When Other People Really Are Holier Than You (December 12, 2004)

We ought to be humble. As an aid to humility, compare yourself unfavorably to someone you know in an area where that person's virtue exceeds your own. This should be pretty easy. Unless you are either very holy or very undiscerning, you will constantly run into people who are much better than you are at doing something that pleases God.

I am a bit hacked off these days about my neighbor doing such a better job of neighboring than I. (We're as close geographically as neighbors can be: we share a wall in a duplex.) Let's see: he fixed the hood of my car by bending it back into shape after an accident. He brings over a couple dozen Rumanian cabbage rolls whenever he cooks a batch. He strings Christmas tree lights across the entire front of our shared property. He gets the paint for our wood trim and sealer coat for our common driveway. He won't take my money for anything - he doesn't cash my checks and he returns whatever cash I give him for his help and maintenance. And I think, "Rats. I'm the Christian evangelical pastor and the way this is supposed to work is that he's supposed to wonder why I'm such a great guy."

But rather than compounding my sin of neighborly indolence with neighborly envy, I suppose the right thing to do is be humbled and give thanks to both God and to my neighbor, and try to be like him.

I have always liked the self-aware humility shown by Judah in what he said about his daughter-in-law Tamar and in what Saul said to David: "She is/You are more righteous than I." (Genesis 38:26; 1 Samuel 24:17). Judah and Saul were deeply flawed men, but at least they had the decency to recognize that and acknowledge the righteousness of those who were somewhat less flawed. Elijah too, in 1 Kings 19:4, said, "I am no better than my fathers." He was discouraged when he said that, but that does not make his observation any less accurate. He probably really wasn't any better than his fathers. James goes as far as to say that "Elijah was a man just like us" (James 5:17).

Well, may not like all of us. Somehow I have a feeling he was still more righteous than I.