Humility: A Common Ground for Us All
My dad was big, and bigger than life to me, his only son. I knew he had all the answers, especially to the big questions in life. Consequently, I felt like I needed to learn and know all the answers. It caught me off guard then, when in a casual moment I said to him around college graduation time, “Dad, I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.” His response caught me off guard still more: “Neither do I.”
It was an unexpected and deeply reassuring moment of humility on both our parts I think; it certainly was for me. There was suddenly permission to NOT have, or HAVE to have, “all the answers” when I thought and felt like I had to. There was acceptance of the idea that OTHER people could have answers I DON’T have and that I could learn from them.
Humility. It’s a virtue our country and culture would benefit from having more. I have been listening to various political debates and interviews, trying to get a sense of the candidates’ character, competence, and kindness. It has consistently frustrated me that no candidate of either party answers the interviewers’ direct question directly, even after being asked twice and sometimes three times. Just once I would like to hear a candidate say, “Yes, I said that,” or “Yes, I voted that way,” and then go on to say, “In hindsight, I think that was a mistake” or, “I have learned more since that decision, and I would vote differently now because I now understand that issue differently.” It would require humility and great courage and, I think, it would be the right thing to do. It would say honestly that we are all growing, that none of us have all the answers, and that we need to work together to fashion better answers for everyone’s benefit.
This Sunday I will be speaking on humility, knowing full well – all these years later – that I still don’t have all the answers. However, I believe that with a spirit of kindness and respect, we will together fashion better answers to help EVERYone move forward.
See you in worship!
