Bring up humility in your next polite conversation and see what reaction you get.
It’s amusing to reflect on the irony of the reaction one might get from writing a column about humility. “Who do you think you are, Bud: The world’s most humble person?”
There’s no way to defend my capacity to discuss humility. I don’t mind putting my cards on the table. I acknowledge that I’m selfish, overindulgent, lazy; and I’m not particularly fond of having people notice these things about me.
I have a difficult time speaking my convictions in public. Rather, I prefer saying what I think you might like to hear. Better you agree with my half-baked platitudes, than have you mad at me because my deeply-felt, but unlived, ideals make you uncomfortable.
But saying these things doesn’t make me humble. A person might indeed be proud of his character defects.
Can we talk about it?
It seems to me that our society is wallowing in humanistic absolution. The “Yeah, but” syndrome has taken over.
Some examples:
“You’re not spending much time with your family, are you Charlie?” “ Yeah, but a man’s gotta make a buck.”
“You’re not spending any time at all in prayer, are you Charlie?” “Yeah, but nobody’s perfect.”
“What was that you put in the collection basket, Charlie, a nickel or a bottle cap?” “Yeah, I put a nickel in, but I couldn’t pay my bills if I put it all in the collection.”
You get my drift. It’s easy to find agreement for our short-comings and in it absolve ourselves and get lost in the great complexus of the human condition.
What is humility? There’s probably a classic definition out there somewhere that would give us erudite insights. But humility is nothing if it’s not real to us. It is perhaps best defined as lived in the life of someone we know.
If we have been privileged to know one or two humble people in our lives, surely we have been favored with a special grace from God. Then we have been favored not only with knowing about humility, but of coming somehow closer to understanding.
Bishop Fulton Sheen was wont to distribute crosses in his travels for the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. It was one day in Africa that he presented a cross to the outstretched hand of a leper.
He tells the story in Treasure in Clay, his autobiography, that the hand “was the most foul, noisome mass of corruption I ever saw.” He held the cross over the man’s hand and dropped it.
“I had taken that symbol of God’s identification with man and refused to identify myself with someone who was a thousand times better on the inside than I,” he said. “Then it came over me the awful thing I had done. I dug my fingers into his leprosy, took out the crucifix and pressed it into his hand.”
Yes, we have value before God. Yes, we are special. Yes, God loves us beyond all understanding. Yes, we are all imperfect.
Humility is not groveling, or false self-derision or even a poor self-concept. But it is the awareness of the truth of ourselves. It is the willingness to acknowledge and honor the worth of another, without reference to self.
Humility is a most valuable, nay precious, virtue; and I vote for its resurrection in our society. It can exert such power over so much of our behavior. Humility awakens the awareness of truth. The awareness of truth brings us into the presence of God.
What flareup of anger could not be soothed with humility?
What arrogant, intellectual confrontation could not be assuaged with humility?
What strides could be made toward Christian unity with humility?
What sickness of headlong greed could not be healed with humility?
We just can’t seem to do it. We know about humility. We even understand it. We just can’t accept its challenge.
written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on April 20th, 1986
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