TTA Takeover: Elizabeth McKinnis

STP Devotional for the Week of 03/23/26

Philippians 2:3-4 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

This verse kept popping into my head as I considered this devotional. What do I want to say about Pride & Prejudice, about my role as a TTA, about God at work in and through us in the telling of this story? I am not sure I have much worthwhile to say, but God does. And Paul tells us – through this letter to the Philippians two thousand years ago – that our goal is to value others above ourselves, to act in humility, not out of ambition or conceit. 

There is something both comforting and disconcerting about this verse. We live in a time when we’re constantly being  told to think about ourselves, what is best for us, how do we be true to ourselves, how can we get the most out of everything we do? And this verse, and really the whole Bible, tells us something different. It tells us that we actually aren’t the most important, we aren’t the main character. God asks us to focus on others above our own needs,  and that is very uncomfy for most of us. 

This is my first show I’ve been a TTA for, and it has been such a wonderful time. I haven’t been involved with STP for very long, and while I did theater as a kid, it was not with a Christian theater – I wasn’t even a Christian until I was an adult – so this experience has been very different to say the least.

The story of Pride & Prejudice, both the original and this wonderful retelling, is something that I think speaks really clearly to this disconnect. My experience as a teenager was being told to find my identity in something or someone – much like a lot of our characters in Pride & Prejudice. It’s all about the marriage market and who you know and how others perceive you. It’s a game of social standing, and while we don’t really have the same restrictions as regency England, I know that a lot of my life also felt like a game I was trying to figure out the rules for, learning how to win. 

In our show, we watch our characters struggle with these rules, this game that is actually their lives, as they try and fail to find worthwhile identity in other people or their status or money. We see characters “fall in love” but that love isn’t really shown until our characters – I’m keeping it vague go see the show to learn exactly what happens – put others above themselves. 

I’m reminded in this show that love of someone, romantic or otherwise, is not a feeling, but a series of actions. One of our characters shows what love looks like when they turn away from their pride, the required social norms, the expectations of being better, doing what feels best for them, and protecting their own image, and act selflessly out of love.  

I’ve seen this in my own life, in Christian community that has looked remarkably different from the kind I grew up with, at STP and in my church and circle of friends. And it is this love – the love focused not on what we can get from someone else but constantly putting the needs of others ahead of our own – that is really so freeing. Our characters experience it in Pride & Prejudice, we experience it in genuine Christ-centered relationships, and –most clearly– in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. 

There is a sense of weight being lifted when you know that you have the freedom to love others unconditionally because God has loved you unconditionally. I think our characters learn that, but I hope more so that our students have, and I hope our audience does when they come to watch the show this week. 

And as we go into our show this week, please pray for us – cast and staff and volunteers – that we wouldn’t let our pride, our vain conceit, or our selfish ambition, get in the way of the work God is doing. Pray that we might humble ourselves before one another and before the Lord, and thus choose to love each other in faith and in the power of the Spirit. 

Let’s Pray:

Dear Lord, who has given us talents and gifts to make the world more beautiful, allow us today and everyday to consider everything as loss that is not done for you. Help our cast and crew as well as the cast of this class, to consider others more highly than themselves, to choose love in their actions every day, and to use their gifts to point others to you, not themselves. Be with our show this week, draw our audience members to you, and continue to give us your joy that flows regardless of circumstances. We ask all this in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.