Humility

I am continually amazed by how, with all the diversity in our world and throughout history, we are able to communicate and understand anything. And what I mean by that is simply looking at your own family, from your oldest relative (great-grandparent, grandparent or maybe yourself) to your youngest relative (great-grandchild, grandchild, possibly yourself), consider the diversity of your experience even within the same family. Between the ‘Greatest Generation’ and the current ‘Gen Alpha’ so much has changed in that 100 years. The way we were raised and taught. The way we spoke. The technology and the information. Lots and lots of change.
And that’s just in the same family. That doesn’t include people from different families, from different parts of the country and the world, with different dialects and languages and very different cultures. And then if we go back even further in history, it’s amazing how we can read and translate and understand what happened in the past. But somehow we can…to a point. It’s not always perfect and there are lots we misunderstand but we also have things in common as humans, too.
But what sticks out most to me is how ‘self-focused’ we are when it comes to the world. And I’m not trying to put anyone down by that, it’s just a fact. I can only see, hear and know things from my personal experience. Sure I can read or listen to or see the experiences of someone else, but I’ll never truly see or hear it from their perspective. And though we’re able to empathize with others, it is only through our own experience that we can do that.
And my point is this: maybe I’m being too self-centered about life. And what I mean is that even though I consider myself fairly informed and fairly understanding, even the most open-minded of us are completely limited by our own senses, right? As much as we try to relate and empathize with others, we will never completely understand another person’s experience. Even if we experience the same events, our experience is our own.
And it’s with that in mind that I’m reminded of Jesus’ words in Matthew 7.1-2, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” What I see Jesus telling us here, is that we need to remember humility is a huge part of being human. Sure we all will analyze and assume and ‘judge’ to a certain extent, but humility helps us realize we don’t know everything. We don’t know how a person thinks. We don’t know how a person was raised. We don’t know their worldview or philosophies. And the best way, Jesus says, to approach others is in humility. I pray we do. God bless.