LOVESTRONG: Choosing Humility Over Hubris

The poet declares at the beginning of the longest Psalm which celebrates walking in the Way of God (Psalm 119:1-3 NLT):

Joyful are people of integrity,
who follow the instructions of the Lord.
Joyful are those who obey his laws
and search for him with all their hearts.
They do not compromise with evil,
and they walk only in his paths.

Sounds good. Simple, even. What’s so difficult about that?

Moses, in his swan song, instructs the people he led out of Egypt toward the Promised Land to make a choice to follow the Way of God – something they had been learning to do during their 40-year Exodus from slavery:

“Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” (Deuteronomy 30:19-20 NLT)

Sounds a lot like the Psalmist. Still sounds simple. Should be an easy decision.

Many centuries later we catch up with Jesus as he was teaching his famous Sermon on the Mount. In this section of what I call his stump speech, he encourages a broader and deeper understanding of the Way of God:

“You have heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not murder. If you commit murder, you are subject to judgment.’ But I say, if you are even angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought before the court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of (Gehenna – you’re throwing your life away). – Matthew 5:21-22 NLT

Makes a lot of sense. Kind of simple and perhaps even obvious?

Roughly two decades after Jesus died, the unlikely Apostle, Paul, wrote to the church he founded that was struggling in surprising ways:

But for right now, friends, I’m completely frustrated by your unspiritual dealings with each other and with God. You’re acting like infants in relation to Christ, capable of nothing much more than nursing at the breast. Well, then, I’ll nurse you since you don’t seem capable of anything more. As long as you grab for what makes you feel good or makes you look important, are you really much different than a babe at the breast, content only when everything’s going your way? – 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 NLT

Hmmm. Interesting. A little embarrassing for the Corinthian church members. Paul is saying that they were struggling with something that appears to be quite simple and basic: choosing the Way of God over less beneficial ways.

Each of these forms of instruction was getting at the same thing: follow the Way of God, which inherently requires a different kind of strength than our human nature recognizes. A way of being in the world that is countercultural and counterintuitive. An approach to life that is generally not reflected in our images of heroism and strength. This series, LOVESTRONG, seeks to examine the weakness of God that Paul was referring to, which he claimed to be stronger than the greatest human strength (1 Cor. 1:25). How do we see it in the verses we see here? What is the weakness of God? What is it in contrast with?

In his writing to the Corinthian church, the weakness Paul is referring to is a lived-out humility, a selflessness, a servanthood orientation reflected in Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus was falsely accused, wrongfully tried, found guilty on trumped up charges, and punished well beyond what would be appropriate for his actions, which included his torturous death. All the way through what we call the Passion, Jesus refused to play the game: he didn’t fight back with words or swing back with his fists. Instead, he chose humility. What a wimp?

We like our heroes tougher than Jesus. At least in appearances. There were some moments in Jesus’ life when he couldn’t hold back, and he called out religious leaders appropriately. But what was he calling out? Hubris. The way Jesus was living and teaching – the Way of the Spirit of God – was and is humility, not hubris. The religious leaders were rigid in their interpretation and execution of the Law. They knew the right answers. They were certain. Jesus, in his humility, offered ways to think that challenged such an approach, which is what got him in trouble.

Hubris – being a loudmouth, the invulnerable tough guy, the know-it-all – is easy. We view hubris as confident strength as human beings. Yet it takes great humility – which requires much more courage – to be vulnerable enough to be aware of what we’re thinking and feeling and why, of recognizing when we’re not seeing things accurately or fully, of choosing a different approach than we had before. The Way of the Spirit of God requires humility because it constantly requires us to be humble, to assess where we are, what we’re thinking, and what we’re doing in light of Jesus.

Humility – a facet of the weakness of God – is incredibly strong. When we have moments of clarity when we see our connectedness and unity over that which divides us, we find incredible power. Think of moments when we have seen our country united even though the divisions were still there. The aftermath of Pearl Harbor. The response toward faith in reaction to the Soviet Union’s declared atheism. The assassination of JFK. The assassination of MLK. The tragic end of the Space Shuttle Challenger and crew. Mass shootings when innocent lives were brutally taken. 9-11-2001. Natural disasters. In each of these instances – and there are plenty of examples – humanity came together with compassion. We corrected our pride-focused lenses and saw ourselves and others as human beings. This is a humility that is easily acquired, but often short-lived. Such moments may lead to the immediate outpouring of support in many forms, but it often doesn’t last long.

Real change, real transformation, requires a long-haul type of humility that takes incredible strength and courage, because our nature and support systems always want to pull us back to the status quo. Moses was worried that this younger generation of Jews would make the same mistakes as their parents, choosing hubris that led them away from the heart of God over humility which saw the Spirit as the source of life and instruction. Jesus was deeply aware of the reality that hubris had led to power plays by the religious leaders that hurt the people they led. Paul was disheartened to learn that the Corinthian Christians had a short memory and were stunted in their growth to the detriment of the more vulnerable members of the community. All their counsel to their respective audiences carries all the way to us, asking the same question: are we people of hubris or humility? Are we satisfied with a certainty that is stuck in the status quo or are we humble enough to be open to whatever the Spirit of God is calling us toward?

Strong and courageous humility continually braves the question, how has my life experience shaped my way of seeing things? Have you had one of those moments where you are looking for your sunglasses only to realize you were already wearing them? We are always wearing lenses that shape how we interpret the world we live in. We cannot help it, and we cannot not be shaped by it. Our respective lenses help us see some things more clearly than others, yet also blur our vision in other areas. Realizing that we are not seeing reality without “correction” is the first step toward seeing more clearly. But that is difficult to do because our hubris rarely wants to admit that we may be wrong. This is a bummer, because our lenses are always on all the time, and if we aren’t humble enough to recognize it, we will be bumping into a lot of furniture and people, tripping our way through life potentially injuring ourselves and/or others, even unwittingly at times.

This impacts all areas of life, and it informs how we think about race in the United States. I celebrate the very significant strides we have made in our country regarding racial equality and equity. Indeed, the arc of history has bent toward justice! Yet we must remember that someone was doing the bending along the way, taking the incredibly challenging role of asking about cultural lenses that had been worn in our country since its founding. A lot of people have died because those lenses were not recognized out of hubris.

I grew up in a predominantly white environment. I didn’t have much opportunity to get to know people from other cultures or skin tones. While I am broad stroking my own story here, I can admit that while I was raised to be respectful, I didn’t understand why it appeared that black Americans seemed to really struggle. They made the crime headlines more than others, were more likely to be arrested, more broken marriages, less education, lower income, more likely to live in poverty, etc. This created a lens through which I interpreted race. It left black Americans on the whole seeming like the problem children of our country. Why can’t they collectively get their act together? We never talked about race in my family, and schools only gave a paragraph or two in history classes: everybody knew about slavery and emancipation, segregation, and the civil rights movement, but that was about the extent of it.

Don’t get me wrong – I was as respectful as I knew how to be and would not have welcomed any notion that my lenses needed to be challenged. It wasn’t’ until college that I began to see differently, in part, because I had meaningful friendships with black students. Partly because my coursework forced me to research just one facet of race: education. My senior project took on the question of whether race should influence acceptance into college. Since the 1980’s some colleges accepted black students over white students even though they didn’t perform as well academically. On the face of it, it seemed patently unfair and unjust. But the more we researched, the more we realized that we were only seeing the tip of the iceberg of a much larger, very complex, far-reaching issue.

Black represents more than race and skin tone. It represents culture as well. Black culture – like any culture – has its own way of speaking and being in the world (and, of course, while there is a larger “black culture” in America, there are lots of nuances within it, just as in white culture). Language is a big part of that. What happens if college entrance exams – the ACT and SAT – are written from a different cultural perspective, where the language reflects one culture and doesn’t really care about the other? English may be the language, but that’s not the end of the story. What we learned was that the tests themselves, being designed by the dominant white culture, reflected how white people do language and communication. The more distant a culture was from the dominant white culture, the worse they would perform on the tests. This is just one piece of the issue where we need to be brave enough, courageous enough to question our lens instead of defending our hubris. There is much, much more to know about the iceberg below the surface of the water that I would learn in the years since then – why reconstruction in the South failed after emancipation; why black people seemed stuck in less desirable housing markets; why public schools in black areas underperformed and were under-supported compared to other areas; how the GI bill that helped create the Middle Class after WWII left out black Americans, severely stunting the capacity for generational wealth and opportunity; voting rights and how they impacted elections; the politics of fear-mongering that was and often a thinly-veiled way to further support race-based anxiety; and the justice system that was not and still is not just in carrying out the basic commitment to fair trials under the law – it goes on and on. It is much easier to double-down on hubris which does not want to recognize any deeper problems. To wonder about our own lenses requires great humility and courage. This is a choice, and the choice leads to greater life or more death.

Moses, Jesus, and Paul in their own way were calling for humility – the weakness of God approach – to take seriously the choices before us. To examine what is before us. To examine the lenses we are wearing. Such humility requires great strength, and yet such a Way of being is also the only way that leads to lasting and increasing maturity and wellbeing. We can’t hubris our way out of a hubris problem – it’s a live by the sword die by the sword type of thing. Jesus didn’t wield a sword. Instead, he wielded a servant’s foot washing towel which had to be a swallowing pride moment for him and those who got their feet washed.

I love what our country represents – protected rights and freedoms to pursue a good life. I love it. We have made massive strides toward everyone getting access to that dream. The good news is that we have the opportunity to continue bending the arc of history in that beautiful direction! It will not be easy, but what a gift! We get to make our country a more beautiful, equitable place! And our motivation runs even deeper than our patriotism – this desire for human flourishing is deeply imbedded in the Spirit of God that breathes equally into all lives everywhere, calling us to greater and greater life.

This day, how will you choose? The weakness of God that is stronger than the greatest human strength? Hubris or humility?