Seeing the Self through Humility and Pride

The figure to the left is a brief visual summary of some of the themes that have been discussed in this blog since its beginning.  The idea here is to represent some associations between the kinds of attitudes that we should cultivate toward our selves and those we should avoid at all costs, especially in this Advent season.  The categorizations that the Punnett Square allows might help to provide clarity for the difficult navigation we must make between the rocky shores of too much and too little.  Despite the risk of sounding Postmodernist, I will have to point out that humility, generally thought of as good, can very often be evil, just as pride, generally thought evil, has much power to influence good actions when it is properly exhibited.

Good Humility

Reality is good.  Humility acknowledges the reality of who and what we are, based on our identity as creatures and our actions as sinners.  The Catholic Encyclopedia defines humility as "a quality by which a person considering his own defects has a lowly opinion of himself and willingly submits himself to God and to others for God's sake."  The essential characteristic of the person of humility is the acknowledgement of the hierarchy of being stemming from God and flowing through the self.  The idea of submission to God requires that we put ourselves under God as the origin and the destination of our human lives.  True humility also encourages us to put others first in our relationships with them.  This attitude comes from an intimate awareness of our own failings and our responsibility for them and the way they influence others.  Good Humility shifts our expectations of others to expectations of our selves.

Evil Pride

Evil Pride is the obvious opposite of Good Humility.  I learned early in life (through such brilliant documentary films as this) the tendency for human beings to put themselves and their immediate interests before all other values.  This is the midpoint of Evil Pride where we behave without the reality check of the above mentioned hierarchy of being.  We are able to imagine that there is nothing above us, although, like the ceiling of the Great Hall at Hogwarts, this is just an illusion.  The starting point of Evil Pride is much more subtle.  An inflated view of the self can be manifested in many ways that we might not identify as such.  For myself, I know that when I begin to feel frustrated at something negative that has happened to me I have a tendency to dwell on thoughts of what I "deserve."  True or false, this kind of thinking makes the self the focus rather than others or God.  Taken to its extreme, Evil Pride makes us become our own beginning and end, essentially taking the place of God and severing our relationships with other people.

Good Pride

Pride is not always evil, however.  There are certain obvious examples of Good Pride that your football coach told you about, but Good Pride on a personal level has to meet certain requirements.  The first is that the source of Good Pride must be, at its most essential level, something outside the self.  The primary such source is, of course, God.  The things we like about our selves (and I would argue that we all have a moral obligation to like things about ourselves) must always be traceable in some way to the opportunities and resources given to us by others.  This factor is compatible with the idea that we must have an appropriate interest in the self.  Mr. Scrooge's business should have been the "common welfare," but his reaction to his conversion experience was not merely to start caring.  Still less did he spend his time bemoaning his past vices.  He went out and used his personal resources to practically aid those he knew to be hurting.  The joy of doing such things is what I call Good Pride, and it always motivates action.

Evil Humility

Good Pride is the cure for the evils associated with the poor practice of humility.  If there is a point that I would like this blog to make more emphatically than any other, it would have to be that Christians must resist  the impulse to take themselves out of the spiritual combat of the contemporary world through an attitude of self-deprecation that debilitates us.  If Good Humility acknowledges reality, Evil Humility forces us to apply unreasonable standards to ourselves.  In fact, when humility goes bad we really end up having an inordinate and even morbid interest in ourselves, and especially our flaws.  If Good Pride leads us to attend to others, Evil Humility leads us back into ourselves, ultimately debilitating us for any positive purpose we might otherwise accomplish.  If I may borrow a phrase from Uncle Screwtape:  this is a favored tool of the enemy. It is much easier for evil to thrive in the world when those who should be opposing it do not do so because they have made mistakes.  Nothing we have done in this life is as important as what we will do next.

Figure B

There is no "Figure B," but there perhaps should be.  Figure B would be a representation of the four categories that illustrates the fact that Good Humility and Good Pride are essentially the same attitude toward the self.  Evil Pride and Evil Humility are the two extremes that tend to distort what we find in this ideal center.  [Extended Metaphor Alert:  You have been warned] One of the toughest skills for me to master in ceramics class my senior year at Wabash was throwing a symmetrical pot on a wheel.  If you have ever tried this, you will know that the main job of the hands is to keep the clay balanced and centralized instead of bunching up and flying off in all directions.  If one side is allowed to slouch into a warped form, the other side is bound to go along with it.  The same is true of the shaping process in our own lives.  Good Humility and Good Pride are the hands that help to form us, while the Evil versions of the same are the temptations that cause us to fly apart. This Advent is a time for us to be shaped into centered vessels to hold the grace of the presence of Christ.

Advent, Actions and Identity

Those who know me well are probably aware (or could guess) that I have deep misgivings about the preparation given to teachers through undergraduate and graduate education classes. I watched my mother jumped through many hoops in her efforts to return to teaching later in life. From what I gathered of her commentary, the classes she was forced to take had little bearing on the realities of the classroom. Beyond that, they even seemed to represent a wisdom about the human person, and especially the child, that was just plain wrong. My wife Ally is now going through a similar process to earn her master's degree in teaching, and I must say that my confidence in our educational elites is at an all-time low. Please don't misunderstand me; my problem is not with the students/future teachers so much as it is with the instructors of these classes. One example of the disappointing nature of educational studies is the fact that in at least half, if not three quarters, of Ally's classes she has been taught and retaught APA style (this after having herself taught APA style to college students, but that is another story).

Another example comes from an online class session I happened to overhear the other night. The instructor made the comment that "negative encouragement has never motivated a child." In other words, children who do wrong will not be motivated to do right by you telling them that they have done wrong. The only thing that will motivate a child (and in this the instructor suggests children are exactly like dogs) is positive reinforcement. One example she presented was that when a child behaves in a disruptive manner two days in a row, the teacher is to praise the child for being slightly less disruptive on the second day.

I don't know what your reaction is to this, but here is mine:   HA!

The instructor made another observation that I found very compelling, however. She said that teachers should never praise the student personally, but only the student's actions. To illustrate: say "what you did was very good," not "you are good for doing that." Presumably the idea here is that what we want from students is a certain kind of behavior, and so we must focus our comments on behavior rather than identity.

You have heard the adage many times, I am sure: "love the sinner; hate the sin." This makes complete sense to me in that human beings and their actions are separable. If every person is a sinner, that does not mean we would also say that every person is, in an ultimate sense, evil. Is the same true with regard to goodness? I am actually inclined to agree. Just because we do good things, we are not able to therefore say that we are ultimately good. Human beings don't work that way. In this life we always have the possibility of turning away from evil and toward good, and vice versa.

On the other hand, orthodox Christian teaching informs us that "it is appointed that human beings die once, and after this the judgment." We have many, many chances within this one chance which is life. Eventually life will end and it will be up to God to decide how to judge our use of these sub-chances.

I honestly do not know whether I think the education instructor's advice would be successful in the classroom. I would say that it is good for each of us to remember that our actions and choices in this life are what will ultimately define us. Times in the calendar such as Advent are given to us by the Church to help remind us of our responsibility to define ourselves in accordance with the will of God. As we wait and prepare for the Christ child to be born, let us strive to do so with a more accurate view of who and what we are by having a more accurate view of exactly what we are choosing to do. Let us at least behave as if our actions are what define us as either good or evil, and we will be living out the gift of humility.

Humility and The City

In a previous post I commented on the problem of marriage and the need to view the day-to-day sacrifices within our relationships as being connected to the cross of Jesus. There is another side to this perspective that we must also keep in mind, especially in the interest of humility.  St. Augustine attacked a related subject from this perspective in his City of God. In the middle of the 1st Book, Augustine discusses the problem of a barbarian attack and the rape of some dedicated virgins. The impulse of these virgins, influenced by Roman and Greek values was to somehow redress the situation through suicide. They had been violated, and that could never be undone. Augustine's sagacious argument is that such a suicide would itself be wrong, due to the fact that the victim – the virgin herself – is an innocent person. Physical virginity can be taken away, but the spiritual virginity remains.

I am not sure that a modern audience can really get the seriousness of the issue on an instinctive level [in support of this claim: the works of Sarah Jessica Parker (please do not follow this link)], so let me try to explain: To the violated person, the impulse to suicide could be considered reasonable in that an essential aspect of the virgin's identity, namely virginity, has been destroyed in a literal sense. At another level, in considering this reaction, the would-be virgin is not defending the value of chastity, but succumbing to a subtle version of the sin of pride.

The virgin lives to commit her virginity to God.  This is a beautiful and glorious thing.  Those who have eyes to see it can truly appreciate the inspiration of such a sacrifice.  But what if this sacrifice is taken away?  What if in the eyes of others you have lost that perfect gift that you were proud to offer to God?  Augustine points to an even greater opportunity to glorify God in losing this first opportunity. Is it a beautiful thing to offer one's life to God through chastity and celibacy? Of course it is. But these things are not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal is a giving of the self to God. This goes far beyond any specific sacrifice we might be called to make, even if we in some way identify ourselves through that sacrifice.

Humility in our acts of faith to God requires us to make such unexpected sacrifices (or perhaps we could call them "meta-sacrifices?"--a sacrifice of a sacrifice). Pride comes in when we believe our own sacrifices are so significant that we practically become our own saviors. There was one necessary sacrifice – Jesus taking up his cross and dying on the hill of Calvary. Our own sacrifices are connected with this great sacrifice, but cannot be allowed to overshadow it in our personal lives. I have found for myself that the more I focus on how much I am sacrificing at a particular moment, the less it helps me grow closer to the true Savior.

Ecclesiastes points out, "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." Let not our own sacrifices become a vanity, but "let him who boasts, boast in the Lord."

All Saints

Today I had the opportunity to listen to a very beautiful homily at St. Louis Bertrand on the focus of today's holy day of obligation:  All Saint's Day.  You can, and should, take some time to look into the history of this day in the Catholic calendar.  My point, for the moment, is simply to relate to you some thoughts about the significance of the saints for our own struggles in realistically living out the Christian ideal.

Saints are often viewed as distant and intimidating by Catholic laypeople (and, sadly, also to some religious and priests).  The origin of this attitude is fairly easy to pinpoint:  we all feel intimidated by the prospect of living up to high expectations.  Because we have shortcomings, the saints can seem like almost a different species from ourselves by virtue of the Church's judgment that they have achieved a level of perfection in this otherwise imperfect world.  A solution to this emotional distance is often attempted by pointing out all the saints who have been great sinners in their earlier lives, but it is a bit odd to try to appreciate a good person on the basis of identification with his or her shortcomings.

This solution is acceptable so far as it goes, but strikes me as woefully incomplete.  If the example of the saints is to be helpful in a practical sense, we have to widen our vision.  The basic point of the homily I mentioned above was that the celebration of All Saints is not just about enjoying the saints themselves.  The celebration of the saints is about what God has done for them and for us through them. 

Sainthood is not some genetic advantage, but the consequence of a choice.  In fact, it is the consequence of a series of choices.  God is always present and offering Himself to us.  It is up to us to choose to receive God.  This is what the Church means when she defends the concept of faith and works.  It is not that God's grace is earned by by our works on earth in the sense that we become deserving of them.  It is that we must be active participants in our own holiness.  I have often been guilty of the flaw of desiring God to wave His hand and make me holy against my own will, but this would really be impossible.  Holiness without active choice is not possible for human beings.  A church can be a holy place by something else acting upon it--the blessing of a bishop or the fact that the Eucharist is kept there--but human beings are nothing without the capacity for self-determination. Thus, the saints show us that we may have imperfections, but we must make a choice of where our lives must go once we recognize them.

Sainthood is what we are all called to live out for ourselves, and it is not the unattainable extreme that many assume.  The Saints we celebrate today simply prove that when we strive to live lives open to God, He will be there to fill us with holiness as He promises.

Special Edition: Humility in Our Nation's Capital

From the land of misleading titles I bring you this:

The St. Louis Cardinals have just had another amazing comeback victory to put themselves in the National League (ie "Real Baseball") Championship Series against the San Francisco Giants.  To reach this point, the Cardinals had to beat the Washington Nationals who were playing on their own home turf of National Stadium just down the street from the US Capital building.  It was not easy.  The Cardinals went into the 9th inning down by two runs.  In the end, the Cardinals rallied to win 9-7.

The significance of the game for this blog focuses on an earlier stage, however.  Adam Wainwright, starting pitcher for the Cardinals and previous hero of St. Louis World Series victories as a closer, did not have a good game.  He gave up three runs in the 1st inning and was pulled from the game after giving up three more in the 3rd with only one out. Things looked bad. 

Then came a turning point and the Cardinals began to rally.

St. Louis manager Mike Matheny pointed to one little-noticed factor as the key to winning the game:  "There was a voice. It was a Carp. It was Waino [the above-mentioned Wainwright] getting back out there. He could have hung his head but he came back out there. That dugout was on fire." Wainwright stayed engaged.  Every kid who has an interest in baseball imagines being the starting pitcher in that final game, holding everything on the line for the team.  They do not imagine leaving the game after 2 and 1/3 innings after giving their team a six-run deficit.

What is our reaction to failure?  Of course it isn't OK to fail at important things in life.  However, we still have to strive to be successful at the next opportunity.  Unfortunately, the next opportunity sometimes doesn't come in this life.  Some things we do have permanent consequences.  Adam Wainwright was never getting back into Game 5 to show he could make up for his mistakes.  All he could do was to suck up his pride as the would-be hero and stay engaged with his team.  He chose to cheer on his teammates instead of wallowing in his personal failures.  In the end, he was able to celebrate along with everyone else because his humility reminded him of being part of the team.  Their victory was his victory. 

In the same way, we Christians, when we have the gift of humility, watch the struggles of Christ to right our wrongs.  He carries the cross because he alone is capable.  If we stay engaged in the process, leaving our pride aside, we too can share in Christ's victory.

Marriage and the Lessons of Humility

It is almost impossible to criticize the modern attitude toward marriage in an original way.  Having noticed the "new normal" of a massive divorce rate, we have reacted along two general routes:  1) accept that marriage is no longer a sacred institution and just feel our way through, even if this process involves massive changes in our understanding of what marriage is and we lose what familial and social cohesion we still have along the way, and 2) fight to put the genie back in the bottle, so to speak, by demanding that a society that has lost its grip on the concept of "truth" go back to living like past generations anyway.

As you can tell from the way I have described them, I find neither route completely acceptable.  If I have anything to add to the conversation about marriage (again, this point is not new or original) it is that we must look at marriage on an individual basis rather than as something to be controlled in sweeping demographic manipulations.  This is where the lessons of humility come in.  We must look at marriage as an element of our identity, just as humility requires us to embrace the painful truth that we must own our sins.

It is legitimate to practice within a marriage.  We learn to be better spouses partly by making mistakes.  My wife of just over two years and I (mostly me, I think) are constantly finding ourselves making decisions as if we were still single.  It is easy to, for example, make a purchasing decision that doesn't take the other person or the goals of the family into account.  It is easy to decide on a schedule for the day that takes the other person's assent for granted.  These are places where we know that we must better live up to our identity as married persons.  There is a distinction between this kind of practice and the idea that the entire marriage can be "practice."  If you make a wreck of your first marriage (or your spouse makes a wreck of it), you do not have the ability to call the whole thing "practice."  [please insert your own sports-related metaphor for this concept here]

In recent days I have heard about some extreme challenges in the marriages of some friends.  Quite frankly, my imagination recoils from some of the possibilities that can and do happen within marriages when one partner makes what seems to be the ultimate wrong choice.  Still, the fact remains that in a true marriage severance always does permanent damage to the partners.  Pope Benedict has recently commented, "Marriage, as a union of faithful and indissoluble love, is based upon the grace that comes from the triune God, who in Christ loved us with a faithful love, even to the Cross. . . Today we ought to grasp the full truth of this statement, in contrast to the painful reality of many marriages which, unhappily, end badly." As we are all made complete by the love Christ displayed for us on the cross--to the point we amend our identity and call ourselves "Christians"--we must also look on the love we promise to offer in marriage as demanding (at least potentially) as much from ourselves.  If we don't go to that cross, we will lose something of ourselves--something that cannot be replaced.

The Power of Humility: Pointing at Yourself

I always told myself that if I started a blog and had to take a long break from it due to being very busy, I would never make a lame attempt to apologize.

Now, on to the post.

There is a saying that makes the rounds from time to time, and it highlights an important aspect of the concept of humility.  The saying goes, "when you point a finger at someone else, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself."  The point of the saying is actually manifold.  It can mean that the person who makes an accusation will really be cutting himself down in the process.  In other words, the message is that you should not ever (or very, very rarely) point out the flaws in someone else.  This is, of course, an element of social propriety as much as anything.  Right or wrong, an accusation can create uncomfortable tension between people.  For this reason, it is seldom all that effective to deliberately point out the faults of others.

Another standard interpretation is that the accuser should be prepared to undergo a deeper scrutiny than the accused.  This interpretation gets us a little bit closer to the concept of humility.  The symbolic meaning of the pointed finger is that it becomes an offensive weapon to use against others.  We must be especially careful to defend against the accusation of hypocrisy if we intend to use this weapon.  The saying should remind us that we may well be guilty of the very thing we see in someone else, and perhaps even more so.

This second use of the saying can serve as an effective caution to the person who speaks out about the actions of others.  However, the classic posture of the humble saint is not that of the pointer.  Yet another interpretation of the saying turns it on its head in a curious and productive way.  If instead of using our finger to point at someone else we turn it on ourselves, the effect is that the three fingers end up pointing out from us and toward the world.  This is the mystery of the person of true humility:  he or she makes people uncomfortable, just by living a life of self-accusation.  This effect explains the origin and impact of religious communities and the process by which groups of saints spring up in proximity to one another.  There is something about holding oneself accountable that leads almost magically to the world doing the same.

Self accusation is not fun.  We live in a world where the necessary process of honing and shaping ourselves is considered unimportant, or even impossible.  The world's wisdom seems to suggest that if no one notices, or at least no one mentions anything, than the gripping, crushing weight of the sins we take upon ourselves will not truly touch us.  In reality, sin is like radiation.  It gradually accumulates in us until our bodies shut down.  Sin is the same.  We collect it to our own peril, even if that peril seems distant and disconnected.  The exercise of authentic humility represents a reminder that accepting sin is not the only option.  If it is not the only option, it may not be the best option.  The sinner who looks on the three superfluous fingers of the pointing hand of humility may interpret them as an accusation.  He may not take comfort in the idea that the pointer is a hypocrite, because he already points at himself.

Humility and the Cross

The above photo is of the Tenth Station of the Cross at St. Louis Bertrand, a Dominican parish in Louisville.  The Stations of the Cross are a powerful meditative experience, and as such you could choose any of them to focus on as an example of the deep suffering and love of our savior.  Lately, I have been drawn to thinking about this station in particular a symbol of the great humility our Lord had to exhibit in going to the cross.  As horrible as the pain of crucifixion might be, we should not forget that it was coupled with tortures designed also to strip away a sense of dignity that might make the victim's experience seem more inspirational.  A man who is brave can be inspirational.  It is hard to be brave when you have nothing between you and the eyes of your accusers.  What do we see when we look on the body of Jesus on the cross of salvation?  If we see with the eyes of the world, we are relieved to ignore him and turn away, for there is nothing there that we want.  If we see with the eyes of faith, we are called to go to our own Calvary and do exactly the same for the greater glory of God, for this is the entire meaning of life.

I have recently listened to an audio recording of a man named Jeremiah Denton who recounted the story of his time as an American prisoner of war in Vietnam.  In his story, he shared how much he was able to endure as the ranking officer among the prisoners, always remembering that they were looking to him for leadership.  Eventually, his Vietnamese captors managed to put him in a situation where he knew he could no longer endure the pain even for the sake of his comrades.  Although he had carried his faith with him throughout the experience, it was only at this point that Denton truly cried out to God as his last resort.  In answer to his prayer, the pain went away, he lit up with joy in the midst of his suffering, and some of his captors even refused to do anything more to him because they knew he could not be broken.  Jeremiah Denton had everything stripped away, just as our Lord did right before he was lifted up on the cross.  Only after this stripping away was the power of God to be seen in its full force.

In our own lives, we must often endure humiliations that seem to have nothing to do with the experience of Christ.  We are seldom called to risk death and torture in a literal sense.  Perhaps this fact is why it is so very hard to be a Christian in this day and age and in this society.  Our crosses are much more subtle.  For myself, I desire to excel at what I do in my professional life, to have my contributions acknowledged by others, and to have others listen to my wisdom and tell me how smart I am.  Even though all of these good things have happened to me in greater or lesser measure from time to time, it is those moments when I feel isolated and unappreciated that I cling to so much in my thoughts.  I cling to my dignity in the eyes of others as if it were a garment without which I would be naked.  I fear that if I do not have these things, my life will become unendurable.  On the contrary, the only unendurable thing for a human being is to lose God.  The purpose of humility is to allow us to accept the opportunities life presents us with to suffer like Christ did.  We all must go through a revolution in our thinking so that we see moments of humiliation as the very means by which we will become the people we were made to be.

As we continue to celebrate this time of sorrow and joy, may the death of our savior remind us again of how much we are loved.  May we realize that, as our defenses are stripped away, we have less and less between us and the loving gaze of the Father.  May we find inspiration to carry on with our personal struggles, realizing through the juxtaposition of the crucifixion and death of Jesus Christ that they are so very small, and yet allow us the dignity to be there beside him as sons and daughters of God.

Holy Week Vs. The Complacency of the World

As we prepare to enter into Holy Week, I would like to present some reflections on the core of the Christian mystery. In its very essence, Christianity is a contradiction--sort of a paradox that fits. There are too many examples to name of times when we as humans tear down what we have celebrated, when we turn away from our only hope for rescue, or when we are forced to die in small ways so that we may live in large ones. Paradoxes (or simply contradictions) are difficult to wrap our minds around. Sometimes we must struggle greatly to internalize and act upon what we come to believe is true.


G. K. Chesterton said, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." This has to be one of the most true sentiments ever expressed (yes, I am a Chesterton groupie), because it cuts straight to the most vital difficulty in the Christian life. We don't witness the true glory of Christian life because we are not really committed to living it. Of course there are degrees of success with the Christian life, as with anything else we do, but I am very convinced that the World has made the majority of Christians flabby contenders.  We don't train ourselves well for the contests we will face in life.  At least not the important ones.

In my Wabash days ("thy loyal sons shall ever love thee!") I had a somewhat surreal experience that drove this idea home for me. Around the Wabash campus is an arboretum that forms a border with the campus buildings. I would often walk through this stand of trees from one point to the other after dark, and it was an excellent place for a young man to achieve solitude. On one such occasion, as I was crossing the arboretum I happened to cross paths with my friend John (although it was a clear night, I prefer to remember him coming mysteriously out of a bank of fog). I asked him where he was off to, but his response was that he was simply out for some fresh air and to think about death. I suppose this might be thought of as a strange activity for a twenty-one-year-old to engage in, and to be honest, that was my first reaction too. Secular influences have long argued that this type of thinking puts us out of synch with the world around us. We are not supposed to consider our own demise, and think as little as possible about what will happen after that, because it will break us away from what is going on in the here and now. It might make us "sad." On the contrary, thoughts of our own demise put us in orbit with the one certainty we all have in life (yes, quite a bit more certain even than taxes): that we will die some day. Why should it be strange to spend time thinking about and preparing for it? Death forces us to give some serious thought to what we believe about a second life, as well as what we want to leave behind in this one. These thoughts have the power to transform a person, before it is too late to change.

Jesus Christ had enough influence to focus the crowds on how to be better people. He certainly spent some time on this, as the Gospels tell us. However, he never lost sight of the ultimate message he came to earth to send, nor of that message's medium. Suffering and the cross are the words with which Christ speaks to us. This Holy Week, let us become students of the language.

Defining Humility, Part 2: The Words of Our Savior and the Tradition of the Church

In the previous post on defining humility, I tried to tackle the concept as it may appear when "lived out."  Humility, it seems to me, is a very misunderstood virtue, such that we can often pass by occasions to exercise it without recognizing them.  Even when we do try to live out humility, we often take it to some extreme or other.  In "Part 1" I also suggested that there is a difference between beliefs and instincts.  What I meant by making a distinction between these terms is that beliefs are ideas that we give our rational assent to, for example, when someone asks us what we think or when we have an opportunity to reflect on the words of others or events in our lives.  There is a certain distance between our beliefs and our first reactions.  When I use the term "instinct," at least in this case, what I mean is the immediate reaction or tendency we have when certain circumstances present themselves.  My belief is that I am no better than anyone else.  Nevertheless, my instinct when I feel slighted is to lash out in my thoughts at everyone I think I should "beat" in life.  The time it takes me to realize that my thoughts do not represent what I accept as true about myself is the difference between my beliefs and my instincts. 

One purpose of this blog is for me to work on reducing the divide between belief and instinct--or between belief and action--for myself, and to further make an argument that Christians (or all people of integrity, for that matter) should be concerned with enacting this process in their own lives.  The good news is that instinct, in the sense that I mean it, can be trained.  The best place to start improving ourselves through humility, however, is to make sure we are starting with the right beliefs about humility.  Last time we tackled some common misconceptions.  Here we will examine some positive definitions and classifications for humility from the wisdom of Christ and the Church.  St. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian and philosopher, argues within the tradition of Catholic thought and Western philosophy in general that there are four cardinal virtues that govern our moral actions:  fortitude, justice, prudence, and temperance.  Other virtues are classified under the headings formed by these four terms.  Humility finds itself associated with temperance as a virtue that acts against the inordinate desires we might experience.  Other virtues found under the heading of temperance may be seen to fight against specific inordinate movements, such as the virtue of meekness opposing an irascible temper.  Humility is specifically opposed to pride.  As such, it means to have a modest (or simply true) sense of self-worth as opposed to an inflated sense.

Humility is not the most essential virtue in the spiritual life, however, because it is the infusion of faith (the first theological virtue) by God that allows us to enter into spiritual life in the first place.  What humility does is to prepare us for this infusion to take effect.  Jesus gave a parable of seed that is spread across the ground:  some on the path, some in the rocks, and some among thorns.  "But some seed fell on rich soil, and produced fruit, a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold" (Matthew 13:8).  If we attach the virtues of faith and humility to this story, the seed represents the faith that God (the sower) offers.  This seed is potent in itself, but needs fertile ground in which to take root.  Humility (from the Latin for "earth" or "ground") would refer to the condition of the soil--or perhaps better, to the process of conditioning the soil--for accepting the seed of faith.  Farmers till the soil (except my Dad, but that is another story) because they know how important it is to have the ground prepared to receive the seed and give it its best chance to succeed.  This concept is what the practice of humility should be for us.  We prepare ourselves through humility to give our faith a place to grow tall and strong.

Unlike the metaphor of the seed and ground, the field of humility can be worked on and better prepared even when faith is already growing.  In fact, it is possible to say that living a spiritual life means a constant return to this field to make sure our faith is getting the nutrients it needs (ok...dropping the plant/field metaphor now).  If we have done a good job of this, our beliefs will have become our instincts and it will be less and less frequent that we regret our first reactions to the situations we face in life.  Humility is a tool of the spiritual life, nothing more or less.  Nonetheless, it is a very powerful tool indeed. 


Please feel free to comment with your own thoughts about the idea of belief vs. instinct, the definition of "humility," the parable of the field, or whatever is on your mind.  Thank you for reading! 

Defining Humility, Part 1: "Lived Humility"

The biggest problem with my master's degree thesis, according to the University of Louisville history professor from my board, was that it was attempting to define the wrong word.  Without getting into too much detail, my thesis was an attempt to define the concept of "lived orthodoxy" according to the medieval author St. Bede (673-735 A.D.), as exemplified in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People.  My point was that the Venerable Bede, through retelling the stories of English saints, kings and laypeople, was attempting to show what it should mean to actually live out true faithfulness to the gospel message in one's own time and geographical location.  I am still unsure whether "orthodoxy" is the right word to cover this issue from a medieval-studies perspective (partly because neither I nor the three professors on my board could come up with anything better), but I bring it up because I think the idea of a "lived" or practical definition is something we should all consider when we throw around terms like "orthodoxy" or "humility."  We have to have some idea of what the concepts would look like if we actually hope to encounter them in our own lives. 

As for the practical definition of "humility," I think that the World and even most faithful people (including myself) have a few mistaken beliefs--or at least instincts--about it.  Perhaps the most obvious misconception about humility is that it is merely a process of self-deprecation.  The idea here is that because humility involves acknowledging shortcomings, the person who puts himself down constantly must be accomplishing the goals of true humility.  A lot of people do this, at least some of the time.  There are at least two problems with this view of humility.  The more naturalistic problem with it is that there is not much attraction to this type of self-thought.  No one enjoys feeling constantly criticized by others; it does not make things better when the critic is the self.  Human nature suggests that this practice of "humility" will ultimately turn out to be toxic and unsustainable.  The more spiritual problem with this method, it seems to me, is that the negativity of consistent self-deprecation is at odds with God's plan of salvation.  If we are meant for eternal life, there is much we will have to leave behind.  But we can become more holy than we are.  If we look at ourselves objectively, we will find that there is bad, which we must call "bad," and there is good, which we must call "good."  The example of the saints tells us that we must give credit for the good that we do to the presence of God with us and in us, but this does not mean that the good is not still part of us.  True humility must also mean embracing the good as a sign of the promise of a future eternal union with God.

Objectivity can help mitigate the first misconception, but it can be taken to extremes as well. François de La Rochefoucauld said, "humility is the worst form of conceit," and whatever his own purposes in making this observation, I think that his words all too often (though certainly not always) ring true.  Humility can become conceit when we participate in another major misconception about humility.  This misconception happens when we look at ourselves objectively, but still within the limiting sphere of humanity--our peers, our generation, our ancestors, or the World in general.  In this case, we apply a relative standard to our objective view of ourselves based on our objective view of those around us.  We rank ourselves as being worse than some and better than others.  The attraction of this view is that it goes along with the standards set by most of life.  As the saying goes, "You don't have to outrun the hungry bear; you just have to outrun the person who is with you."  When we look at ourselves with this kind of objectivity, we can come up with all sorts of ways to feel superior to others while "graciously" admitting that we are not the best.  In the end, this way of thinking rarely constitutes motivation for self-improvement because becoming the best version of ourselves has nothing to do with how good or bad others may be.

True humility needs a standard that is not relative.  This standard is Christ.  And if Christ is the standard, then it only makes sense to observe Christ to see what true humility should "look" like.  This is how I take Jesus' words in Matthew 16:24, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me."  When we are truly living out humility, we will be capable of following this directive. Our own lived humility must "look" like the kind of purposeful suffering that our savior took upon himself for the sake of those he loves. 

We have a crisis on our hands.

Sadly, the above phrase has lost almost all its power through overuse in a world of voices seeking our attention.  Perhaps to say that we currently stand in the midst of a crisis of humility is an overstatement, especially considering that the enemy of humility is pride, and pride is the root vice behind all sin, and human beings have been sinners from the first.

On the other hand, I also believe that the word "crisis" does apply in a very specific way to the idea of humility in this historical moment.  One strong voice on behalf of human wisdom regarding this "mother of all virtues" has lost much of its ability to communicate with the world at large, mostly by forgetting its own identity.  I refer here to the Catholic Church – not in its teaching authority (for this has the guarantee of the Holy Spirit to defend it), but in the laypeople who form the face of the church – the face of Christ – to individuals the world over.  We are surrounded in this age, as in any age, by people who seem to be making a mess of their own lives. This is nothing special. What is lacking in the secular mindset of today is the same thing that was lacking in the corruption and cruelty of the Roman Empire, or in the rise of the European nation-state coinciding with an increase in personal poverty, or any number of movements we can identify in the historical tableau:  an impoverished wisdom about the meaning and value of the human person.  In other words, a lack of understanding about how to be human. If Christ is an example for us of anything, he is an example for us of what the human person should be and how to be it. He was willing to die for sins, even if they were the sins of others. True humility calls us, in the earliest stages of our life journey toward unity with God, to acknowledge our own sins in honesty, day in and day out.

Logic dictates that it is impossible to conceive of a four-sided triangle.  It violates the very definition of a triangle for a figure named as such to have anything but three sides.  As I see it, the person who would call himself or herself a "Christian" without constantly acknowledging the need for an intense, consistent awareness of personal faults and acknowledging the need to take responsibility for them has also contradicted the definition of "Christian." Perhaps it is another overstatement to say that this attitude creates a logical impossibility, but at the very least it blurs the image of the God who humbled himself to come among us and suffer with us that we should be trying to show to everyone in our lives.

I write this post as a man who has recently realized how little attention I paid to how much of Christ I was truly showing to others.  After a long self-assessment, I came to the conclusion that it was my own thinking about myself that not only impeded me from showing Christ to others, but also prevented me from being at peace with myself in my life and situation.   As I explore the concept of humility in these posts, I hope to provide an opportunity to think about and discuss this critical human virtue, always with a mind to how it can bring us closer to the lives we want to live, to the lives we should be living, and to the life we have been made to live by the God who loves us.

A Statement of Purpose

It is very difficult to write about humility.  It can be seen as oxymoronic to discuss a personal virtue whose very essence involves not drawing attention to the self.  Nevertheless, I think this is a subject that does bear special attention. There are various recent events in my life that have caused me to think more and more about this virtue.

One such "event" is an article that I read some time ago about a subject which deeply disturbed me at the time. The article was about what happens when good and faithful Catholics choose to get divorced, despite the teachings of the Church on the subject.  Although I don't remember the source and haven't been able to find it again, this piece really struck a chord with me. The gist of the article was that many Catholics who desired to be faithful to the teachings of the Church somehow found themselves in a position where their marriages were not working out. There was some kind of overwhelming feeling that things had gone wrong, and this feeling led these otherwise faithful Catholics to doubt the validity of their own marital vows. Although retaining their beliefs that divorce is and should be an impossibility, these couples sought annulments from the Church on the basis that if they were truly married they wouldn't feel this way.

My purpose in this post is not to disparage any of the individuals involved:  the writer of the article, the husbands and wives, or anyone who might feel a sense of sympathy for the position that these people find themselves in.  My point is simply to analyze and consider the basic idea represented by these couples' core reasoning. What they are essentially saying is, "Good and faithful Catholics will never feel a sense of disconnection from their spouses, at least not in the long-term.  I am a faithful Catholic, and if that is how I feel, there must have never been a marriage here in the first place." It is my contention that this reasoning process is fundamentally flawed.  The first premise makes an assumption about what life should and will be like for a faithful Catholic. This assumption simply isn't born out by the lives of the saints, to whom we look for guidance in this life.

If God the Father sent Jesus down among us to take up a cross, endure physical torment and ridicule, open himself to betrayal by his closest friends, and ultimately die in agony with his hands and feet nailed in place on behalf of all of us, why should we--we who are trying to be his disciples--not be asked to suffer in ways we may not have ever expected?  If we close our minds to such possibilities, I would say that what we lack is the gift of humility. Humility pierces through the illusions we create of who and what we should be so that God can come in and ultimately and authentically glorify our lives.

The purpose of these reflections is to explore the idea of humility seen in this more ultimate light.  Who and what we are must go through a great transformation if we hope to live lives of meaning that are directed toward the peace that only God can give.  What we feel we can and cannot accept depends greatly on our perception of ourselves.  It should depend much more on what we perceive about our Lord and ourselves as an instrument of Him.