The Humility of Age

Posted by Anthony on September 11, 2007

I had some interesting experiences in college. I went to college intending to become a pastor and practically became an atheist after just a few months. I emerged from this much stronger. I remember well how deeply I threw myself into studying all sorts of things. Buddhism, Hinduism, atheism, Christianity, science, quantum physics, evolution, philosophy, and more. Most of what I learned I learned apart from the classroom. I became very knowledgeable about the Bible and I thought I was doing a good job living by its precepts. I considered myself pretty patient and selfless. And spiritual. Let’s not forget spiritual.

More than ten years later I have a different view of myself. I no longer believe I am a patient person. I thought I was selfless, but this version of myself was destroyed within the first year of marriage. Now that I have four kids I can safely say that I am the most impatient and selfish person I have ever met. What I failed to recognize while in college was that I was operating in a setting that made it pretty easy to be a Christian. How you are in that kind of setting is not indicative of how you will be in another setting.

I will sometimes have people come by my Christian discussion forum who will then email me and say that I was not nice to someone. I used to take those comments more personally until I realized that I have a community consisting of members who have been around for years and years, discoursing and debating with each other. When you live with someone it is hard to always be ‘nice’ (even harder, I’ve discovered, if you’re tired). Some of these people I have ‘lived’ with day in and day out for a long time. This person complaining to me… is he speaking from a context of insulated safety or are they the same saint when banging around people 24/7?

Unfortunately for me, of course, the snippy exchange that I had with my wife this morning will soon be forgotten between us and there won’t be a record of it left anywhere except in the Mind of God. My forum posts, however, will last so long as Google lasts, and will appear- out of the context of the years in which the postings occurred- as a mere snapshot.

The older I get the more I see that we are quick to give ourselves a pass and quicker still to stick it to the other guy. The older I get, the more I see that the reasons for my doing the right thing often had to do with the fact that I was not tired, I was not hungry, I did not have four children screaming in my ear, I didn’t have bills to pay, I didn’t just lose a loved one, and so on and so forth. It has also showed me the importance of doing what I can to create a setting around myself that will be more conducive to carrying out the behaviors I approve of.

And with this humility of age, I can look back in history and see that even though some deeds were inexcusable, one cannot simply assert- “If I was there, I would have done other.” Those people were often hungry, or oppressed, or afraid, or exhausted, or tired. I hope that I will do better if I am ever in such circumstances, but I realize now that if I do, it will only be because I have been working on it now. It is no credit to me that I am patient with the stranger in the store whom I will never see again. If I am kind to my wife after we’ve both had a hard day’s work, that is a different story. It is easy to be kind to the person I will never see again. It is much more difficult when you have no hope for escape from your circumstances.

Let us treat the ones we love better then we treat the strangers and so prepare us for the day (if it comes) when our circumstances are so radically shaken, we will have trained ourselves to still behave honorably no matter what life throws at us.