Rev. Aaron Long: Crabs in a Bucket or Rising Tides?
Crabs in a Bucket or Rising Tides
Are you crabs in a bucket or are you rising tides? You might ask me, Preacher, what does this have to do with the bible, or the church, or the faith? Don’t sound like it does but let me tell you, this has to do with faith, our culture, our country, and our world.
Let’s start with crabs in a bucket, what do I mean by crabs in a bucket? When you put a bunch of crabs in a bucket the crabs will try to start crawling out. As they try to crawl out, they will pull each other down rather than help each other out. All of these crabs individually want to get out of the bucket but have no interest in helping each other, fact is they try to hinder each other. They think by hurting others chances of advancement they help their own. This is an incredibly destructive way of thinking; in fact, I would say it’s evil.
We see this in our churches when people put their agendas before the gospel or the faith, when people put their political situation above winning souls. We see the same thing on Facebook and social media where people, like crabs in a bucket, tear each other down and spend time in flame wars rather than advancing the causes they are fighting for. This is seen in politics where we have cancel culture and identity politics that rise above actual functional ideas for advancing society.
These crabs in a bucket are demonic because they are trying to push their own good and their own ideas while destroying or hurting those around them. They are consumed with their own pride, their own goals and end up as idolaters worshiping themselves over the God who saved them.
Are you tearing each other down to get ahead? Are you stirring up problems to make yourself look better? Are you platforming yourself to hurt other people?
Are you lifting up others with you? You have heard the saying that rising tides lift all boats I am sure. Whether a boat is big or small, long or short, when the tide rises the boat lifts. We need to be like that tide. There is nothing wrong with advancing our cause, we are supposed to do that, but as we advance our cause we need to build each other up, we need to keep our eyes focused on what is important and not what is simply our fallible opinion. We need to make others better, not tear each other down.
We need to get rid of Crab mentality. We need to stop thinking that all we do is a zero sum game. This is the problem across the board. Communists think that there is only so much wealth out there, capitalists know you can create wealth. The wicked hoard wealth to make themselves rich and feed their own sinful desires, the godly share wealth to improve others. Cultists think only their narrow view is the right one, Christians know we need to major on the majors rather than majoring on the minors.
We need to share and help. We need to get out there and love people where they are and show them Jesus not just by what we say, but also by what we do.
We need to celebrate success; we need to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. We need to be a community, not a lone island.
We need to collaborate, We need to encourage each other, we need to be the rising tide, not the crabs in the bucket.
