25 March 2014

Humility and Love of Neighbor



At one level it is obvious:  the way we can love and serve God is by loving and serving our neighbor.  Jesus gave more than a few heavy hints that this would be a good strategy--essentially the only strategy!  We can't see God directly, except behind the disguise of bread and wine, so it stands to reason that we must connect with our neighbors in order to experience the dynamic exchange that is a love relationship with the Holy Trinity. 

We have great trouble with this strategy, however, for the very reasons that make it a good strategy to begin with.  We can "love" God in an abstract way by focusing good thoughts toward Him and maintaining a good attitude to the world around us, confirming in our minds that God loves us back.  The whole thing can be quite pleasant and sanitary.  Other people are seldom sanitary and often not pleasant.  Relationships with real people in the real world tend to be much harder to feel good about without some strong basis in reality.  This is because other people react to what we actually do more than to the ideas we have about what we have done.  If we betray a friend in word or deed they may well let us know, even going so far as to end the friendship over it.  God does not react in ways that are so blunt and obvious (at least not for most of us most of the time).  This may be one reason that it is so hard to conceive of God as a real person, although that is the most profound truth about the essence of God:  Divine Personhood. Yet this distance from the personhood of God makes it easy to fool ourselves into thinking our relationship is strong when it might not be so.

Our neighbors are concretely "there" before us in a way that God is not.  In addition, we and our neighbors are equally called to be members of one body whose head is Christ. We should be aware of our neighbors in as vivid and intense a way as we wish to be aware of God.  Something holds us back.  Many things, actually, hold us back.  First among them is a lack of humility.

To illustrate, I have a disgusting tendency, especially when tired and easily distracted, to sit in Church and judge others.  I do not mean the kind of positive judgment that can make me an instrument to instruct others.  I mean the BAD kind of judgment.  I think long and hard and continuously about the clothes others have chosen to wear, or the amount of whispering they do, or even the kinds of homilies they give.  None of these thoughts as I experience them can be construed as Christian.  Although my opinion about whispering excessively in church may be well founded, there is no way in the place of the double hockey sticks I would ever say a word about it to the people doing it.  My critical thought is only a tiny flame of hate and comparative pride that I must continually fan. At the same time, I convince myself that my real concern is for their wellbeing and the more perfect worship of God.  I think,
"How distracted they must be doing that!"  How ironic that I am so distracted in unproductively minding their business.

Love of neighbor quite often involves making judgement, but these judgments must be made in the spirit of love. Only through humility can we place to ourselves in the right order of priority:  God first, neighbor second, self third.  In fact, lived humility tends to drop the self out of the picture entirely so that we see only our neighbors and the God we seek in them.  In this way we can begin to enjoy the life of membership in the body of Christ, giving to and receiving from our neighbors in good health and holiness.

07 March 2014

Bringing Humility Forth in New Life



My wife and I have just had a daughter at the end of January.  We are overjoyed with the event and all that it will entail for our lives.  On the other hand, we have also been dealing with a few challenges that seem at least to us to go beyond our abilities.  Georgia Lynn pretty consistently goes through long spells of inconsolable crying.  Even when she can be consoled, she often requires constant holding (and bouncing) for hours on end despite the fact that she is warm (not too warm), has plenty to eat and is changed every five minutes or so.  At the same time, we have been dealing with various random but significant plumbing problems and car troubles along with their attendant bills.  I don't intend to complain overly of these problems (I often don't even bear the brunt of them the way my wife does!).  I also know that many others have dealt with far worse.  And yet, in all honesty I have not handled things very well.  I must admit that I have occasionally wondered with varying levels of seriousness why God would not just intervene and deliver us from the burden of my daughter's cries in some miraculous cure for the colic.  I even give myself the fleeting satisfaction of believing I might deserve such a thing.  I am, after all, doing what He wants, right?  (If she would be a little more manageable, I would be freed up to write more in my profoundly important humility blog, after all!)

Obviously in my rational moments I realize that my level of frustration (the level, not the existence) is rooted once again in my personal pride.  I seem almost incapable of remembering how much I have to be thankful for in the midst of any amount of suffering because somewhere in my heart I think I deserve better than other people.

All of this has come to a sharp focus for me recently when I heard the story of one of our students.  This young woman was a mother of four when she was diagnosed with cancer.  She then found out she was pregnant with her fifth.  The doctors suggested that she abort the child, but she (heroically) chose to ignore this advice.  The child is healthy, but recently the cancer has spread to her brain.  Please offer a prayer for her and her family as she prepares for her next surgery.

My own troubles fade to nothing, of course, in the face of these events.  The mind recoils from the possibility that such a thing could happen to me.  But this sort of thing is happening all the time somewhere in the world.  If I can't deal with the little inconveniences of my own comfortable life, what would become of me in those circumstances?  Can I really afford to lack so much Christian character that I have no confidence I could deal with something like that?  I find myself in a classic catch 22:  I have it too bad to be content with my situation, and I have it too good to deserve to feel bad. 

Rather than give in to discouragement and frustration with myself over my limitations, I think it best to turn back to that principle of lived humility that drives the reflections in this space:  to humble oneself is the way one lives out the call of Christ.  I can only become a stronger Christian by going through this little desert because it is a desert for me.  If I were not pushed to my limits I would not be able to expand those limits in order to become the person God created me to be.  These are the but the early labor pains which will bring forth my own new life.

If anything, the stress I experience and will ultimately endure will be a means for me to give something back to God for the gift of such a beautiful daughter.  That is an encouraging thought for me to hold on to this Lent.

...I would say more, but I think Georgia may be about to cry...