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humility_talk.md (7952B)


      1 # Humility
      2 
      3 ## What is humility?
      4 
      5 humility (n.)
      6 
      7 ... from Old French _umelite_
      8 "humility, modesty, sweetness"
      9 
     10 ... from Latin _humilitatem_
     11 "lowness, small stature, insignificance;
     12 baseness, littleness of mind,"
     13 
     14 ... from _humilis_
     15 "lowly, humble,"
     16 literally "on the ground,"
     17 
     18 from _humus_
     19 "earth,"
     20 from PIE root _dhghem-_
     21 "earth."
     22 
     23 - [Etymonline, "Humility"]("https://www.etymonline.com/word/humility")
     24 
     25 So, to be humble is, literally,
     26 to be "down to earth."
     27 
     28 ## What is humility good for?
     29 ### James 4
     30 
     31 Humility is useful for many ends,
     32 but consistently in scripture it is
     33 invoked as the most useful tool
     34 to create peace among
     35 the very human members of the Body of Christ.
     36 
     37 Contention comes from pride and lust
     38 (==friendship with the world),
     39 and the antidote is humility.
     40 
     41 "From whence come wars and fightings among you?
     42 Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your [bodily] members?
     43 ...
     44 Ye adulterers and adulteresses,
     45 know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
     46 whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
     47 Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain,
     48 The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy?
     49 But he giveth more grace.
     50 Wherefore he saith,
     51 God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.
     52 Submit yourselves therefore to God.
     53 Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
     54 Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you.
     55 Cleanse your hands, ye sinners, and purify your hearts, ye double minded.
     56 Be afflicted, and mourn, and weep:
     57 let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to heaviness.
     58 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord,
     59 and he shall lift you up."
     60 
     61 And then immediately,
     62 "Speak not evil of one another, brethren
     63 ...
     64 who art thou that judgest another?"
     65 
     66 ### Purify your hearts, ye double minded
     67 
     68 A little more on being double minded and purifying our hearts,
     69 and the processing of becoming lifted up in the Lord
     70 via affliction, mourning, and weeping.
     71 
     72 "If only it were all so simple!
     73 If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds,
     74 and it were necessary only to
     75 separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.
     76 But the line dividing good and evil
     77 cuts through the heart of every human being.
     78 And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
     79 
     80 "During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place;
     81 sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil
     82 and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.
     83 One and the same human being is, at various ages,
     84 under various circumstances, a totally different human being.
     85 At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.
     86 But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.
     87 ...
     88 Confronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm,
     89 we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out
     90 that they were the executioners and we weren't."
     91 
     92 - Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, p 168
     93 
     94 ## Practice 00: When reading for edification, do not identify with the heroes. Identify with the villains.
     95 
     96 Because the heroes write the stories,
     97 we don't often see their villainy,
     98 and anyway it's more useful to root out our own pride
     99 than to stoke our egos.
    100 
    101 Nephi is the great hero of his books,
    102 and Laman and Lemuel are the villains.
    103 But of course it's more complex than this,
    104 and there are times when L/L are good,
    105 when they do the hard thing with aplomb,
    106 when their complaints seem very reasonable,
    107 and where Nephi is kind of a jerk.
    108 
    109 2 Nephi 4 helps us reframe the rest of the two books,
    110 and see where Nephi's heart is hard,
    111 his anger hot,
    112 his will and commitment struggling.
    113 
    114 We'll read part of his psalm, because it's great,
    115 and because it's the one part where Nephi identifies
    116 himself as the villain in the story.
    117 Then, when rereading the Nephis or any other scripture,
    118 see if we can identify lessons by
    119 seeing to the hearts of the villains,
    120 and then finding our own hearts within them.
    121 What would the Psalm of Laman look like?
    122 What would our own psalms look like?
    123 
    124 "Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord,
    125 in showing me his great and marvelous works,
    126 my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am!
    127 Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh;
    128 my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.
    129 I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and sins which do so easily beset me.
    130 And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins;
    131 nevertheless, I known in whom I have trusted."
    132 
    133 ... Nephi recounts the many ways the Lord has blessed him ...
    134 
    135 "O then, if I have seen so great things...
    136 why should my heart weep
    137 and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow,
    138 and my flesh waste away,
    139 and my strength slacken,
    140 because of mine afflictions?
    141 And why should I yield to sin, because of my flesh?
    142 Yea, why should I give way to temptations,
    143 that the evil one have place in my heart
    144 to destroy my peace and afflict my soul?
    145 Why am I angry because of mine enemy?
    146 Awake, my soul!
    147 No longer droop in sin.
    148 Rejoice, O  my heart,
    149 and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.
    150 Do not anger again because of mine enemies.
    151 Do not slacken my strength because of mine afflictions.
    152 O Lord,
    153 wilt thou redeem my soul?
    154 ...May the gates of hell be continually shut before me,
    155 because that my heart is broken and my spirit is contrite!
    156 O Lord,
    157 wilt thou not shut the gates of thy righteousness before me,
    158 that I may walk in the path of the low valley...
    159 O Lord,
    160 I have trusted in thee, and I will trust in thee forever.
    161 I will not put my trust in the arm of flesh..."
    162 
    163 ## Practice 01: try out the Jesus Prayer
    164 ## Luke 18:9-18
    165 
    166 And he also spoke this parable to certain persons
    167 who were confident that they were upright
    168 while despising everyone else:
    169 "Two men went up to the Temple to pray,
    170 the one a Pharisee,
    171 the other a tax-collector.
    172 The Pharisee stood up straight
    173 and prayed these things about himself:
    174 
    175 'God, I thank you that
    176 I am not like the rest of mankind
    177 --rapacious, unjust, adulterous --
    178 or even like this tax-collector;
    179 I fast twice a week and
    180 tithe from everything whatsoever that I earn.'
    181 
    182 But the tax-collector, standing a good distance off,
    183 would not lift his eyes to heaven,
    184 but beat upon his breast, saying,
    185 'God, grant mercy to me, a sinner.'
    186 
    187 I tell you, the latter rather than the former
    188 went down to his house vindicated,
    189 because everyone who exalts himself
    190 will be humbled,
    191 and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
    192 
    193 - David Bentley Hart, _The New Testament: A Translation_, pp 149-150
    194 
    195 One of the oldest Christian traditions
    196 is the prayer typically called, in English anyway,
    197 "The Jesus Prayer."
    198 There are a few different versions,
    199 and the specifics really don't matter much,
    200 but the idea is to address
    201 the listener (Jesus),
    202 ask for mercy,
    203 and acknowledge our own fallen state.
    204 
    205 'God, grant mercy to me, a sinner.'
    206 
    207 The trick is to repeat it enough to mean each part,
    208 and repeat it with the goal of
    209 getting closer to God
    210 by getting farther from our own pride.
    211 It's close to the simplest possible Christian meditation,
    212 next to the _kyrie_, "Lord,"
    213 abstracted from "_kyrie eleison_",
    214 "Lord, have mercy.
    215 (we know to whom we are talking,
    216 and if we are talking to him we are asking for mercy
    217 and if we need mercy it is only ever because we are inadequate on our own).
    218 
    219 Another recommendation is to keep it social,
    220 not in that the prayer is communal,
    221 but in that the motivation behind humility
    222 all over the scriptures is to
    223 help us all just get along.
    224 
    225 Think about the ways we might be exalting
    226 ourselves above others,
    227 seeing only our own strengths
    228 and others' weaknesses,
    229 and how being delivered into mercy
    230 is a delivery into compassion.
    231 By loving others as much as ourselves,
    232 by seeing how we are debased and full of pride,
    233 so we can get over our silly quarrels,
    234 give mercy to those who are just as imperfect as ourselves,
    235 and release our silly pride
    236 into the freedom that comes from relying
    237 on God rather than the arm of flesh.