Elizabeth and Screwtape on Humility

I know this may seem to be a totally unrelated idea, but bear with me - as usual. I was telling someone just recently that I'd noticed one telling difference in a single sentence of Julian of Norwich's Showings. In the first manuscript, Julian, at age 30, wrote, "what I wretch I am." Though otherwise the overall passage is much the same, at 50 she'd changed this sentence to "what a wretch I was." My guess would be that this was the result of a combination of awe at divine grace, which Julian possessed in abundance at both times, the transformation which occurs in 20 years of devotion to her prayer life, and a bit of the wisdom only age can supply for most.

Both virtues and vices are often misunderstood, and all the more because some have a far different meaning in the vernacular than they had for theologians. (Remind me to write about that at length some time.) Humility (which is truth) indeed is a rare and wonderful blessing. Unfortunately, the perception of this virtue can be taken for abasement - for finally realising that one is rubbish.

I remember once hearing an excellent sermon, delivered by a priest of my acquaintance who ranks among the best homilists I've ever encountered. There was quite a bit of trouble, including a complaint from a very vocal parishioner, when he mentioned Jesus' being perfect in humility. I was very puzzled at the negative reaction. It would seem to me that Jesus, and He alone, would be perfect in all virtues. I can only suppose that the mental picture of 'humility' as being linked with realising one is terrible made the very hint that Jesus (the Way, the Truth, and the Life) could possess this virtue as meaning he was a rogue by nature.

Considering that, for centuries, the concept of the Incarnation focused primarily on the crucifixion (and that each of us put Christ on the cross), and much preaching and writing was centred on calling the hearer to repentance, the idea of truth became far too limited. Indeed, we do need to repent (I'm defining that as spiritual transformation, not only turning from sin, though heaven knows we all need to do plenty of that). Yet our nature is glorious - created by God, the human nature assumed deified by the Logos. There was such emphasis on "the fall" that many a writer would give the impression that we were so unbearably wicked that we needed punishment to remedy matters (...I often wish Augustine had stuck to the Trinity... but too many later theologians, notably not including my friend Thomas, were not pining for paradise lost but seeing their goal as getting us to the point of self hatred.) Any recognition of self worth, which one would think appropriate considering creation and deification, was assumed to be a stumbling block.

(Another topic which I'll save is how many a religious sort, convinced that s/he is as wicked as the worst of murderers, can be manipulated by those who've chosen to be genuinely wicked. Fortunately, to be truly wicked is not easy - it takes years of closing oneself off not only to grace but to one's own human nature... and the good shepherd continues to go after the wicked nonetheless.)

Screwtape is, as usual, quite clever in instructing Wormwood in how to fix the new Christian's attention on humility for maximum damage. Again, I'll remind the reader that the quotation following is correspondence between one demon and another - the Enemy is God.

"By (humility), our Enemy wants to turn the man's attention away from self to Him, and to the man's neighbours...Abjection and self hatred... may do us (the demons)) good if they keep the man concerned with himself, and, above all, if self-contempt can be made the starting point for contempt of other selves, and thus for gloom, cynicism, and cruelty..

You must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a ... low opinion of his own talents and character... The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what threatens to become a virtue. By this method, thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly, and clever men trying to believe they are fools..

The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's - or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things."

Now, I can hardly be expected to match Screwtape in wisdom (it's angelic intelligence, after all), but I can admit that humility is a virtue I worship from afar. I say this because it took me years to realise that it frequently is not pride but fear and insecurity, both of which I possess in abundance, which keep us from the truth about the value of ourselves / creation. I'll leave my readers with that thought, because I have a sense that I am not alone! It is unfortunate that many in positions of authority or teaching (whether in the pulpit, home, classroom, whatever) so thought that reminding another of weakness, lack, and so forth to an excessive, indeed untrue, extent (...whether to make them work harder, or to keep them from pride... pick a card, any card...) filled us with a fear of our best qualities.