Our new parish priest shared two local news stories that illustrate an alarming lack of humility among Christians. I won't share them here; they're not the point. But they got me to thinking on this topic.
I'm often appalled at our lack of humility, given that it is the defining virtue of Jesus' earthly life.
I'm especially concerned over how quickly we judge others, and have concluded that we often do so because too many of us are walking around with an inaccurate, grade-school concept of salvation.
I, too, grew up with the "good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell" mindset that underlies the entire "scales of justice" view of God's mercy, which we may have never grown out of. Instead, we hold onto a foundational belief that we somehow deserve the love that God has bestowed on us.
We may be largely unaware of this attitude; when someone says that no one merits God's grace, we nod our heads in agreement with the definition of grace we've internalized - "unmerited favor." Who could disagree? Yet our response to someone who commits what we consider a terribly sinful, even heinous act, betrays our underlying assumptions. We may say, "There, but for the grace of God, go I," but we don't really believe it. Instead, we often conclude that the offender has forsaken their very humanity.
Perhaps so. But God has not stopped loving him or her.
As long as we believe that we're "mostly pretty good" people, we tend to assume that is mostly why God loves us, and that we’re going to heaven because that’s how "mostly pretty good" people are rewarded. After all, there must be some sort of eternal karma for all the sacrifices we make: the vices from which we abstain, the hurtful things we choose not to do, the pleasure we deny ourselves, the good deeds for which we go out of our way. Rather than seeing these good and important decisions as our response to and participation in God's love, we often consider them to be the steps in our stairway to heaven. We think our own virtue ensconces us in the at-least-somewhat exclusive club of those with whom God is pleased, and quickly judge that others' sins (or beliefs, or other perceived shortcomings) forever bar them from membership. As we cling to such a viewpoint, there will always be those – and we each know who they are – with whom we’d never deign to worship or socialize, let alone spend eternity. Murderers, rapists, child abusers, addicts, racists, abortionists, gays, spics, niggers, honkeys, . . . , jews, muslims, protestants, catholics, conservatives, radicals, liberals, intolerants – there seems no limit to the ways we can delineate our "them" – are going to get what they deserve, we think, not considering that God has given us grace that we could never deserve rather than the death Christ bore in our place.
The sin in my own life has been too great to allow me to operate under an illusion of superiority to others. Not even this lengthy post is rooted in a sense of greater worthiness, as I know many of those who have not had to come to grips with such failings are truly purer hearted than I am, even with all the change God has already made in me. I know that if God's eternal reward is for those who've lived rightly, then I will surely be rejected. I could never hope to make up for the pain I’ve caused by any amount of right living. Yet last week in my living room, my friends expressed incredulity that someone who works for the Lord as I do could believe himself undeserving of God’s love and mercy. "If you're hopeless, what hope is there for me?" they practically said. Fortunately no one suggested that we compare our sinfulness, which could become a sort of reverse pride! But I explained that I'm not at all hopeless; it's just that my hope is in Christ rather than in myself.
I’ve always assumed that one who has been forgiven a truly hurtful action would forever understand the nature of grace. They'd know that no one is more deserving of it than another, and strive to live their lives in response to such an unfathomable love. But while my friends seemed aware of their own shortcomings, they expressed shock that I don't think my visible efforts to live as I am called would be sufficient to overcome my own sin, and thereby gain the reward which Christ has already won for me. They seemed sure that such a conclusion should drive me to despair, rather than to live as fully as I can in this magnificent Love that our Savior has revealed to and purchased for us.
Finally reaching the point: to me, this is humility - to understand (without self-condemnation!) that I don’t deserve God’s love, yet to be willing to receive it anyway, respond to it, be transformed in it. The more this process occurs in my own life, the more deeply I will desire it for every other person. I seek to encourage and embrace others who are sincerely seeking the Truth, trusting that God will lead them to Him, even if I disagree with them. Then will I share Christ's compassionate love with others according to the leading of the Holy Spirit, not considering how "deserving" of it they may be.
Sometimes this will mean speaking difficult words – after all, enabling another's sin isn’t an expression of love – but I will always do so lovingly.
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