Our Jagged World
Loving in Dangerous Times
Hubris is a kicker. It lands us all in such a mess. Roberta Bondi strikes this point in her helpful book To Love as God Loves when she writes:
Part of the realism of humility is its conviction that every one of us, being human, is prone to sin…We must not allow ourselves to feel that we have “risen above” temptation, nor allow ourselves to be shocked when we meet sin in ourselves or others. Humility does not abandon its commitments; it does not indulge itself in the luxury of disillusionment. In short, it is humility that goes hand in hand with love, that makes love finally possible in such a jagged world as ours.
Humus, on the other hand—earth, soil, humility, the virtue of littleness—helps us navigate the pitfalls of hubris. Thoughts?
"The virtue of littleness." YES. Can't get much more counter-cultural than that!
I have often thought of the Nobel prize winning dissident author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956 imprisoned for years in Russia who wrote of facing one of his captors and thinking: “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?” His words cut deep and certainly fit here in our assessment of our own moments in time.