Overcoming a Grasshopper Complex: Claiming God’s Promises through Faith

Overcoming a Grasshopper Complex: Claiming God’s Promises through Faith

Rev. Dr. Jason Curry, Columnist

One of my favorite sermons, preached by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., is titled the “Drum Major Instinct.” If you’ve never heard this outstanding sermon, I invite you to listen to it on YouTube. Throughout the course of the sermon, Dr. King talked about how our human inclination to receive personal recognition or to feel “important” among others has often hurt the feelings of innocent people in our human family. If we must be first, according to Dr. King, we should be first to love and first to help others.

Recently, I read a passage of scripture in the book of Numbers which caused me to reflect on Dr. King’s characterization of the human personality. According to Number 13:33, “There we saw the Nephilim (the Anakites come from the Nephilim); and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.”

Moses sent spies to view the land of Canaan; a land that had been promised to the Israelite people (see Genesis 12:7 and Exodus 6:8). Even though the land was promised to them, the Israelites were reluctant to claim it. In short, they viewed themselves as grasshoppers or weak, small, insignificant, and afraid of other animals and people. They saw themselves as potential victims instead of achievers and inheritors of the Promised Land.

The spies sought to graft this “faithless” worldview onto the entire Israelite people. One may argue that they were in the process of developing and conveying a “grasshopper complex.” Through Moses’ successor, Joshua, the Israelites eventually reached the Promised Land. Joshua and others fought against this emerging grasshopper complex and claimed what God had promised them.

As a Christian people, we must guard ourselves against an unproductive, grasshopper complex. Hebrews 11:1a says, faith “is the assurance of things hoped for” and fear cannot occupy the same place. God has often revealed to many of us that God will guide us in our careers, take care of our families, assist us in finding or keeping a meaningful relationship, and help us manage our finances. Through our devotion, worship, prayers, and conversations with seasoned Christians, we have clearly heard God’s voice.

The challenge of receiving or implementing God’s promises to us may be great; however, we must always resist developing a grasshopper complex. When faced with the challenge of having the faith to embrace what God has promised me, I am comforted by God’s words through the prophet Jeremiah, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (29:11).”

The Rev. Dr. Jason Curry currently serves as the dean of the Fisk Memorial Chapel, an Assistant Professor of Psychology, and the Associate Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness and Accreditations at Fisk University. He is an ordained itinerant elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church and has written various academic articles, a book, The Star Book on Pastoral Counseling, and is a columnist for The Tennessee Tribune.