It was a bad morning for worms.
I learned this as I looked out my bedroom’s picture window at birds flitting down onto the grass and plucking up their food.
I watched from my knees. I gazed out into my yard as I prayed.
I'm back to praying on my knees. I had gotten out of that habit. But then I was reading the book of Daniel; Daniel prayed on his knees, and Daniel was a great and beloved prophet. I read the book of Acts. Paul prayed on his knees, and Paul was a mighty apostle.
If a prophet and an apostle prayed on their knees, why shouldn’t I?
I had read long ago that your posture while you pray shapes your attitude in prayer. Kneeling humbles. And God is a great army, an irresistible force; it’s best to be humble and make peace with him while he’s on his way.
So I prayed on my knees, with my elbows on my bed, looking out at the birds getting their food free from God.
Some people pray as they drive. Or as they work. Sometimes that’s me. Kneeling isn’t an option. But such prayer is a blessing. Time on the road is better spent in prayer than in listening to some political pundit’s rant-of-the-day. Prayer is better than many of the businesses of life.
I pray in the mornings. Sometimes I rush through prayer, so to speak, because I have to start work by a certain time. Prayer on those days is a little like a checklist, with me remembering the people I have a habit of praying for:
- my kin
- my church (pastors and members)
- the unemployed
- the sick
- my clients in custody
- my clients generally
- people including my parents and grandparents who have died
- leaders in California and the nation
- judges in California and on the United States Supreme Court
- friends and colleagues
- and others.
Maybe one day, Jesus will answer all of my prayers; maybe he will be say that he’s pleased with the time I spent praying for others and for myself. In the meantime, some of my friends will think that all of this is silly. But as John Wimber used to say, "I’m a fool for Christ; who’s fool are you?"
Today I didn’t rush throgh prayers. This morning, I have no appointments or court appearances, so I could tarry. I could reflect on the people I prayed for; I could craft unique prayer-petitions. Maybe God helped me formulate these prayers.
And I could pause between petitions, and I could look with happiness and thanksgiving into the nature happening in my back yard. This may have been the gladdest, best time of my day today. Prayer is a blessing.
I have prayed for a friend of mine who is out of work. I recently learned that after thirteen months he found a job. So my prayer of petition turned into a prayer of thanksgiving.
As I prayed, I remembered how grandiose I was as a young man, filled with hope of a brilliant career. I still have grandiose fantasies; I try to keep them in check. Today I prayed that I might have a life, small in scope, in which God does good through me every day. If that happens, I have reason to be grateful beyond measure. After all, didn’t Paul say that God’s power is made perfect in weakness?
Before I prayed, I read the Bible. This morning it was Hosea. I’m making my way through the Bible again. Sometimes what I read before I pray shapes my prayers.
Tonight I will read in 1st Corinthians before I pray. Night is dicey. Sometimes I fall asleep as I read the Bible, and it doesn’t necessarily matter what time I start to read. Sometimes I’m too tired to pray. So morning prayer is important, because I don’t have those problems in the morning.
I’m off to get some exercise now, and then to work. While I work out, and during the day, I may talk to God. This also is a blessing and a gift. It’s God’s grace to me, for which I need always to be grateful.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Boston
People can have a low opinion of God.
Night is about Elie Wiesel's experiences as a Jewish child in a German death camp. There is a moment in Night when Elie Wiesel rejects God. But when I read this memoir many years ago, I wasn’t clear about the nature of his rejection. I couldn’t tell if he stopped believing in God, or if he decided that God was such a – excuse me – shitty god that he wasn’t worth regarding.
I think of Elie Wiesel when I think of the terrible events at the Boston Marathon – a bombing that killed three people, including an eight-year-old child. The bombs wounded over one-hundred by-standers. People were mangled. People lost legs.
How many of the wounded survivors, how many of their loved ones, now think of God as a shitty god?
1. I can’t judge.
If they do, I can’t judge them. I can’t judge Elie Wiesel. I have not suffered in a death camp. I have not lost a limb. I myself have been on the edge of annihilation, but I never went over the edge.
2. The nature of God: perplexity.
I rarely wonder if God exists. I sometimes wonder about his nature.
The nature of the world invites wonder about the nature of God. No-one can be completely ignorant of evil. Holocausts. Cancer. Children who die. People who starve. Mental illness. Murder. Injustice. Slander. Selfish people who prosper. Kind people who lose their jobs, their homes, their dignity.
3. My hard times.
I have, like I said, never suffered like Elie Wiesel, or like many of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. I’ve never had a child ripped away by death.
But I have had my share of anguish. As a young man, I was career-proud. I was hopeful of doing great things in the law; I hoped one day to become a judge, maybe even a judge of a high court. I intended to leave a big footprint on life.
I worked hard. I was so confident in my work-ethic and in my smarts that I shunned the games I saw among many of my colleagues – the backbiting, the sabotaging.
I thrived for a time. But a supervisor was put over me who thwarted me. She made my work a misery. In a year’s time under her authority, I lost my dynamism and became a listless worker. Unbearably fatigued, I resigned and limped to another job. It took a long time to recover.
I went mad many years ago; before I regained sanity, I found myself in panicked flight from a vast Satanic conspiracy that seemed so widespread that I could not eat. I could not eat because everywhere I went, these demonically-clever conspirators seemed somehow to poison my food and control my mind.
I have represented clients who deserved to win their cases because they were innocent or in the right. But they have had victory plucked away from them by a partisan judge or by a jury that was proud to afflict a victim of police violence and prosecutorial overreach, or who rejected mountains of proof that my clients were in the right. Please trust me: if you care for your clients, and I usually do, this bleeds your spirit.
I don’t compare my suffering – such as it has been – to the suffering of others. But I’m no stranger to injustice or fate.
4. Some reasons why I hope in the goodness of God.
But it seems to me that there is reason, in the midst of a world of evil events, to hope in a God who is good.
For example, Emil Kapaun was an American chaplain in the Korean War. He was captured. In captivity, he risked his life to steal food from the guards, to feed his starving fellow-P.O.W.’s. He sold his watch to buy a blanket, and from the blanket he made socks for prisoners in the freezing weather who had none. He encouraged others. He did such things until he died of cold and hunger.
The night after I read about Emil Kapaun, I wrestled with the idea of a god who somehow knows the billions of people living and dead -- knows them, knows everything about them, a god of vast love. From my bed, I asked "What are you God?" And suddenly I remembered Emil Kapaun, as if that were the answer. God is the God who made Emil Kapaun – made him alive and made him good; made him manifest the spirit of his maker. Maybe I can’t understand an infinite God, but I can comprehend him as expressed in his godly servant. And the expression of God in Emil Kapaun reveals a god who is good.
Another example: when I lost my mind, I also lost my confidence in my salvation. I became convinced that God had rejected me, and I believed that God was right to do so. But after a time, I had dreams that God had forgiven me. The dreams were joyful, but I did not believe them when I awoke.
Then, one day, I was in church. I had until then shunned the bread and wine of communion because of my estrangement from God; but that day, I took it. And God opened my eyes through the communion. I have described this experience in a prior post. It was on that day that I regained the hope of salvation. To believe that you are lost to God, and then to discover that you aren’t, is powerful proof of the goodness of God.
And the Bible is full of urgings to do right, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy, to care for the poor, to care for the lowly, to care for the hopeless, to care for the sick, to care for the infirm, to care for the outsider. No God who wasn’t good would be so determined to make us good.
5. A desperate grip.
But my conviction of the goodness of God does not come only from such evidence of his goodness. It comes also from a need to believe. That need is greatest when times are worst.
Pain comes regularly and in doses big enough to try my patience. The worst of those are times that I feel like I could not carry on if I did not believe in a loving and caring God. On bad days, I cling to hope in a God who will one day put things right. Days like that make me cling to his goodness with the grip of a desperate man, a man who believes that without the hope in a good God, there is no hope at all in an evil world.
Night is about Elie Wiesel's experiences as a Jewish child in a German death camp. There is a moment in Night when Elie Wiesel rejects God. But when I read this memoir many years ago, I wasn’t clear about the nature of his rejection. I couldn’t tell if he stopped believing in God, or if he decided that God was such a – excuse me – shitty god that he wasn’t worth regarding.
I think of Elie Wiesel when I think of the terrible events at the Boston Marathon – a bombing that killed three people, including an eight-year-old child. The bombs wounded over one-hundred by-standers. People were mangled. People lost legs.
How many of the wounded survivors, how many of their loved ones, now think of God as a shitty god?
1. I can’t judge.
If they do, I can’t judge them. I can’t judge Elie Wiesel. I have not suffered in a death camp. I have not lost a limb. I myself have been on the edge of annihilation, but I never went over the edge.
2. The nature of God: perplexity.
I rarely wonder if God exists. I sometimes wonder about his nature.
The nature of the world invites wonder about the nature of God. No-one can be completely ignorant of evil. Holocausts. Cancer. Children who die. People who starve. Mental illness. Murder. Injustice. Slander. Selfish people who prosper. Kind people who lose their jobs, their homes, their dignity.
3. My hard times.
I have, like I said, never suffered like Elie Wiesel, or like many of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing. I’ve never had a child ripped away by death.
But I have had my share of anguish. As a young man, I was career-proud. I was hopeful of doing great things in the law; I hoped one day to become a judge, maybe even a judge of a high court. I intended to leave a big footprint on life.
I worked hard. I was so confident in my work-ethic and in my smarts that I shunned the games I saw among many of my colleagues – the backbiting, the sabotaging.
I thrived for a time. But a supervisor was put over me who thwarted me. She made my work a misery. In a year’s time under her authority, I lost my dynamism and became a listless worker. Unbearably fatigued, I resigned and limped to another job. It took a long time to recover.
I went mad many years ago; before I regained sanity, I found myself in panicked flight from a vast Satanic conspiracy that seemed so widespread that I could not eat. I could not eat because everywhere I went, these demonically-clever conspirators seemed somehow to poison my food and control my mind.
I have represented clients who deserved to win their cases because they were innocent or in the right. But they have had victory plucked away from them by a partisan judge or by a jury that was proud to afflict a victim of police violence and prosecutorial overreach, or who rejected mountains of proof that my clients were in the right. Please trust me: if you care for your clients, and I usually do, this bleeds your spirit.
I don’t compare my suffering – such as it has been – to the suffering of others. But I’m no stranger to injustice or fate.
4. Some reasons why I hope in the goodness of God.
But it seems to me that there is reason, in the midst of a world of evil events, to hope in a God who is good.
For example, Emil Kapaun was an American chaplain in the Korean War. He was captured. In captivity, he risked his life to steal food from the guards, to feed his starving fellow-P.O.W.’s. He sold his watch to buy a blanket, and from the blanket he made socks for prisoners in the freezing weather who had none. He encouraged others. He did such things until he died of cold and hunger.
The night after I read about Emil Kapaun, I wrestled with the idea of a god who somehow knows the billions of people living and dead -- knows them, knows everything about them, a god of vast love. From my bed, I asked "What are you God?" And suddenly I remembered Emil Kapaun, as if that were the answer. God is the God who made Emil Kapaun – made him alive and made him good; made him manifest the spirit of his maker. Maybe I can’t understand an infinite God, but I can comprehend him as expressed in his godly servant. And the expression of God in Emil Kapaun reveals a god who is good.
Another example: when I lost my mind, I also lost my confidence in my salvation. I became convinced that God had rejected me, and I believed that God was right to do so. But after a time, I had dreams that God had forgiven me. The dreams were joyful, but I did not believe them when I awoke.
Then, one day, I was in church. I had until then shunned the bread and wine of communion because of my estrangement from God; but that day, I took it. And God opened my eyes through the communion. I have described this experience in a prior post. It was on that day that I regained the hope of salvation. To believe that you are lost to God, and then to discover that you aren’t, is powerful proof of the goodness of God.
And the Bible is full of urgings to do right, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy, to care for the poor, to care for the lowly, to care for the hopeless, to care for the sick, to care for the infirm, to care for the outsider. No God who wasn’t good would be so determined to make us good.
5. A desperate grip.
But my conviction of the goodness of God does not come only from such evidence of his goodness. It comes also from a need to believe. That need is greatest when times are worst.
Pain comes regularly and in doses big enough to try my patience. The worst of those are times that I feel like I could not carry on if I did not believe in a loving and caring God. On bad days, I cling to hope in a God who will one day put things right. Days like that make me cling to his goodness with the grip of a desperate man, a man who believes that without the hope in a good God, there is no hope at all in an evil world.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Prayer and War on the Korean Peninsula
Kim Jong Un is a third-generation dictator of North Korea. He makes me think of that saying: The first generation earns; the second generation learns; the third generation burns. Mr. Kim's privileged upbringing might make him wildly detached from reality. And dangerously likely to bring burning to his corner of the word.
1. Danger.
The news magazine The Economist says this:
Even by its own aggressive standards, North Korea’s actions over the past couple of weeks have been extraordinary. Kim Jong Un, the country’s young dictator, has threatened the United States with nuclear Armageddon, promising to rain missiles on mainland America and military bases in Hawaii and Guam; declared a "state of war" with South Korea; announced that he would restart a plutonium-producing reactor at its Yongbyon nuclear site, while enriching uranium to build more nuclear weapons; and barred South Korean managers from entering the Kaesong industrial complex, almost the only instance of North-South co-operation. All this comes after the regime set off a nuclear test, its third, in February. Tensions are the worst on the peninsula since 1994, when North Korea and America were a hair’s breadth from war.
Things easily could get out-of-hand. What might a delusional upstart do with a fanatical million-man army and artillery trained on populous Seoul, the capital city of South Korea? There’s no telling.
We can’t control a tyrant who might be seduced by megalomania into mass murder. But we can do our part. Because war on the Korean peninsula would spread death and suffering deep and wide, time spent in prayer is time well spent.
2. The first prayer: guidance.
How do you pray against a Korean holocaust? Do you pray for removal of the agent of danger? God could do that. Do you pray for his temperance? God could do that, too.
But maybe the first thing to do is to ask God what to pray for and hope in his prayer-guidance. Maybe prayer begins with listening for the still, quiet voice of the Holy Spirit, perhaps a mental hesitation that says, "Not that way; this way." Prayers are more potent when they petition for the will of God to be done. I don't doubt that God can direct our prayers according to his will.
3. The second prayer: raising an army.
It’s an old joke that if you are given three wishes, the first thing you should wish for is more wishes. But maybe that works in prayer.
When I pray for Barack Obama, I often pray for God to raise up more people to pray for him, for his wisdom, and for protection for him and for his family. And, you know? After I had prayed that for some time, after the 2012 election, conservative Evangelical-leader Franklin Graham publicly called for Evangelicals to pray for their president.
Did I have anything to do with that? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly not alone; maybe God chose to hear my prayers combined with the prayers of many others and did, in fact, raise an Evangelical army of pray-ors for the president.
So pray for God to stir other people to pray, so that blood won’t be poured out on the Korean peninsula.
3. The third prayer: blessings.
Maybe God will have directed your prayers in one way or another. If so, good. But if you do not feel otherwise guided, what harm can come if you pray for blessings?
Pray for peace.
Pray for the one-to-two-hundred thousand political prisoners who suffer in cruel conditions in Korean concentration camps.
And for the millions of farmers groaning in hopeless labor on collective farms in communist Korea.
Pray for light to come to the dark place that is North Korea. Pray for the North Korean people, for their freedom of self-determination, their freedom of mind, their freedom of speech, and their freedom of worship. They are a people severely oppressed. It's a crime in North Korea to sing any song that doesn't extol its leader.
Pray for safety, prosperity, and godliness for the people of South Korea.
It seems right to pray for blessings for a people, more than to pray for harm to any person, however odious and cruel that person might be. I would rather intercede for blessing than judgment.
5. The fourth prayer: guidance.
I suggested that this cycle of prayer begin with a prayer for guidance. Perhaps it should end, also, with a prayer for guidance – guidance for leaders who must make choices about the turmoil on the Korean peninsula, and about the turmoil in the world caused by that.
Pray for the president, and for his military leaders, and for the intelligence community, and for everybody in the American government who will shape policy about North Korea and South Korea. Pray for them to be guided by wisdom and discernment.
Pray for the leaders of other nation, that there may be harmony among nations and wisdom in the preservation of peace on the Korean peninsula. And, beyond the present foment, pray that the nations will be wise toward each other, and toward North Korea, and compassionate toward the North Korean people.
Pray that they will be compassionate, as I believe that God yearns to show his compassion, and as you are compassionate by praying for the welfare of a people that you do not know.
If you choose to take up this burden of prayer, I hope that God blesses you in it.
1. Danger.
The news magazine The Economist says this:
We can’t control a tyrant who might be seduced by megalomania into mass murder. But we can do our part. Because war on the Korean peninsula would spread death and suffering deep and wide, time spent in prayer is time well spent.
2. The first prayer: guidance.
How do you pray against a Korean holocaust? Do you pray for removal of the agent of danger? God could do that. Do you pray for his temperance? God could do that, too.
But maybe the first thing to do is to ask God what to pray for and hope in his prayer-guidance. Maybe prayer begins with listening for the still, quiet voice of the Holy Spirit, perhaps a mental hesitation that says, "Not that way; this way." Prayers are more potent when they petition for the will of God to be done. I don't doubt that God can direct our prayers according to his will.
3. The second prayer: raising an army.
It’s an old joke that if you are given three wishes, the first thing you should wish for is more wishes. But maybe that works in prayer.
When I pray for Barack Obama, I often pray for God to raise up more people to pray for him, for his wisdom, and for protection for him and for his family. And, you know? After I had prayed that for some time, after the 2012 election, conservative Evangelical-leader Franklin Graham publicly called for Evangelicals to pray for their president.
Did I have anything to do with that? Maybe, maybe not. Certainly not alone; maybe God chose to hear my prayers combined with the prayers of many others and did, in fact, raise an Evangelical army of pray-ors for the president.
So pray for God to stir other people to pray, so that blood won’t be poured out on the Korean peninsula.
3. The third prayer: blessings.
Maybe God will have directed your prayers in one way or another. If so, good. But if you do not feel otherwise guided, what harm can come if you pray for blessings?
Pray for peace.
Pray for the one-to-two-hundred thousand political prisoners who suffer in cruel conditions in Korean concentration camps.
And for the millions of farmers groaning in hopeless labor on collective farms in communist Korea.
Pray for light to come to the dark place that is North Korea. Pray for the North Korean people, for their freedom of self-determination, their freedom of mind, their freedom of speech, and their freedom of worship. They are a people severely oppressed. It's a crime in North Korea to sing any song that doesn't extol its leader.
Pray for safety, prosperity, and godliness for the people of South Korea.
It seems right to pray for blessings for a people, more than to pray for harm to any person, however odious and cruel that person might be. I would rather intercede for blessing than judgment.
5. The fourth prayer: guidance.
I suggested that this cycle of prayer begin with a prayer for guidance. Perhaps it should end, also, with a prayer for guidance – guidance for leaders who must make choices about the turmoil on the Korean peninsula, and about the turmoil in the world caused by that.
Pray for the president, and for his military leaders, and for the intelligence community, and for everybody in the American government who will shape policy about North Korea and South Korea. Pray for them to be guided by wisdom and discernment.
Pray for the leaders of other nation, that there may be harmony among nations and wisdom in the preservation of peace on the Korean peninsula. And, beyond the present foment, pray that the nations will be wise toward each other, and toward North Korea, and compassionate toward the North Korean people.
Pray that they will be compassionate, as I believe that God yearns to show his compassion, and as you are compassionate by praying for the welfare of a people that you do not know.
If you choose to take up this burden of prayer, I hope that God blesses you in it.
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Seek the Meek!
Supreme self-confidence: it's a highly valued personal quality. At some point, "pride" became a good thing. Black pride. White pride. Gay pride.
I knew a young prosecutor. He was in trial. In a break in the trial, the defense attorney slapped down in front of him a picture of a Porsche. "That’s my car", the defense attorney said. Possession-proud.
A good friend of mine boasts that her body is better than it has ever been. And she is lean and strong. And I admire pictures of myself snapped at a swim meet. My friend and I are body-proud.
We can be career-proud. We can be education-proud. We can be brain-proud.
The Pharisees of Jesus’s time were famously proud of their own virtue. Virtue is, well, virtuous. But it can makes us think of ourselves more highly than we ought.
And what’s more pious that piety? But we can be impressed with our own piety. Piety-proud.
What about a man who writes about pride and humility? No doubt he can be humility-proud.
But we can't be proud and humble at the same time. Owning our failings foments gratitude. Those who are forgiven much love much. Those who are forgiven little love little. (Luke 7.)
1. Sin and me.
Maybe this is a truism: it’s easier to be an expert in other people’s sins than our own.
But sometimes knowledge of my sins leaps on me like a rabid badger. Times like those make me contrite.
But sin is not always a rabid badger. Sometimes I don’t begrudge my sins like an early riser begrudges the late-night music at his neighbor’s party. In those times, my knowledge of sin is a detached diagnosis. It’s like a doctor telling me that I have a medical condition that does not, however, keep me from doing anything that I want to do.
So love doesn’t exactly overflow when I consider God or think of my neighbor. Or choices that might be easy if I knew how to lean upon an all-knowing God to make them are hard. God isn’t a God of anxiety, but I have times of anxiousness; if I walked perfectly with God, I would not worry.
I cling to the things of this world. I am fretful of my reputation. I want to put a verbal thumb in the eye of a lawyer who insulted me. I get wrapped up in making a political point and forget to be kind. I’ve been foolish with money and opportunities.
These are murmurs of the heart that reveal to an educated ear that trouble lies inside. But, day to day, they don’t necessarily trouble me, because they are conditions that seem normal because they are long-standing. But they should.
2. Hailing sin.
I suppose that some of my friends will say that I’m debilitating myself with a "guilt trip". But to know my fault is valuable. I value humility when I find it in myself. I pray for a contrite spirit before God.
Thinking of myself as a neatly-ironed-and-folded man wouldn’t make me so. Hubris doesn’t ground me in reality. It spins a parallel universe in my mind of my own virtue that doesn’t match the reality of the world and doesn’t match the state of my soul.
And God can work with people who know their faults. In the Hebrew Bible, no man was greater than Moses; and no man was more humble. (Numbers 12:3.)
Jesus was humble. "[Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:8 (NRSV).)
The direction to be humble comes with a promise. For example: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." (James 4:10 (NRSV).)
3. Bearable faults.
Self-criticism is bearable because I hope in a kind God who loves me, sin and all.
And looking at the gutter-water of my soul channels me into right relationship with God. Knowing my wrong makes me grateful for his right. Knowing my sin makes me admire the man who died without sin, bearing in his dying body the sins of everyone else.
As a Christian, I can’t trust in riches, strength, status, learning, or smarts. To do so isn’t humble, and I want to be humble. When I am humble, I trust in the mercy, riches, strength, and wisdom of the one who made me.
4. Antiphonies.
But there is a call-and-response between accepting my sinfulness and striving to do right, to be right. I have to recognize that sin will always be close at hand, even mixed in with my virtues like sprayed colors of an artsy necktie. But I can’t think that sin is OK.
I can never trust that I am without sin; and if sins drop away with time, I can’t dilate with a sense of self-righteousness. But I’m supposed to work for a clean conscience with good works, so that in time of trouble my faith is founded on a rock.
I know that I have to strive to do what God wants. But I have to give credit to God when success in that comes.
I have to try to be perfect. But on my dying day I will have to trust in God’s virtue, not in my own.
Jesus speaks of people being "worthy" of the heaven. (Luke 20:35.) But in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14), the righteous Pharisee was not justified before God; the contrite tax collector was.
5. Perplexity.
I admit to perplexity here. I’m a cross-eyed archer who doesn’t know which eye to close.
Which I guess is fine. It keeps me from glorying in my own smarts.
Or maybe, when I first wrote this, I forgot at least a partial way to reconcile these biblical ideas: the Bible is fundamentally pastoral. Sometimes we need to strive to be better than we are. Other times we need to lean upon the grace of God. Sometimes we need to reckon the terrifying God of the book of Ezekiel. Sometimes we need to hope in the merciful God of Romans.
Humility makes peace between our fear of God and our knowledge of our own insufficiency.
I knew a young prosecutor. He was in trial. In a break in the trial, the defense attorney slapped down in front of him a picture of a Porsche. "That’s my car", the defense attorney said. Possession-proud.
A good friend of mine boasts that her body is better than it has ever been. And she is lean and strong. And I admire pictures of myself snapped at a swim meet. My friend and I are body-proud.
We can be career-proud. We can be education-proud. We can be brain-proud.
The Pharisees of Jesus’s time were famously proud of their own virtue. Virtue is, well, virtuous. But it can makes us think of ourselves more highly than we ought.
And what’s more pious that piety? But we can be impressed with our own piety. Piety-proud.
What about a man who writes about pride and humility? No doubt he can be humility-proud.
But we can't be proud and humble at the same time. Owning our failings foments gratitude. Those who are forgiven much love much. Those who are forgiven little love little. (Luke 7.)
1. Sin and me.
Maybe this is a truism: it’s easier to be an expert in other people’s sins than our own.
But sometimes knowledge of my sins leaps on me like a rabid badger. Times like those make me contrite.
But sin is not always a rabid badger. Sometimes I don’t begrudge my sins like an early riser begrudges the late-night music at his neighbor’s party. In those times, my knowledge of sin is a detached diagnosis. It’s like a doctor telling me that I have a medical condition that does not, however, keep me from doing anything that I want to do.
So love doesn’t exactly overflow when I consider God or think of my neighbor. Or choices that might be easy if I knew how to lean upon an all-knowing God to make them are hard. God isn’t a God of anxiety, but I have times of anxiousness; if I walked perfectly with God, I would not worry.
I cling to the things of this world. I am fretful of my reputation. I want to put a verbal thumb in the eye of a lawyer who insulted me. I get wrapped up in making a political point and forget to be kind. I’ve been foolish with money and opportunities.
These are murmurs of the heart that reveal to an educated ear that trouble lies inside. But, day to day, they don’t necessarily trouble me, because they are conditions that seem normal because they are long-standing. But they should.
2. Hailing sin.
I suppose that some of my friends will say that I’m debilitating myself with a "guilt trip". But to know my fault is valuable. I value humility when I find it in myself. I pray for a contrite spirit before God.
Thinking of myself as a neatly-ironed-and-folded man wouldn’t make me so. Hubris doesn’t ground me in reality. It spins a parallel universe in my mind of my own virtue that doesn’t match the reality of the world and doesn’t match the state of my soul.
And God can work with people who know their faults. In the Hebrew Bible, no man was greater than Moses; and no man was more humble. (Numbers 12:3.)
Jesus was humble. "[Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:8 (NRSV).)
The direction to be humble comes with a promise. For example: "Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you." (James 4:10 (NRSV).)
3. Bearable faults.
Self-criticism is bearable because I hope in a kind God who loves me, sin and all.
And looking at the gutter-water of my soul channels me into right relationship with God. Knowing my wrong makes me grateful for his right. Knowing my sin makes me admire the man who died without sin, bearing in his dying body the sins of everyone else.
As a Christian, I can’t trust in riches, strength, status, learning, or smarts. To do so isn’t humble, and I want to be humble. When I am humble, I trust in the mercy, riches, strength, and wisdom of the one who made me.
4. Antiphonies.
But there is a call-and-response between accepting my sinfulness and striving to do right, to be right. I have to recognize that sin will always be close at hand, even mixed in with my virtues like sprayed colors of an artsy necktie. But I can’t think that sin is OK.
I can never trust that I am without sin; and if sins drop away with time, I can’t dilate with a sense of self-righteousness. But I’m supposed to work for a clean conscience with good works, so that in time of trouble my faith is founded on a rock.
I know that I have to strive to do what God wants. But I have to give credit to God when success in that comes.
I have to try to be perfect. But on my dying day I will have to trust in God’s virtue, not in my own.
Jesus speaks of people being "worthy" of the heaven. (Luke 20:35.) But in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14), the righteous Pharisee was not justified before God; the contrite tax collector was.
5. Perplexity.
I admit to perplexity here. I’m a cross-eyed archer who doesn’t know which eye to close.
Which I guess is fine. It keeps me from glorying in my own smarts.
Or maybe, when I first wrote this, I forgot at least a partial way to reconcile these biblical ideas: the Bible is fundamentally pastoral. Sometimes we need to strive to be better than we are. Other times we need to lean upon the grace of God. Sometimes we need to reckon the terrifying God of the book of Ezekiel. Sometimes we need to hope in the merciful God of Romans.
Humility makes peace between our fear of God and our knowledge of our own insufficiency.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)