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Author: C. Beau Hilton <cbeauhilton@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 2021 08:53:05 -0600
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+# Humility
+
+## What is humility?
+
+humility (n.)
+
+... from Old French _umelite_
+"humility, modesty, sweetness"
+
+... from Latin _humilitatem_
+"lowness, small stature, insignificance;
+baseness, littleness of mind,"
+
+... from _humilis_
+"lowly, humble,"
+literally "on the ground,"
+
+from _humus_
+"earth,"
+from PIE root _dhghem-_
+"earth."
+
+- [Etymonline, "Humility"]("https://www.etymonline.com/word/humility")
+
+So, to be humble is, literally,
+to be "down to earth."
+
+## What is humility good for? James 4
+
+Humility is useful for many ends,
+but consistently in scripture it is
+invoked as the most useful tool
+to create peace among
+the very human members of the Body of Christ.
+
+Contention comes from pride and lust
+(==friendship with the world),
+and the antidote is humility.
+
+"From whence come wars and fightings among you?
+Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your [bodily] members?
+...
+Ye adulterers and adulteresses,
+know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
+whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
+Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain,
+The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
+But he giveth more grace.
+Wherefore he saith,
+God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
+Submit yourselves therefore to God.
+Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
+Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you.
+Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
+Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep:
+let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
+Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord,
+and he shall lift you up."
+
+And then immediately,
+"Speak not evil of one another, brethren
+...
+who art thou that judgest another?"
+
+### Purify your hearts, ye double minded
+
+"If only it were all so simple!
+If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds,
+and it were necessary only to
+separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
+But the line dividing good and evil
+cuts through the heart of every human being.
+And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
+
+"During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place;
+sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil
+and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.
+One and the same human being is, at various ages,
+under various circumstances, a totally different human being.
+At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.
+But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
+...
+Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm,
+we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out
+that they were the executioners and we weren't."
+
+- Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p 168
+
+## Practice 00: When reading for edification, do not identify with the heroes. Identify with the villains.
+
+Because the heroes write the stories,
+we don't often see their villainy,
+and anyway it's more useful to root out our own pride
+than to stoke our egos.
+
+Nephi is the great hero of his books,
+and Laman and Lemuel are the villains.
+But of course it's more complex than this,
+and there are times when L/L are good,
+when they do the hard thing with aplomb,
+when their complaints seem very reasonable,
+and where Nephi is kind of a jerk.
+
+2 Nephi 4 helps us reframe the rest of the two books,
+and see where Nephi's heart is hard,
+his anger hot,
+his will and commitment struggling.
+
+"Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord,
+in showing me his great and marvelous works,
+my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am!
+Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh;
+my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.
+I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and sins which do so easily beset me.
+And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins;
+nevertheless, I known in whom I have trusted."
+
+... Nephi recounts the many ways the Lord has blessed him ...
+
+"O then, if I have seen so great things...
+why should my heart weep
+and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow,
+and my flesh waste away,
+and my strength slacken,
+because of mine afflictions?
+And why should I yield to sin, because of my flesh?
+Yea, why should I give way to temptations,
+that the evil one have place in my heart
+to destroy my peace and afflict my soul?
+Why am I angry because of mine enemy?
+Awake, my soul!
+No longer droop in sin.
+Rejoice, O my heart,
+and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.
+Do not anger again because of mine enemies.
+Do not slacken my strength because of mine afflictions.
+O Lord,
+wilt thou redeem my soul?
+...May the gates of hell be continually shut before me,
+because that my heart is broken and my spirit is contrite!
+O Lord,
+wilt thou not shut the gates of thy righteousness before me,
+that I may walk in the path of the low valley...
+O Lord,
+I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever.
+I will not put my trust in the art of flesh..."
+
+## Luke 18:9-18
+
+And he also spoke this parable to certain persons
+who were confident that they were upright
+while despising everyone else:
+"Two men went up to the Temple to pray,
+the one a Pharisee,
+the other a tax-collector.
+The Pharisee stood up straight
+and prayed these things about himself:
+'God, I thank you that
+I am not like the rest of mankind
+--rapacious, unjust, adulterous --
+or even like this tax-collector;
+I fast twice a week and
+tithe from everything whatsoever that I earn.'
+But the tax-collector, standing a good distance off,
+would not lift his eyes to heaven,
+but beat upon his breast, saying,
+'God, grant mercy to me, a sinner.'
+I tell you, the latter rather than the former
+went down to his house vindicated,
+because everyone who exalts himself
+will be humbled,
+and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
+
+- David Bentley Hart, _The New Testament: A Translation_, pp 149-150
+
+## Practice 01: try out the Jesus Prayer
+
+One of the oldest Christian traditions
+is the prayer typically called, in English anyway,
+"The Jesus Prayer."
+There are a few different versions,
+and the specifics really don't matter much,
+but the idea is to address
+the listener (Jesus),
+ask for mercy,
+and acknowledge our own fallen state.
+The trick is to repeat it enough to mean each part,
+and repeat it with the goal of
+getting closer to God
+by getting farther from our own pride.
+It's close to the simplest possible Christian meditation,
+next to the _kyrie_,
+which just uses the middle part of the prayer,
+asking for mercy,
+because that encapsulates the rest
+(we know to whom we are talking,
+and if we are asking for mercy
+it is only ever because we are inadequate on our own).
+
+Another recommendation is to keep it social,
+not in that the prayer is communal,
+but in that the motivation behind humility
+all over the scriptures is to
+help us all just get along.
+Think about the ways we might be exalting
+ourselves above others,
+seeing only our own strengths
+and others' weaknesses,
+and how being delivered into mercy
+is a delivery into compassion,
+so that by loving others as much as ourselves,
+so we can get over our silly quarrels,
+and release our silly pride
+into the freedom that comes from relying
+on God rather than the arm of flesh.
