At last we come to the end: Act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. Now for the “walk humbly” part.
It would be hard to argue the fact that Will Ferrell’s supreme gift is his ability to create  characters that are big, loud, dumb - yet somehow lovable – horse’s rear ends. In so doing, he exposes the tendency in us all to think a little more highly of ourselves than our actual greatness merits. The prima facie case, of course, is his ass-ertion in “Anchor Man”:
“I’m not sure how to say this, but I’m kind of a big deal.”
I think most of the time I’m painfully aware of my own weaknesses and shortcomings. But there are days. Days when it’s easy to believe you are the sharpest crayon in your little box. Which reminds me of a North Dakotan joke (we tell those in Montana): What do you call a North Dakotan with half a brain? A genius. You see what I mean? Now I’ve isolated my North Dakotan readership with arrogant presumption and derision of their mental proficiencies. If they have finally gotten the Internet there, I’m hosed!
And God asks us to walk humbly with Him. Which leads the finite logical mind to start down a road of self-justification. We ask:
“Why does God care if we are humble? If He’s so great and we’re so..not great, what’s He trying to prove? Does He need us to grovel to feel good about Himself? Does He just want us constantly reminded we are less than navel lint? Is He that insecure?”
There’s a whole school of thought in Christianity that focuses squarely on one core truth, first and foremost: all of humanity is sinful, fallen, broken, perverted, lost, and incapable of even the slightest shred of decency. This fact is driven home with endless lists of why, how, and for which of our acts we are eternally fallen beyond all repair. Jonathan Edwards delivered the master thesis on the subject, and though many others have followed, few have matched his rhetorical sound and fury. Here’s a fun quote:
O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in: ’tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell; you hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have no interest in any mediator, and nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you ever have done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.
The thing is, Edwards and his ilk are totally right. We are scum. And outside of life in Jesus, incapable of any goodness of our own. But this is not the core message of the Gospel. Else wise (to use the olde English)Â it is not that great of news. It’s like having your death sentence commuted to life in solitary confinement. You’ve escaped death, but to live what kind of life?
Even Edwards did not focus entirely on God’s wrath (though he and the other Awakening chaps seemed a bit obsessed with the subject). The insanely good news the Gospel represents, as we have said before, is that we are freed from death to life. Real, complete, and full life. In redeeming us from our sins, God is acting to set the world right – to operate as He intended, in relationship with us.
So back to walking humbly. I think it’s about balance (surprise, surprise). Our focus is not on how sinful and hopeless our nature is (though we agree it is). Jesus died for our sins so we can be free from them and their guilt. But our eyes are also not fixed squarely on just how special we are because we have been brought to the truth. We are no better in and of ourselves, but we also no longer rely on our own goodness alone.
On the other end of things from those who flog their congregations weekly with just how rotten they are (not a hard hypothesis to support) are the equally imbalanced Christian Tony Robbinses (is that the plural of Robbins?) who tout the greatness of themselves, their church, their teachings, and so on.
Not long ago I saw a TV commercial for a church showing good looking, young, suburban hipsters sitting at church together and having many good times reading the Bible. The voice over was a pastor saying how the people of the church were “cool, and smart, and good looking.” I am not making this up. Translation: Jesus makes your teeth whiter and your clothes hipper and your IQ higher. As if. And monkeys might…
The grunge / indie / urban / emergent / emerging / new skool / postmodern – whatever you call the Christians with their finger on the pulse of American culture (I can’t keep the names straight) – dudes now have an even newer twist on this old trend: putting together websites to critique the ridiculousness and excesses of other Christians, or even rate their churches. Translation: the idiots we write about are lame, but we know they are, so we are not lame. We are cool Christian people who are hip and with the times. You know – like all the guys back in high school who had to tell you they were cool and / or not lame. Those guys rocked!
And here I am blogging about how much better I am than them, because I have seen their hypocrisy. Oops.
You see the problem, right? Both ends suffer from a Ron Burgandy brand of narcissism. “I’m kind of a big deal.” And God reminds us to walk humbly – to remember that we are capable of excess, and capable of excessively critiquing the excesses of others. To recall the state we were rescued from, and to remember that apart from God’s grace we’d slide right back into it. And to put our sin in its place – not as the center of our every conversation, but nailed to the Cross.
 And nothing rings more true in my own soul than this great truth: “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” That is, everything on earth draws its life and breath and existence from God Himself. And in realizing that I am utterly dependent on Him, not only for salvation, but for my daily existence, I find the most profound peace and comfort. I am not a big deal. But I know someone who is. And for now, He covers me.
It’s pretty easy for me to think I’m a big deal. It’s also pretty easy for me to become obsessed with my own shortcomings, replaying my own “fail blog” in my my head in the darkest hours of the night. But God invites me to walk humbly with Him. Not on my own with my issues, not full of my own greatness. With Him. And I really like that idea.
