3 – 13 – 17 Pride and Purpose

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There might be sort of a double whammy there in terms of avoiding pride. I don’t think I’ve reached it because people very rarely say I’m exceptionally faithful but I’d imagine it’s a challenge every saint has faced. Once one has actually wrestled with the initial pride of simply being, the self-adulation inherent in everyone, that person may start to achieve great things through the virtues and gifts God has given them. Then this person reaches some different status of personhood in the eyes of their peers, every friend of theirs will likely still consider them their peer, but will think that they too are truly exceptional from all others in the group. Less commonly, the friend will elevate the seemingly exceptional person without placing themselves in that category. Perhaps more commonly than either of those, depending on what kind of people you’ve lived with and their ages, friends will begin to notice petty flaws in the seemingly exceptional person, in an effort to reconcile their visions of peerhood with some obvious virtues.

Either way it’s highly evident to the person that people are treating them differently now, and a little examination can usually pretty easily reveal that this different treatment started when they won the spelling bee or hit the game winning shot. The response to this is a difficult one. Many will consciously make the right decision, by which I mean they will choose to be outwardly humble and pat themselves on the back for it. Others will be openly prideful, whether gracious or derisive to their “lessers.” Or there’s the one I have the most trouble understanding the inner workings of, the response of true humility.

It’s easy for me to understand how a lazy or dull person could be humble. It is easy for them to have a low estimation of their own importance because that conception is continually reinforced throughout their lives. I suppose the question of whether they really possess the virtue or not is whether it remains when they suddenly gain success. Lincoln said, "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power." But nevertheless they stay in a nursery for humility, with constant reminders every day to develop the most important and foundational virtue. Truly how hard is it for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, those who have accolades and acknowledgements showered upon them seem doomed to pride.

I hope that my seeming understanding of what frame of mind humility would really mean is a sign that I’m getting close enough to it to recognize what it is, rather than that I’m getting far enough from it to suppose I know when I have no idea. The central framework to humility is the statement “I am not important.” Which seems an easy enough statement to adopt. We receive insults, we are ignored, our thoughts are not considered when our friend group makes plans, it’s quite plain to see for everyone who is not delusional that we as individuals are not important to the wider world except in so far as we can be used for benefit. Even the President is not important because of their identity but because of the title before their name, the job they were hired for, where they were put by other people.

Now the conventional, modern thought is to rail against this. To carve out of delusion and wishful thinking some self-esteem, some measure of independence from and value to the world. I’d say this works rather well sometimes, when one is healthy and productive, receiving enough recognition to balance out the insults in a very uneven mental math. This is by the way not an atheistic position at all, I’ve seen it in nearly every person I’ve ever known.

In this mindset to be worthless is utter oblivion. Our value is derived from how “good” we are, regardless of whether that means how moral, or useful, or important we perceive ourselves to be. The statement, “I am not important, the world would not fundamentally change were I not” is a suicidal statement in this context. There is a strange concept of a duty to exist in this ideology, founded on the idea that we are essential. I do believe this is quite a frightening maxim if taken in the wrong way, and can easily lead to misery and despair.

But then there is the virtue of humility which answers this despair with a seemingly impossible dichotomy. We are not important, inherently, but we are infinitely important, as individuals, because of the love the all-powerful creator of the universe has for us. It feels quite contradictory, especially when one considers that he loves everyone else too. It’s as though we are all the grains of sand on the beach he is walking on, fully knowledgeable of our own insignificance, when he stoops and picks up a single grain and says, this do I love with everything I am, it is beautiful and I am proud to claim it. The metaphor breaks slightly here though, as he is stooping down and grabbing every grain and saying this about infinite different people. I would say simultaneously here but that doesn’t really make any sense. The reason God can have infinite love for infinite people is because he’s just not bound in the ways the universe is. There’s no good reason to suspect that God is subject to time, or causality, or space. So there’s no reason to doubt how he could pay infinite attention to each individual person.

So then true humility seems to be somewhat of a contradiction that can only be solved by delving deeper into what God must be like. I don’t see any problem with that, the idea that we’d learn more about God in an area we didn’t intend to examine while trying to learn about some other aspect of him doesn’t seem unreasonable in the context of the physical sciences, much less theology. So humility is then that juxtaposition that I am inherently, by my essential nature and definite attributes, absolutely and permanently trivial. My life means nothing. Except in that my life means everything to He who is everything.

Before I started writing I was troubled by thoughts of whether or not what I was doing was what I was really supposed to be doing, why I didn’t feel passion this morning, why things were stale. I think the act of writing about God reminded me where he should be in my thoughts, and where he is in my life. As long as I am making every decision with God’s will at my foremost consideration, counting the virtues that different avenues will develop and being mindful of the temptations I’ll be exposing myself to, I’ll make the right decision. Not right in an objective sense, but because I am at least attempting to follow God’s will, it will turn out far better than had I merely gone off my own intuition. This writing reminded me that I don’t need to be so stressed about figuring out what I want to do with my life, because I should be continually searching for what God wants me to do with my life. Till then I will pray and attempt to listen to him, I will not despair or worry for I have faith in him, and I will work as hard as I can at whatever God puts in front of me. Because whatever has happened, I know he has led me to this moment for a reason, and whatever that purpose is, it will not be achieved by me questioning and being lazy, but rather by a trusting, earnest, and persistent spirit that continually seeks to grow in Christ.