Faces on Faith: The spiritual virtue of humility
Two days ago, June 12, marked the seventh anniversary of the mass murder which took place at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.
In the aftermath of that violence, journalist and author Michael Gerson wrote an editorial titled “After Orlando, Divided We Mourn.” The first line of that piece was: “One of the manifold tragedies of the Orlando mass murder is how difficult it is for us to experience it and mourn it together.”
Gerson goes on to point out that the killings touched on a multitude of issues which produce deep emotional responses and disagreements in our nation — then and now: terrorism; gay rights; guns. And well before bodies had been identified and families notified, Gerson claimed that many people had already determined that what happened did nothing but confirm their pre-existing beliefs about those issues. Everyone, it seems, had “chosen different battlefields” in Gerson’s words, which makes learning and doing better going forward extremely difficult.
Indeed. But why? Why are we seemingly less and less able to come together now as a society? Gerson didn’t delve into that, and as always with a social phenomenon this large, there are a multitude of factors — too many to suitably identify and explore here. But I will suggest one that is deeply connected to faith and spirituality.
My sense is that part of what keeps us so divided is our inability to balance the dynamic between two foundational biblical and spiritual principles — the importance of both the individual and the community. Perhaps one of the critical factors at the heart of what Gerson describes is that we are in a time when, as a whole, we are “off balance” spiritually, with an unhealthy overemphasis on the individual. Perhaps we struggle as a society to come together because we have been, and continue to be encouraged to look at the world largely, and sometimes only, through our own individual lens. We need only look at the tone and content of a great deal of current media, advertising and political messaging to see this imbalance exhibited.
And while an emphasis on the individual, individual differences and individual freedoms is necessary in order to avoid the suppression of dissenting views and the oppression of minority populations, too much emphasis on those can lead to the splintering of society into nothing more than a collection of autonomous people sharing the same borders or a collection of single identity based groups — neither of which reflects the complexity of the human condition and experience.
This can lead to a spiritual, ethical and moral worldview of “it’s about me” — a worldview that what is good and true for me must be good and true for everyone. It can lead to verifiable facts being seen as irrelevant compared to individual feelings, resulting in the belief that if I feel it’s right, it must be right for me and everyone else.
Not only is that an intellectually and emotionally immature mindset, it is an unfaithful and spiritually empty approach to living as one of God’s people. The faithful and spiritually mature person recognizes that they are as loved and valued by God as any other person, but never more than any other person. The faithful and spiritually mature person knows it is about them, but at the same time it’s not about them. Which is all another way of describing the spiritual virtue of humility.
And as one of the most faithful and spiritually mature people I know once said, “Humility may be the most forgotten spiritual virtue of all.”
Perhaps, for all our sake, we would do well to start remembering it.
The Rev. Dr. Mark Boyea is senior minister at the Sanibel Congregational United Church of Christ.