Lent: Day Three

Yesterday I admitted that I often lack humility, and that I was using Lent as an opportunity to focus on humility and hopefully become more humble. I laid out a series of very practical things I can do to measure my progress and to know when I am practicing humility or when I am practicing pride.

Let me start off today by stating that I am not taking steps to become more humble because it is Lent and I need something to either give up or take on, and since I often lack humility, then why not take on humility or give up pride? There may be an element of truth to that, but it is not why I am really doing it. My primary reason for striving to become more humble is that my Lord instructs me to be humble�"in fact, I can say that humility is God’s will. So I am seeking to learn about humility, and striving to grow in humility, not as some form of Lenten “busy work,” but simply because the Lord commands it.

Jesus Christ teaches His disciples (of which I am one) that “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11; 18:14). Maybe we don’t use the word “exalt” much these days, so maybe we don’t understand what Jesus is teaching us. The word in the Greek is  �'ψῶν (hoops-own)and it means “to elevate, to glorify, to dignify, to make prosperous.” As you can see, there’s still a lot of different ways to translate this, but the common thread as I see it is “Everyone who puts himself on a pedestal will be knocked off and end up lower than where he started, but everyone who puts God on a pedestal will be put on the same pedestal.”

So Jesus teaches us about humility by also teaching us about the result or the dangers of pride. Self-glorification leads to humiliation�"and let’s not confuse humility with humiliation!�"while glorifying others, or glorifying God, leads to being glorification of ourselves as well. I can include “other” in this equation because the way we serve this invisible God of ours is to serve the people who are made in God’s image. And God loves each of these people just as much as He loves me; therefore, he doesn’t mind if we are focused on raising others up because if we raise everyone else up, and everyone is also raising everyone else up, then all of us are raised up�"the boat rises with the tide. So, Jesus is telling me to focus on helping others to get ahead, and I’ll get ahead too; but if I just focus solely on me getting ahead, I’m setting myself up for a fall that will send me beyond where I even started from. When they say that Pride goes before the fall, they never tell you that the fall may be into a bottomless pit.

The simple truth is that pride is a lie. That’s why humility is the antidote. Remember, humility is honest and generous�"an honest appraisal of one’s abilities and limitations, and humility is being generous with ourselves, not just what we have. Pride is a lack of humility; therefore, it is dishonest and selfish. A life filled with pride is a life established upon lies�"the foundation is false and unable to support the structure of our life. Pride is a prison, self-centeredness is the cell. Humility is the key that unlocks our cell and frees us from imprisonment. The way of the world tells us to “look out for number one” meaning ourselves, but this is the advice that imprisons us in pride, and can lead us to the solitary confinement of self-centeredness. The way of Christ is to look out for others. This offends the world. This sounds like weakness and slavery to the world. But to those who live is, this other-centeredness, this humility, is not a denial of our freedom, or a position of weakness, but the pathway to freedom and strength.

In his Rule (Monastic Constitution), St. Benedict devotes one of his longest chapters to humility. He began, as I have, reminding us that humility is not a luxury of faith that we may one day acquire, but it is a requirement of faith, and a place to begin. Perhaps that’s why even many of us Christians have a hard time living our faith and have reduced it to a set of moral propositions or personal values instead of a prescribed way to behave and live�"because to live it requires us to be humble enough to put our own wants and desires aside or on hold and accept instead the wants and desires God has for us.

St. Benedict teaches about humility, and the process toward humility, by employing an allegory about Jacob’s ladder. He tells us that Jacob dreamed of a ladder with angels ascending and descending to and from heaven (Gen. 28:12). The ladder, he says, is a symbol of the life we establish in the world, saying that “our lives are lifted up to heaven by our Lord if we bring low our pride, and increase our humility.” There are two vertical sides to a ladder that are connected by horizontal rungs or steps. St. Benedict stated that the two vertical sides represent the body and the spirit and that they are held together by the horizontal rungs of humility. So our way to heaven is to climb the rungs of humility, and our way away from heaven is to climb down the rungs, descending in humility and growing in pride. Our bodies touch both the earth and heaven, and the way to heaven is by climbing the rungs of humility. Pride is at the bottom of the ladder and heave is at the top, and as we increase in humility, we move from pride and toward heaven. Hopefully you understand the image. If I have explained it clearly enough to be understood, then our instruction from St. Benedict is “to construct our lives on the image of the ladder.”

And I can see the pattern of these blogs is for them to get away from me fairly quickly. So if the Holy Spirit allows it, tomorrow I will write about�"or start writing about�"the first rung, or step to humility. For today, the question is: How do I quantify all this into something that can be enacted or quantified.

Here’s what I propose as a start:

1) Whenever you enter a room, meeting, situation, whatever, ask yourself: “What can I contribute to this?” or “How can I help?” and silence that voice inside you that asks: “What in this for me?”

2) When you go to a restaurant, to Walmart, the grocery store, or anywhere else, look the cashier, server, etc., in the eye and be polite. If they are wearing a name tag, say their name. People often treat servers and cashiers like dirt for some reason, my anti-pride/pro-humility behavior is to treat them as most people would treat someone rich and famous.

3) If I’m in a checkout line and I have a lot of things and someone has a couple of things, I will let them ahead of me.

4) Give others the right of way in stores, on the road, and anywhere else. I’ll let them be important and go first.

5) If I had an office job or worked with a lot of people, I could ask myself: “Who needs help?” or “Who can I help get ahead?” I can definitely stop thinking of my co-workers as competitors, and thus work against them to get ahead, but instead I can think of them as partners, and thus help them get ahead, understanding that I am getting ahead with them.

These are a few suggestions to get started. As always, feel free to add any suggestions. I am learning humility too, so I am open to suggestion on the topic.