Humility

I can easily become distraught when I think about the ways many of our conservative brothers are playing the role of the morality police, emulating many of the ideas and practices we criticize in countries such as Iran, which base their society on Sharia law.  I often find myself staring into space, my mind wandering.  How can I know what is true, right, holy, good?  What criteria do I use to make value judgments?  What justifications do I use to convince myself I’m one of the good guys?  Can I ever escape my surroundings, my childhood,  being part of the dominant culture, the white power structures?   If sin is missing the mark, who and what defines that which we use to compute what is missing the mark? How am I to discern if what I hear and perceive as truth is actually true or simply something I want to believe because I want to belong, to be liked, and to be admired? And the biggest question of all:  What makes any of us think we can know the mind of God?

Humility, I suspect, may be simply admitting having holes in one’s soul.  Humility may well be recognizing that the best any of us can do is to “ see through the glass darkly,” to quote the apostle Paul.  Thus, none of us are in a position to put others down or to judge them too harshly.  You know, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”   Perhaps humility is accepting that our perceptions and experiences are limited by so many things…race, gender, religion, social and financial status…the list goes on and on…and staying open for new information, insights, and revelations.  What if humility is recognizing that no matter how far one advances in life, we will never be good enough, big enough, educated enough, experienced enough, honest enough to fulfill the needs in our own lives, let alone the lives of others?  

What gives me hope, however, is recognizing that despite my limitations, in spite of the gaping holes in my world-weary soul, I still have something positive to offer.    Instead of insisting on my way or the highway, God calls me to model possibilities for positive change to the best of my ability.  And, I am energized that by working together, we become the ones we have been waiting for, as we each do our small part in bringing “peace on earth, goodwill to all. ” Despite the gaping holes in our individual and collective souls, we can still lean into faith, hope, and love to move us out into our soul-weary world,  humbly holding up our small lights for all those around us to see.