Somebody Already

By Robert F. Hull Jr.

(From our series “The Best or Worst Advice I’ve Ever Received.”)

“Don’t get above your raising,” is what they said to me. Yes, I realize country people have said this for so long that it has become a maxim, but that’s probably because it’s such good advice. As I was preparing to leave the hills of West Virginia for college, I must have heard it from several of my kinfolk, but I’ll attribute it to my mother. It comes in two other versions: “Don’t get too big for your britches,” and “Remember where you came from.”

These are reminders that education and social position don’t make me better than the person who bags my groceries. I didn’t go off and “become somebody”; I was already “somebody” in the eyes of God when I bagged groceries at my first job. “I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14).

Robert F. Hull Jr. is professor of New Testament, emeritus, Emmanuel Christian Seminary, Johnson City, Tennessee.