Humility and Acceptance

      Humility is a remarkable virtue.  It isn’t one that most of us cultivate, but it is probably the most wonderful characteristic that we can possess.  The problem with humility is that it doesn’t draw any attention to itself.  Humble people tend to remain in the background.  They don’t get credit for much of anything.  Often they are shy and aren’t in the forefront of what is going on around them.  This, unfortunately isn’t what a lot of us want.

We all want some measure of attention.  We learned this when we were little children.  Brothers and sisters vie for their parents attention.  Here I am!  Look at me!  Even our pets do this.  We presently have custody of our granddaughter’s little dog.  She constantly is trying to get our attention.  She stands in front of us and wags her tail.  Often we have no idea what she wants.  We take her out, we feed her, we do what we think will make her happy, but there she is again a moment later, standing in front of us wagging her tail.  Frustrating sometimes, but certainly in keeping with the way all of us act from time to time.  While we are taught to be humble, we love attention.

It is interesting that the lesson from Jeremiah and the Psalm cry out for attention from God because of persecution.  The authors want God to stand against those who are trying to destroy them.  In these passages, it isn’t enough that the author is saved from the trouble, he also wants the persecutors to be destroyed.  That is probably the height of arrogance.  Destroy those who don’t believe in God.  Protect me from their terrible persecution.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus is trying to help his disciples understand what is going to happen to him.  He has told them about his own coming persecution.  He tells them that he will be arrested, crucified and that he will rise again.   This is the moment when Peter says to him, No, Lord, this must never happen to you!  Jesus told him at that moment to get behind me, Satan!

      Here, later in the Gospel, Jesus discovers that the disciples have been arguing among themselves about who is the greatest of them.  His answer to this is the essence of humility.  He puts a small child among them and says to them: Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.

Here is the answer to all of their arguing.  It is also useful for all of us to consider what it means for our own arrogance.  Do we think that we are better than others?  Or is it possible that God loves all of us dearly, and we are simply one of his children.  That is not something that we tend to think about a lot.  Often, we think that we are somehow set apart and better than others.

I’ve been somewhat amazed at the present turmoil in the Middle East that has been brought about by an ignorant video portraying the prophet Mohammad in very unflattering terms.  Many Muslims have seized this opportunity to attack the United States for what it believes is blasphemy against their religion.  Our response to all of this has been to denounce the video and worry that those who are attacking us don’t quite understand what is going on.  Perhaps we are the ones who don’t quite understand what is going on.

     Many of the people in the Middle East are somewhat tired of the efforts of the United States to control their countries.  We have spent a lot of money and the lives of our troops trying to bring what we call democracy to them.  Often, we don’t understand what that translates into for those people.  We have witnessed a remarkable event that we have called the “Arab Spring,” which has toppled dictators and sometimes installed radical Muslims in their place.  We aren’t always comfortable with how these things have turned out.  Instead of letting these people choose for themselves the kind of government that they want, we want to help them in their choice.  There is a lot of our own arrogance present in this kind of thinking.

Remember what Jesus is telling us.  Accepting a little child is tantamount to accepting him and the one who sent him.  We need to learn what our acceptance of them means.  It means giving them the benefit of the doubt and letting them grow into the mature people whom we can continue to love and respect.  As all of us with children know, that is sometimes difficult.  They don’t always behave the way that we would want them to behave.  Accepting them means accepting them and their behavior.  We need to let them grow, make mistakes and profit from them.  We don’t always need to call the shots.

      That is probably what we need to understand about the Middle East.   These countries are growing and developing themselves according to their own cultures.  Our own humility is what is at stake here.  Forcing results that only appeal to us is certainly not going to bring harmony to either us or them.  Accepting them is what we need to learn to do.  When we can do that, peace is the certain ultimate result.  No matter who benefits. We all will.