Humility: It Works Every Time It’s Tried

I was combing through the Internet looking for something to be angry about (that’s just a little joke) and instead found a gem. A woman, who seems to have been married about as long as I have, suddenly, for the first time, heard herself belittling her husband. It’s a great piece. You should go read it and then wander back here if you like, or not. I’m not going to tell you what to do, really I’m not.

What this woman so well articulates, what she discovered on her own, is one major section of pre-marriage counseling that Matt and I do our level best to dwell on as long as possible. We start with a family tree, to dredge up every speck of dysfunction that we can find. We spend some time in the bible, to discover what marriage is for. And then, under headings like Communication, Money, Sex, and Children, we implore the woman, sometimes with tears in our eyes, to consider treating the man like a human being.

Young couples always nod and smile, because the great love with which they love each other will of course carry them as far as they need to go. They will have little trifling troubles but happiness is all before them, and unkindness is practically no where to be seen. But sometimes, even in those charmed days before marriage, people can see glimpses of how hard it is to speak to the other person as if that person were an actual human.

Of course, it is excessively sexist of me to note that we spend lots more time telling the woman to be kind, in general, than the man. Do we tell the man anything? Well, when he does all the talking and doesn’t let her speak, which is more rare, we endeavor to help him to be quiet so that we can hear her. More usual, though, we spend the balance of our words with him on the fact that he should pay attention to her, he should listen to the things she wants to say, he should try to understand who she is. But then yes, when we turn our heads towards her, we implore her not to treat him like a child.

Because, sexism aside, it seems to be the natural propensity of women to mother, even their husbands, sometimes to death, often with unkindness, and also, the culture has made it acceptable for her to do so. The man is wrong. It’s her duty to help him not be so awful. Everything depends on her. If it weren’t for her he wouldn’t be able to get up and go to work in the morning, neither would the sun appear in the sky. She holds all things together by the power of her will and her immaculate planner. That is the modern ideal.

Of course, most women don’t want to live that way. Most of them marry men they admire and think are wonderful. But because it is in the very air, disrespectful unkindness easily creeps in to savage and destroy the ego of the other person. It takes diligent watchfulness, a habit towards immediate forgiveness, and overall a growing humility to keep the unkindness in its proper place, which is in the disgusting dustbin under the sink.

There is one singular help, for the married person, and for anyone who wants to relate to other people in an expansive, giving way, a way that doesn’t cause you to be the measure of all your relationships. And that help is the dawning and growing understanding that God cares for your interior life more than he cares that you did all the things. Of course, when I say it that way you can see how simple it is, but try living it, or going to the depths of it. God wants you to be poor in spirit. He wants you to be kind. He wants you to put everyone before yourself. He wants you to trust him for everything. He wants the way you love to be self giving. He wants you to receive and not to take. He wants you to flee from sins that no one can even see that you’re tempted by. Whereas the world wants you to do all the things. Your measure in the world is not humility, it is competence, and having the right ideas about things.

If you can sit in church, or stand at the kitchen sink, or bang your head on your desk at work and know, in the dark places of your soul, that the Holy Spirit’s living in you means that he wants your soul to be well, that he will hold you in a place of suffering lots longer than you think is good for you, that while his caring for you includes your external circumstances but that’s not his main concern, that he wants your entire self to be directed towards him, then you will have more and more room to see the other person is an actual person.

It’s better if this can happen to both the man and the woman at the same time. That’s what marriage is supposed to be–the constant emptying of each one for the other–so that there is no lack, there is only ever kindness. But even if one does it alone, it can still be a great mercy.