Invitation to Humility

As our airwaves and platforms are saturated with requests, threats and predictions over the upcoming midterm elections, the unrelenting messaging machines generate visceral reactions, to be sure, but also – maybe, some personal reflection, if not introspection.  What is important?  What values do I have and how can I hold them?  How am I/ how are we, supposed to live with one another – and how best to do that?

Nearly 3000 years ago the prophet Micah had a well- remembered admonition:  “And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.”  (Micah 6:8).  Justice, kindness and humility.  Seemingly straightforward commitments, except they are not.  There are endless disputes as to what constitutes justice.  Kindness is a bit simpler, yet if there is any sort of cultural, economic or racial disparity between two people, kindness can often be perceived as manipulation or oppression.  And humility can often turn evolve into humiliation, which was certainly the case when recordings of a phone call among City Councilors in Los Angeles became public, revealing  an intention to humiliate a particular constituency, and using offensive, if not racist language in doing so.  The prevailing wisdom in our culture seems to be that the best way to avoid humiliation is to humiliate someone else.   

Except it doesn’t work.  Mutually assured humiliation just keeps people on edge, and undermines trust.  And in the Los Angeles case, generates calls for the Councilors to resign.

The Latin root of humility is humus, or of the earth.  It refers to being grounded.  Being humble invites a level of vulnerability.  When Micah calls people to walk humbly with their God (assuming there is an acknowledgement that there is a God with whom one can walk) the prophet is suggesting that they assume this posture of vulnerability.  Not to be stepped on, but to be opened up.

I have discovered that one of the most profound and abiding pathways to humility is to tell our story.  First to oneself, then to others.  Not our inflated story, or our edited story – or the story we think someone else wants to hear, but the full story – with all of its highs and lows.  The story of our life’s journey; the roads we have taken, the opportunities we have embraced or squandered, the fears that have surfaced, the lessons we have learned.

It could be said that what the Lord requires – justice, kindness and humility, is an invocation of God’s judgment.  For much of my life I interpreted God’s judgment as an invisible hammer that would be brought down with crippling force if we messed up.  (No wonder more and more people want to keep distant from such a forbidding God).  In recent years I have come to regard God’s judgment not as a reaction, but as an invitation – to tell our story.  To be humble and vulnerable.  Because when we tell our story – we are then inviting others, including God, into a deeper, and more abiding relationship.

And the kindness index goes up – and the humiliation quotient goes down.

Recent Posts

Intellectual Scrutiny vs. Religious Expression

Intellectual Scrutiny vs. Religious Expression

“While in college, his Jesuit formation did not stand up to intellectual scrutiny.”  So said the introduction to my college’s new president in the Alumni magazine published several decades ago.  Intellectual rigor won out over religious expression.  Again. By the time...

Survival of the Fittest and Silicon Valley Bank

Survival of the Fittest and Silicon Valley Bank

Survival of the fittest is an adage that has long been planted in our psyches.  The phrase emerged as a terse summary of Charles Darwin's findings that the strongest and fittest of a species have the best chance of passing their genes on to the next generation.  The...

The World As it Is vs. the World As it Should Be

The World As it Is vs. the World As it Should Be

It is a tension that has confounded people for centuries:  ‘the world as it is’ vs. ‘the world as it should be’.   Most people make some commitment to doing something that will help bring about the world as it should be, but their commitment may falter, or may even be...

Pride:  a Refusal to Accept our Limitations

Pride: a Refusal to Accept our Limitations

I have not been one who has subscribed to the notion of original sin, which is the legacy Christians have inherited from Adam and Eve, whom the Judeo-Christian tradition have identified as the first man and first woman.  We meet them in the Garden of Eden, which is...

The Journey From the Ego to the Soul

The Journey From the Ego to the Soul

The fear mongers and the anger entrepreneurs are ubiquitous. Their messages — on air, screen or in print, are intended to arouse the ego and trigger a reaction. Fill us with resentment, indignation or fear. Concepts and issues that had once invited conversation are...

Intellectual Scrutiny vs. Religious Expression

“While in college, his Jesuit formation did not stand up to intellectual scrutiny.”  So said the introduction to my college’s new president in the Alumni magazine published several decades ago.  Intellectual rigor won out over religious expression.  Again. By the time...

Survival of the Fittest and Silicon Valley Bank

Survival of the fittest is an adage that has long been planted in our psyches.  The phrase emerged as a terse summary of Charles Darwin's findings that the strongest and fittest of a species have the best chance of passing their genes on to the next generation.  The...

The World As it Is vs. the World As it Should Be

It is a tension that has confounded people for centuries:  ‘the world as it is’ vs. ‘the world as it should be’.   Most people make some commitment to doing something that will help bring about the world as it should be, but their commitment may falter, or may even be...

Pride: a Refusal to Accept our Limitations

I have not been one who has subscribed to the notion of original sin, which is the legacy Christians have inherited from Adam and Eve, whom the Judeo-Christian tradition have identified as the first man and first woman.  We meet them in the Garden of Eden, which is...

The Journey From the Ego to the Soul

The fear mongers and the anger entrepreneurs are ubiquitous. Their messages — on air, screen or in print, are intended to arouse the ego and trigger a reaction. Fill us with resentment, indignation or fear. Concepts and issues that had once invited conversation are...

The Fault Line of Woke

There are some serious, if not dangerous, fault lines in American discourse these days.  Some have been around for decades – notably attitudes toward guns and abortion;  and we take care to avoid these issues or tread lightly around them in conversation with people...

The Disabling Debate on Freedom of Speech

Free speech, which most people in America recognize as a fundamental right, is undergoing endless and painful scrutiny these days.  What opinions should be allowed – or prohibited, on Facebook or Twitter?  When do stated certain political or religious convictions...

The Killing of Tyre Nichols: An Eruption of Violence

If you haven’t seen the video, you certainly have heard about the savage beating of Tyre Nichols, which led to his death,  murder charges brought against five Memphis police offers who carried out the atrocity, and their subsequent firing. Brutal, horrific, evil.  And...

The Confounding Paradox of the Gun Divide

In the wake of 40 mass shootings so far this January, I am struck by – and stuck on, some paradoxical statements that have echoes in different parts of the country.  The first, from Shannon Watts, who is the founder of Moms Demand Action, a gun violence prevention...

Dr. Martin Luther King: Joining Holiness and Justice

Our country pauses today to honor the memory and challenge of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  We remember him as a prophet for civil rights who, throughout his public ministry, dared to bend the arc of history toward justice. But it didn’t start out that way.  As...
Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join my mailing list to receive the latest blog updates.

You have Successfully Subscribed!