To decrease is not to disappear but to be freed from illusions of grandeur. Or “notions” if you are Irish! If Christ is the Savior, then I don’t have to be. If the Spirit gives growth, then I don’t have to manufacture it. If God’s glory is what matters, then my reputation doesn’t need to carry the weight. This is liberating for ordinary Christians whose faithfulness may never make headlines. In the eyes of the world, unremarkable. In the eyes of Christ, radiant.

A few weeks ago, our son had to have an MRI. We were braced for the inevitable waiting, sitting with that uneasy mixture of prayer, worry, and hope that accompanies hospital visits. When the results came back, the radiology report contained the phrase: “an unremarkable scan.”

I confess, we laughed. They had just examined his brain, his wonderful, complicated teenage brain, and pronounced it “unremarkable.” I turned to my wife and said, “Well, at least they didn’t say he had a remarkable brain. We’d have never heard the end of that!”

But the phrase stuck with me. In medicine, “unremarkable” is good news. It means nothing abnormal, nothing to panic about. Yet in our cultural understanding, “unremarkable” is the last thing we want to be called. Who wants to live an unremarkable life? We want to stand out, leave a mark, make sure our existence gets noticed. We want to be influential. Being unremarkable feels like failure.

Yet the Scriptures push us in the opposite direction. John the Baptist, perhaps the most popular preacher of his day, the fiery prophet who drew crowds and baptized multitudes, summed up his life’s mission in a sentence: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

He understood something we often miss: the goal of the Christian life is not to be remarkable but to make Christ remarkable.

Our Addiction to Being Remarkable

The modern mantra appears simple. Be remarkable. Whether through career achievements, our social media feeds, or our personal brands (don’t roll your eyes, we all have them!), the pressure is relentless. From motivational posters in the hotel our church meets in, to influencers hawking productivity “hacks,” the cultural gospel is clear. Your worth depends on how much you stand out,  how much you rise above. Don’t be a normie!

Even in church life, this disease seeps in. Pastors build platforms and reach. Worship leaders long for recording contracts. Churches market themselves as if they were tech start-ups competing for customers. Even the ordinary Christian feels the weight. Each of us is expected to be extraordinary at parenting, evangelism, prayer, and community service. And if we’re not, then perhaps we’re not really useful to God. This is a heavy burden to load onto ourselves. It distorts discipleship into performance and witness into self-promotion. When we crave remarkability, we begin to believe the gospel depends on us—on our eloquence, our charisma, or our ability to draw a crowd.

But if the spotlight is always on us, how can it ever fall fully on Christ?

John the Baptist: Patron Saint of the Unremarkable

Consider John the Baptist, or “Crazy John” if you’ve watched The Chosen. Few figures have ever generated more attention in a short span of time. People flocked to hear him. He lived with prophetic eccentricity, dressed in camel hair, and ate locusts and honey. I mean, that’s weird enough as it is! And yet, when his disciples pointed out that Jesus’s ministry was drawing larger crowds, John didn’t flinch. He didn’t rush to protect his market share, branding, or attendance figures on ChurchSuite. Instead, he responded with breathtaking clarity:

“A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ . . . He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:27–30).

John knew who he was, and more importantly, who he was not. His role was never to be the light but to bear witness to the light. His voice mattered only because it carried the Word. His baptism prepared the way for the One who would baptize with fire and Spirit.

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