If you are feeling fully outraged, you are full of yourself. If you are deeply hurt, you are a victim. If you are loudly righteous, you are with a greater good — and you just know it. We are, mostly, hanging ten on the surfboards of our egos.
Where is the humility in all of this?
It is Crock Pot Time in America. The main ingredient is COVID-19, seasoned with fear, anger, and unfollowed wisdom. No matter what other ingredients are added, the overwhelming funk of fear poisons the stew.
We may have an election, a Supreme Court confirmation, any number of sports, arts, education and romantic seasons — but all have gone from crock pot to pressure cooker. The meal will be terrible. I can taste it now, and I am nauseated. I even know the days, perhaps months, of indigestion that follow.
In all of this, I and countless others know — just know — that we deserve better. We know that someone, something, caused this plague, this political freak show, this cultural outrage. We are hoarse from being full-throated, chests blooded by breast-beating, and exhausted to the point of being humorless. I want this time to end.
What, besides the litany of grievances that are unavoidable in every post, every conversation or media platform, is going on with each of us in this Screech Time? Well, a key ingredient has gone missing.
Humility is MIA.
In each outrage, in each victimization, in each empowering justification, we, the focal point recipients and expressers of what we know and await, forget that we are given life. We do not earn it, let alone make it, and we certainly do not deserve what we want.
We deleted “and there is no health in us” from our prayers because the editors thought it betrayed our possible redemption. We thought that we had progressed enough that the love of our creation was more important than our guilt.
But I know that I am, daily, “a miserable offender” — but in this Outrage Time no one believes that they are actually offenders. They are either victims or saviors. At least the loudest are.
Confession has vanished because humility has vanished. We now know, fully, that we are owed our lives and thus we are entitled to make our lives, our culture: we are entitled to make ourselves.
But soon (very soon) about half of us will be very, very wrong. Either way. The ranting and virtuosity and hate will run up against the reality of all of us. Not just you. Not just me. Of course, half will feel justified, vindicated, empowered, even validated.
Or maybe, when the widest spread COVID Fever breaks, even the winners might see the damage done. No, not to the losers. But the damage we have done to each other, and most painfully, ourselves.
There has been no humor in these months because there has been no charity. We all have come to be in agreement with a toast given at our wedding rehearsal dinner: “May we all get what we deserve.”
We only deserve the one thing that made us, Love. God made so much complexity that in the eyes of his creations we come to believe that we are God. At least on Facebook.
Humility is a base reality, not an affect of greater ego. Humility is born of the guilt of being human, of thinking we are the center of righteousness rather than the product of love.
Guilt is in short supply in the valley of victimhood. It is easy to believe that we deserve what is owed to us, because we have been given everything. The last few centuries’ technological advances simulate control enough that we think we have it. There is less prayer. There is less worship of anything beyond ourselves. The faith in control belies the reality that humans only control the edges of our lives. We have no ability to fabricate joy on demand, let alone conquer death
If we actually did have God-like control of things, there would be no COVID-19 and no impeachment/SCOTUS/election anger. We would have carefully considered options, not the clarity (and terror) of the hangman’s noose found in every new stage built for righteousness.
We would have humility.
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2 responses to “On the Cusp of Humility”
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Amen!
Yep! So good