We are often quite certain that we know what is best for us. Therefore, we pray, asking God for good health, prosperity, or victory in some cause. But what if it is better for us to be unhealthy, to be poor, or to lose? Can we really say we know what is best and confidently set before God our agenda?
James and John sought honors and exaltation, but Jesus responded, You do not know what you are asking (Mark 10:38). Paul prayed three times to be delivered from some physical malady, but the Lord said no and taught him that the affliction was necessary to keep him from being too elated by the blessings he had seen. Weakness was necessary to keep Paul humble and able to realize that it was God’s strength and not his that accomplished anything good or lasting.
Scripture says, We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans (Rom 8:26). Meditating on this passage, St. Augustine wrote,
We do not know what it is right to pray for; yet, because it is difficult, troublesome and against the grain for us, weak as we are, we do what every human would do, we pray that it may be taken away from us. We owe, however, at least this much in our duty to God: if he does not take it away, we must not imagine that we are being forgotten by him but because of our loving endurance of evil, must await greater blessings in its place. In this way, power shines forth more perfectly in weakness.
These words are written to prevent us from having too great an opinion of ourselves if our prayer is granted, and when we are impatient in asking for something that it would be better not to receive; and to prevent us from being dejected, and distrustful of God’s mercy toward us, if our prayer is not granted, [For, indeed] … we [may] ask for something that would bring us greater affliction, or completely ruin us through the corrupting influence of prosperity.
In these cases, we do not know what is right to ask for in prayer.
Therefore, if something happens that we did not pray for, we must have no doubt at all that what God wants is more expedient than what we wanted ourselves. Our great Mediator gave us an example of this. After he had said: Father, if it is possible, let this cup be taken away from me, he immediately added, Yet not what I will, but what you will, Father (Letter to Proba, Ep. 130, 25-26).
Humility in prayer, humility.
I have shared this story here before, but it is worth repeating. It teaches on the often-ambiguous qualities of events and problems and how we are often in no position to distinguish a blessing from a burden:
There was a man who was a farmer. One day the wind blew the gate of his field open and his valued and only horse escaped and was not to be found. His friends came to commiserate with him about this loss, but he only said to them, “We’ll see.”
Several days later, the horse returned with a wild stallion and a mare. His friends came to rejoice with him in his good fortune, but he only said to them, “We’ll see.”
Several days later, his son was breaking in the new horses and was cast from the back of the wild stallion and suffered a broken arm and leg. The farmer’s friends came and commiserated with him about his son’s injuries, but he only said to them, “We’ll see.”
Several days later, troops of the emperor came to the area to draft the young men of the village into his army. But the farmer’s son was exempted due to his injuries. And the farmer’s friends came to rejoice with him that his son was not taken away, but he only said to them, “We’ll see.”
Yes, in so many events of life we lack the comprehensive view to sit in judgment on their full meaning. We ought to pray, but in great humility. God knows what we are really asking and what will really bless us. He asks us to pray. He wants to engage us, but the answer must be His; what is His is always best. Blessings are not always as they seem; neither are burdens. Sometimes the best we can do is to say, “We’ll see.” Meanwhile we pray—in humility, always in humility.
One of the most commonly committed—yet least often confessed—sins, is that of rash judgment. The commercial below humorously depicts the sin and how wrong we can sometimes be.
In reality, the sin is not often humorous and can lead us to some very dark places. On account of rash judgments, we may harbor grudges, resentments, fears, and unjust anger. We may allow it to foster pride, feeling ourselves superior to others. We may even seek revenge based on misinformation or as a result of misinterpretation of others’ actions. And gossip is usually the daughter (or son) of rash judgment.
St. Thomas speaks of rash judgment in this way:When the human intellect lacks certainty, as when a person, without any solid motive, forms a negative judgment on some doubtful or hidden matter, it is called judgment by suspicion or rash judgment (Summa Theologica, Quest. 60, art 2).
Fr. John Hardon defines it in this way: Rash judgment is unquestioning conviction about another person’s bad conduct without adequate grounds for the judgment. The sinfulness of rash judgment lies in the hasty imprudence with which the critical appraisal is made, and in the loss of reputation that a person suffers in the eyes of the one who judges adversely (Modern Catholic Dictionary, John A. Hardon, S.J.).
The Catechism places rash judgment in the context of our obligation to preserve the good reputation of others:
Respect for the reputation of persons forbids every attitude and word likely to cause them unjust injury. He becomes guilty
– of rash judgment who, even tacitly, assumes as true, without sufficient foundation, the moral fault of a neighbor;
– of detraction who, without objectively valid reason, discloses another’s faults and failings to persons who did not know them;
– of calumny who, by remarks contrary to the truth, harms the reputation of others and gives occasion for false judgments concerning them.
To avoid rash judgment, everyone should be careful to interpret insofar as possible his neighbor’s thoughts, words, and deeds in a favorable way (CCC 2477-2478).
All this said, rash judgment is often committed out of weakness. Our minds are weak and we often lack the patience or determination to carefully discern the whole truth. Sometimes we commit this sin because of past hurts or the general climate of cynicism that permeates our culture.
On account of these roots in weakness, the necessary antidote is humility and an understanding that in most cases we do not have all the facts at our disposal immediately. In fact, there are many situations in which we may never have all the facts. In humility, we should presume benign intent in uncertain matters unless and until the facts indicate otherwise.
In today’s world of 24×7 information at our fingertips, we are encouraged to make quick judgments. News outlets often rush to provide “analysis” before many of the facts are known. When “experts” speak from the anchor’s desk, their statements can seem quite credible when, in fact, they are often little more than rash judgments.
Be very careful. Rash judgment, especially when shared with others, can do a lot of damage. It is not a sin to be taken lightly, even if it is often committed in weakness.
Perhaps, then, a little humor will make the point. In this commercial, a man with all the best of intentions appears to be guilty of the worst intentions. Enjoy.
Perhaps like you, I have to see people I love and care about through some difficult periods in their lives. One neighbor and parishioner recently lost her eight-year-old daughter to cancer. A number of my parishioners are seeking work and praying daily for it, but no employment offers have been forthcoming. Still others cry out for relief from any number of different crosses. I, too, have lots of things for which I pray; sometimes I get discouraged or even angry when God seems to say, “No” or, “Wait.”
There is one thing that I have learned about true prayer: I have to be humble, very humble. The Scriptures say, We do not know how to pray as we ought (Romans 8:26). Many other translations of this text say even more emphatically, We do not know what we ought to pray for. Yet we are often so sure that we know what is best for us or best for others. But what we find is that the outcome we want is not necessarily the best one for us. This insight requires great humility. We see so little and understand even less. Though it is not wrong to ask for some particular outcome, we need to do so humbly. God alone knows the best answer and when to give it. Recognizing this requires humility.
There is an old teaching that basically says this: Many think of prayer as trying to get God to do your will, but true prayer is trying to understand what God’s will is and then doing it. I heard an African-American preacher put it this way: “You’ve got a lot of people that talk about naming and claiming and calling and hauling, but there’s just something about saying, ‘THY will be done!’ that we’ve forgotten.”
It’s not wrong to ask. The Book of James says, You have not because you ask not (James 4:2). But we do need to ask with great humility because we don’t really know what’s best. James and John came to Jesus one day seeking high positions in the new administration (Kingdom). Jesus said to them, You do not know what you are asking (Mk 10:38). And the truth is, we don’t.
So ask, but ask humbly.
St. Augustine writes beautifully on this matter in his letter to Proba:
Paul himself was not exempt from such ignorance … To prevent him from becoming puffed-up over the greatness of the revelations that had been given to him, he was given … a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, he asked the Lord three times to take it away from him … even such a great saint’s prayer had to be refused: “My grace is enough for you, my power is at its best in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9).
So when we are suffering afflictions that might be doing us either good or harm, [we ought to remember that] we do not to know how to pray as we ought. [B]ecause they are hard to endure and painful, because they are contrary to our nature (which is weak) we, like all mankind, pray to have our afflictions taken from us. [But], we owe this much respect to the Lord our God, that if he does not take our afflictions away, we should not consider ourselves ignored and neglected. But [rather, we] should hope to gain some greater good through the patient acceptance of suffering. “For my power is at its best in weakness.”
These words are written so that we should not be proud of ourselves … when we ask for something it would be better for us not to get; and also that we should not become utterly dejected if we are not given what we ask for, despairing of God’s mercy towards us. [I]t might be that what we have been asking for could have brought us some still greater affliction, or it could completely ruin us through the corrupting influence of prosperity. In such cases, it is clear that we cannot know how to pray as we ought.
Hence if anything happens contrary to our prayer [request], we ought to bear the disappointment patiently, give thanks to God, and be sure that it was better for God’s will to be done than our own.
The Mediator himself has given us an example of this. When he had prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by,” he transformed the human will that was in him because he had assumed human nature and added, “Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it.” Thus, truly, by the obedience of one man many have been made righteous (St Augustine Letter to Proba (Ep 130 14.25ff)).
Beginning in 721 B.C., after repeated warnings from the prophets, terrible waves of destruction came on the Jewish people. The Assyrians invaded and conquered the ten northern tribes of Israel. The survivors were exiled and in a certain sense were not heard from again. (They are often called the “Ten lost tribes of Israel.”)
Small, feeble attempts at reform in the south for Judah and the Levites were mostly unsuccessful. Again, despite repeated warnings from the prophets, 587 B.C. was witness to another wave of destruction: the Babylonians invaded and destroyed Jerusalem. The city lay in ruins, the temple burned and looted. The survivors were exiled in Babylon and for eighty years the Promised Land lay in ruins.
How could this be? Why would God allow His people to be conquered? Worse yet, how could He allow the temple to be destroyed?
But He did. God does not care about buildings and land. He cares about the temple of our soul and a harvest of justice.
Even though His people were severely pruned and waiting for a spring of new growth, God did not forsake them utterly; He nurtured a remnant in Babylon. Through His prophets, God taught them to remain faithful and to await the day of liberation that would surely come.
We do well to look at a repentance text, a simple and humble text with very few moving parts. Why? Because many of us, especially the older of us, remember a once-flourishing Church that had enormous numbers and was influential in the culture. Back then over 80% of Catholics attended Mass every Sunday. Our schools and churches were packed and the faithful were generally respectful of Church teaching. Poor laborers and immigrants built glorious monuments to the faith along with schools, universities, hospitals, and orphanages. While we ought not to idealize those times, it is hard to argue that they did not produce a remarkable legacy of buildings, institutions, and large Catholic families.
But a cultural earthquake in the West shook us vigorously and many were lost to us. Today only 20-25% of Catholics attend Mass regularly. Once-packed churches have closed or been merged with others. Schools and seminaries have been shuttered and a flock that was once largely obedient has been infested with dissenting voices up to some of the highest levels. Birthrates have plummeted, liturgy has widely degraded, and catechesis seems ineffective against a secular juggernaut. Even those who have tried to stay faithful feel lost, weak, and discouraged.
It is not 587 B.C. by a longshot, but we cannot help but see some similarities. It may be good to recall this simple, humble text summoning all to repentance and encouraging the faithful remnant to stay true:
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land (2 Chron. 7:14).
Well, what do you think? Is this really so complicated? The Lord seeks a humble, broken people who seek Him and His truth. Are you among them? Be careful, the Lord is not seeking a people who are proud and who denounce others; He had that in the Pharisees. What if changing others were not my primary task? What if repenting more deeply of my own sins were my focus? What if humbling myself were to come before finding fault in others? What if turning from my own sins were what would get God’s attention and bring healing on this land?
It’s pretty hard to change the world, but when it comes to my own life I stand a chance to be able to affect my acreage and claim it back for God.
King Jesus is listening all day long to hear a humble sinner pray. Too often we assess the problems in others, in the rival political party, in secularism, in culture. All of these areas certainly need help, but when do we ever get around to following what God asks of us: that we humble ourselves, pray, seek His face, and repent of our sinful ways?
I don’t know how or even if our land will be healed. Better cultures and empires than ours have fallen. But empires and cultures consist of individuals, and among us God seeks those who will humble themselves, seek His face, and turn from their sinful ways. Why not me? Why not you? Why complicate things? It is easier to wear slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth. What is God asking you to do to change this Hell-bound, sin-soaked world? Why not do it? What if the change of the whole world were to begin with you and me?
Pride is our most pervasive and serious sin; humility is its antidote and the foundation of our spiritual life. And as the remedy to our most deep-seated pathology, it must be strong medicine. Humility is hard to swallow and has a lot of things it needs to work on.
Let’s consider humility under a number of headings.
I. The Foundation of Humility – Indeed, humility as a foundation is a good image, since by it we bow toward the earth or soil (humus in Latin) and abase ourselves before God. Foundations and holes in the earth go together.
By humility we understand that we are small, poor, barely more than dust and water. If God does not scoop us from the earth, we are nothing. Only by His command is the mysterious spark and organizational principle of life ignited. We are wholly dependent on God; our life is contingent. We do not explain ourselves at all. We are dependent not only on our parents (who cannot explain themselves either), we are dependent on God’s purely gratuitous act of summoning us from dust. We are given existence by Him who is existence itself.
And we are given not merely existence, but something mysterious called “life.”
Think you have life figured out? Think you can define it? Hmm … Imagine before you an acorn and a small rock of similar size. One (the acorn) has the mysterious spark of life in it; the other does not. Plant both in the earth and add water. One transforms into a mighty oak; the other remains unchanged for thousands of years. What is the difference between the acorn and the rock? “Life,” you say. Well, tell me what that is. Can you weigh it in a scale? Can you see its essence under a microscope? We see life’s effects, but we do not see it. We detect its absence, but where has it gone? What exactly departs when a human, an animal, or a plant dies?
And thus humility, like a foundation, bids us to bow low to the earth and admit that we know very little. Even the most basic thing (life) that enables everything else eludes us and taunts us by its mystery.
II. The First Humility – When it comes to humility, we distinguish a humility toward God and a humility toward others. Humility toward God is simple (and first and foremost) because our duty in that regard is clear. There is no ambiguity in comparing ourselves to Him who is perfection, glory, and purity.
Humility toward others, though, has ambiguities that can only be resolved by reference to God. For not everything in another person is superior to us; not everything in others is perfect truth or purity.
But indeed, our first humility is toward God. And by it we recognize that we are nothing without Him. But even more, no good work of ours, not even the slightest salutary act, can happen without the grace of God. This is the first humility.
III. The Finding of Humility – Humility also recognizes that neither do we have meaning, direction or purpose apart from God. And thus we must look to the Book of Creation and the Book of Scripture, the Word of God, to discover and obey the truth and meaning given by God in what is created and what is revealed.
Atheists and materialists boldly assert that nothing has meaning, purpose, direction, or sense. They hold that everything that has happened is by chance, a random, meaningless crashing together of atoms (wherever they came from). But even atheists cannot seem to accept or live by their radical theory. Only one of them, Nietzsche, was ever “brave” enough to really live in a meaningless world. And he died insane.
But for us who would seek for humility, we must sit before what God has created and what God has revealed in Scripture, humbly observing, learning, and obeying what God teaches us there. We do not simply project meaning; we must humbly seek it, find it, and obey the truth and meaning of things.
IV. The Frank Truth of Humility – Humility also admits the frank and obvious truth that we are sinners. We have base, selfish, and narrow hearts that are strangely attracted by what we know is harmful and resistant to what we know is good. Our wills are inconsistent, vacillating, whimsical, and yet at the same time stubborn. We tend to maximize the minimum and minimize the maximum. Our darkened minds seem almost to prefer foolish and dubious explanations to what is clear, common sense, and obviously true. We almost seem to want others to lie to us. We love to rationalize and daydream. Knowing a little we think we know it all. Frankly, we are a mess. We are only saved with difficulty and because God is powerful, patient, and abundant in grace and mercy.
V. The Fellowship of Humility – St. Thomas Aquinas says quite poetically, “Wherefore, every man, in respect to what is his own, should subject himself to every neighbor in respect to what the neighbor has of God’s” (Summa Theologica IIa IIae 161, a 3). For indeed, our neighbor has many things from God that are to be respected. They have things which we share, but also many things that we do not have at all. I do not have all the gifts; you do not have all the gifts; but together we have all the gifts. But we have them all only by mutual respect and humble submission. And thus our humility toward others is really humility toward God, who wills that others should be part of His governance of us, and of our completion.
But note, too, a careful distinction that flows from what St. Thomas teaches in regard to humility toward others. It is not to be reduced to mere human respect or flattery, or rooted in worldly and servile fear. True humility has us abase ourselves before others based on what is of God in them. The humble person does not abase himself before others for what is wicked in them. Indeed, many holy and humble people have had to rebuke the wicked and suffer because of it.
Consider our Lord, who found it necessary to rebuke the leaders of His day. Consider John the Baptist, who rebuked Herod; or the Apostles, who refused the command to speak Jesus’ name no longer. These were humble men, but they also knew that the first humility belongs to God, and that no humility toward human beings can ever eclipse or overrule the humility due to God.
Therefore the modern notion of “Who am I to judge?” is not proper humility. Rather, it is rooted more in a kind of sloth (cloaked in the self-congratulatory language of tolerance) that avoids humbly seeking truth and being conformed to it. The truly humble person is open to correcting others and to being corrected, because humility always regards the truth.
VI. The Focus of Humility – And that lead us finally to a kind of focal statement about humility: “Humility is reverence for the truth about ourselves.” Indeed, the focus of humility is always the truth.
And what is the truth? You are gifted, but incomplete.
Humility doesn’t say, “Aw shucks, I’m nothing.” That is not true. You are God’s creation and are imbued with gifts. But note this: they are gifts. You did not acquire them on your own. God gave them to you. And most often, He gave them to you through others who raised you, taught you, and helped you to attain the skills and discover the gifts that were within you. So you do have gifts. But they are gifts. Scripture says, What have you that you have not received? And if you have received, why do you glory as though you had not received? (1 Cor 4:7)
But though you are gifted, you do not have all the gifts. And this is the other truth of humility: that God and others must augment your many deficiencies. For whatever your gifts, and however numerous they are, you do not have all the gifts or even most of them. That is only possible in relationship with God and His people.
Ok, admit it, true humility is tough. And if you don’t think so, then try the test below from St. Anselm, who lists seven degrees of humility. How far along are you?
Here are St. Anselm’s degrees of humility (as quoted in the Summa Theologica IIa IIae q. 161a. 6):
1. to acknowledge oneself contemptible,
2. to grieve on account of it,
3. to confess it,
4. to convince others to believe this,
5. to bear patiently that this be said of us,
6. to suffer oneself to be treated with contempt, and
7. to love being thus treated
In this video do you think that Lancelot might be struggling just a bit with pride?
I am writing this post early on a Friday, to automatically post at my usual time. I have been staying at Bethany Beach Delaware, just north of Ocean City Maryland.
We received a mandatory evacuation order last night due to impending hurricane Irene. SO my vacation ends one day early. Alas.
This evacuation comes two days after an East Coast Earthquake that damaged the beach house where we were staying (not serious). Back in DC the earthquake damaged my parish: cracks in our newly restored frescos on the Church clerestory, and the smokestack at the school was cracked and leaning. It will have to be taken down on Friday before the high winds of the hurricane come.
Ok we’ll survive, but all this is a humility lesson. Message to humanity: you are small, the world as you know it is passing away. In fact we’re so small that we have to run when that point is made obvious. What a sight to see, all the bureaucrats and politicians, in the “most powerful city in the world” running out of buildings and standing on the street. Imagine me now, sitting in a long backup of evacuees fleeing the beach lest we be crushed or drowned by the power of swirling winds and rain.
From space a hurricane looks so beautiful, so symmetrical. But beneath its beauty terrible destruction awaits things and people in its path.
We are small, and we are contingent. And twice this week many folks on the east coast have had to run for their life. I am mindful of the words of an old hymn:
O tell of God’s might, O sing of God’s grace,
whose robe is the light, whose canopy space,
His chariots of wrath, the deep thunderclouds form,
and dark is God’s path on the wings of the storm.
Frail children of dust, and feeble as frail,
in thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail;
thy mercies how tender, how firm to the end,
our Maker, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend.
Yes, humility should make us turn to God who alone can be said to over power the things of this world that make us run. We may be troubled that he allows such destructive things, but his wisdom does permit them.
For our pride is the most deadly thing in our life, it is our greatest enemy. Perhaps the greatest gift God can give us is the gift of humility. Trust God, our maker, defender, redeemer and friend.
Here’s a little video I put together to recall humility
I, perhaps like you, have to see folks I love and care about through some difficult periods in their life. One neighbor and parishioner just lost her eight year old daughter to cancer. A number of parishioners are seeking work and praying daily for it, but no work offers seem forth-coming. Still others cry out for the alleviation of any number of different crosses. I too have lots of things for which I pray, and sometimes I get discouraged or even angry when God seems to say, “no” or, “wait.”
One thing I have surely learned about true prayer, and that it is, I have to be humble, very humble. The Scriptures say, we do not know how to pray as we ought (Romans 8:26). Many other translations of this text say even more emphatically: We do not know what we ought to pray for. Yes, it is true, and yet we are often so sure of what is best for us, or best for others. But what we find the desirable outcome is not necessarily the best outcome. And this insight requires of us great humility. We see so little and understand even less. When we ask for some outcome, and it is not wrong to do so, we need to ask humbly. God alone knows the best answer and when to answer. This is humility.
There is an old teaching that basically goes: Many think of prayer as trying to get God to do your will. But true prayer is trying to understand what God’s will is and do it. I heard and African American preacher put it this way:
You got a lotta people that talk about naming and claiming, and calling and hauling…But there’s just something about saying, “THY will be done!” that we’ve forgot.
It’s not wrong to ask. The Book of James says, You have not because you ask not (James 4:2). But we do need to ask with great humility because, truth be told, we don’t really know what is best. James and John came to Jesus one day seeking high positions in the new administration (Kingdom). Jesus said to them, You don’t know what you are asking (Mk 10:38). And the truth is, we don’t.
So ask, but ask humbly.
St. Augustine writes beautifully on this matter in his letter to Proba:
Paul himself was not exempt from such ignorance….To prevent him from becoming puffed-up over the greatness of the revelations that had been given to him, he was given….a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet him, he asked the Lord three times to take it away from him…..even such a great saint’s prayer had to be refused: My grace is enough for you: my power is at its best in weakness. (2 Cor 12:9)
So when we are suffering afflictions that might be doing us either good or harm, [we ought to remember that] we do not to know how to pray as we ought. [B]ecause they are hard to endure and painful, because they are contrary to our nature (which is weak) we, like all mankind, pray to have our afflictions taken from us. [But], we owe this much respect to the Lord our God, that if he does not take our afflictions away, we should not consider ourselves ignored and neglected. But [rather, we] should hope to gain some greater good through the patient acceptance of suffering. For my power is at its best in weakness.
These words are written so that we should not be proud of ourselves…. when we ask for something it would be better for us not to get; and also that we should not become utterly dejected if we are not given what we ask for, despairing of God’s mercy towards us. [I]t might be that what we have been asking for could have brought us some still greater affliction, or it could completely ruin us through the corrupting influence of prosperity. In such cases, it is clear that we cannot know how to pray as we ought.
Hence if anything happens contrary to our prayer [request], we ought to bear the disappointment patiently, give thanks to God, and be sure that it was better for God’s will to be done than our own.
The Mediator himself has given us an example of this. When he had prayed, My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by, he transformed the human will that was in him because he had assumed human nature and added: Nevertheless, let it be as you, not I, would have it. Thus, truly, By the obedience of one man many have been made righteous. (St Augustine Letter to Proba (Ep 130 14.25ff)
This song reminds us that the answer to our prayers is often caught up in the paradox of the cross:
When I was a little kid the science books said that the universe was in a steady state and had existed forever. There were some theories about the universe actually expanding but these were not accepted by most who declared the steady state universe to be a matter of “settled” science. Though evidence had been building through the 20th Century for an expanding universe (red shift etc.) and the “Big Bang” that started everything, many ridiculed the Big Bang Theory with slogans like “Big Bust” and “Big Boom.” Discoveries in the mid sixties (e.g. background microwave radiation) shifted the debate and the Big Bang Theory won the day. But the fact is, in my own lifetime cosmology (How we understand the universe) has undergone a seismic shift. The science was not so settled after all.
When I was in High School the scientific world was all abuzz with climate change. But in the 1970s “climate change” referred to the fact that a new ice age was coming. It was held that man made pollution would so block the sun’s rays, that by the year 2000 the ice caps would be advancing and winters in the north would become increasingly frigid and summers shorter. The usual calamities were predicted: widespread hunger since growing seasons would shorten, extinctions etc. By the dreaded year, 2000, many the same climatologists were predicting global warming and the same catastrophic consequences but now postponed to 2050 or beyond. These climatologists demand that we accept that their conclusions are “settled science.” Another seismic shift in my own lifetime and pardon me if I am a bit less certain than is demanded of me.
Science has brought us many blessings, but it would seem humility is not among those blessings. We do well to rediscover words like theory, possibility, assumption, premise, thesis, supposition and the like.
I am not attacking science here. True science is comfortable with the fact that, as evidence changes, so do theories. Likewise, our capacity to measure changes and generally gets better. This brings forth new data and shifts theories, sometimes in significant ways. This is part of the scientific method wherein data and evidence are accepted and interpreted in an on-going way so that theories grow and sometimes change.
But we are living in a world increasingly dominated by advocacy science. The “cause” too often eclipses the science. Funding too has become a pernicious influence and whole scientific disciplines start to follow the money more than the data. “Popular” and politically savvy theories get funded, unpopular less politically correct ones do not. Popular media also influences science more than it should. Some scientists get the interview, others do not and thus pop science often eclipses the truer and careful laboratory science.
Through it all, there are still wonderful scientists and great things happening in science. And the best of it is restoring a lot of humility to the equation. Quantum theory is bewildering to be sure but it is showing the limits of our current understanding. Physics is bumping up against metaphysics, science is rubbing shoulders with philosophy, the material world seems to be pointing beyond itself.
This is not an essay in radical skepticism. There ARE many things we do know. But there are so many more that we do not know. We are not even sure how something as basic as gravity works. What we know amounts to a period at the end of a sentence in one book in the Library of Congress. And there are a LOT of books in the Library of Congress. Scripture says of the created world, Beyond these, many things lie hid; only a few of Gods’ works have we seen. (Sirach 43:34). It is humility that is necessary in the great pursuit of science.
In theology too humility is essential. Here, as in science, there are many things we know by faith and are certain about, things which God himself has revealed. But many other things are mysterious to us and we dare not ever think we have God or even the mystery of our own life fully figured out. God is “Other” and cannot be reduced to our thoughts or words. And thus we speak with clarity about what has certainly been revealed. But we also reverence the mystery of what is beyond our understanding with humility. To hand on what has been revealed intact and to insist upon it is not the arrogance that some claim. Rather it is the humility of accepting what God has revealed intact without selectively choosing what merely appeals to us. But even as we speak of what we surely know by God’s revelation, we are always humbly aware of what we do not know.
In the Book of Proverbs there is an important reminder: Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him. (Prov 26:12)
By the way, double click on the picture above and you’ll get a better look at how beautiful it really is. It also illustrates how the huge mountains on this planet are tiny compared to the vast universe. So too our knowledge compared to what can be known.
Here is a good video that shows a consistent lack of humility in the many prognosticators of our day. It is a very cleverly done video.
We are often quite certain that we know what is best for us. Therefore, we pray, asking God for good health, prosperity, or victory in some cause. But what if it is better for us to be unhealthy, to be poor, or to lose? Can we really say we know what is best and confidently set before God our agenda?
