer than others, receiving the status and power that would come with this special kind of position?

So at this point the prophet calls them all together and offers them a different way of thinking about what matters. He suggests that becoming a servant to others rather than seeking positions of power is the way forward; he says that this is the way into a different and more meaningful kind of life. 

When I read this story, I am tempted to mock the audacious and self-promoting disciples as foolish, but if I’m honest I’m probably not as far from them as I’d like. Many of my actions are driven by considering (often subconsciously) how what I have compares with those around me. 

Of course it’s a natural part of growing up to try and figure out how important you are and where you fit in the world. This is a significant part of identity formation and probably why sibling rivalry is such a strong tension in many families. From an early age we are jostling for position and possession, intuitively creating some form of hierarchy among our family and friends. Who is most important?  Who is Mum’s favourite?  Or Dad’s favourite?  Who do we like the least, who do we like the best?  We create little clubs in our tree houses where we can decide who is “in” and who is “out”. Who can climb the ladder and who will be left at the bottom. We are obsessed with status wherever we go, even from a young age. 

Although this is a natural part of human development, of figuring out our way in the world, the challenge arises when it continues to be the centring ethos of our adult lives. And this is exactly what our modern consumeristic and capitalistic society has done; take this early developmental growth stage and extend it out so that it becomes one of the predominant themes of our entire existence.

We live in a world that is constantly creating new ladders to climb. We are sold the story of ‘need’ and ‘want’ all day, every day.  Why can advertisers be so successful in selling us stuff that we don’t need? Because they have tapped into the ladder theory. They know that we all want to be a bit higher up the ladder, and if they can find a way to sell it to us than they know we’ll pay for it. So we can buy that new car, new outfit, new line of make-up, new lounge suite. And we know that once we have them we’ll finally feel worth something. Until tomorrow when we realise there’s another step on the ladder, and for this one we’ll need just a little more.

And at the top of these ladders stand our celebrities. The ones who have truly made it; they have the wealth, the fame, the possessions and the power. We need them to function as symbols of our pursuits, because without them we don’t know what ladder we’re climbing. They help us to understand that there is something worth climbing for, and perhaps we can at least taste some of that - that’s why they’re so good at selling us things. Why do marketing and advertising companies pay millions of dollars to get ‘celebrities’ to endorse their products? Because even though I might not ever be famous like them, I know that if I can have some of what they have, then I’ll feel a bit further up the ladder. I have value. My life will somehow mean something more. 

So we need these celebrities to validate the ladders we are climbing. The irony is that these people are above us on the ladder, and so while we need them we like to pretend we don’t need them; we like to see them fall, stumble and struggle. We need them to be there to give us something to chase, but then we read pages of stories about how messed up they are. We look at photos that show us how celebrities look funny when they’re half way through a mouthful of food.

We like to enjoy these little snippets of “celebrity gossip” because it shows us that although these big shots are at the top of the ladders, they’re not so different to us. They’re not out of reach. They’re not perfect. They don’t deserve to be there, not really. If I had all that money and fame of course I would be different. I would treat people nicely. I would give money to the poor. I would be an awesome celebrity. I would build a different kind of empire.

This ladder system also infiltrates into religious belonging. We make a club in our tree house, and some people are in, and some are out. And we build it all in such a way that we can define how you get in, and how you become more important once you’re there. We make lists of do’s and don’ts. Things that help us to identify who is in the gang. It needs to be clear you see; that way we know what we need in order to climb the ladder.

But in the story at the beginning of this post, the prophet challenges that part of all of us that doesn’t just want to be important, special, or powerful, but wants to be more important, more special, more powerful. True life is found not in such status and power, he says, but in the giving up of these things in pursuit of the good for one another.

And this is really important to deal with because it gets to the core of so much of our driven-ness; this relentless drive that demands so much from us in exchange for a special piece of the pie, and that combats our ability to live a life in the present that is centred around love. This prophet continually critiques the religious people, partly because they had taken the idea of God, of the divine, the most sacred and fundamental heart of reality, and used it to curate a system to their own advantage, a ladder to climb. And so he offers a pathway of service rather than comparison, status, power and hierarchy. He offers us a vision of life in which there is no ladder.

There’s a paradox at play here. In some sense, if there is no ladder, then what am I to do with my life? What am I to pursue and why? But it can also be liberating. It can be transformative. It invites us to dismantle the ladders that drive us to exhaustion, and offers us the kind of life that is found when we give ourselves to those around us, and find that they do the same in return.