Whose Feet Will You Wash?

Maundy Thursday is a reminder that our Lord’s call to communion with himself is inseparable from our communion with one another as members of his body. Basil of Caesarea (c. 330-379) understood this and warned in his monastic Rule against seeking communion with God outside of community:

How shall you show humility, if you have no one in comparison with whom to show yourself humble? How shall you show compassion if you cut yourself off from the fellowship of the many? How can you exercise yourself in patience, if no one contradicts your wishes? If you think the teaching of the Holy Scripture is sufficient to correct your character, you are like a person who learns the theory of carpentry but never makes anything.

The Lord, because of his great love of humanity, was not content only with teaching the word, but, so that he might accurately and clearly give us an example of humility in the perfection of love, he girded himself and washed the feet of the disciples in person. [If you neglect life in the community] whose feet will you wash? Who will you care for? In comparison to whom will you be last?

A Life Pleasing to God, The Spirituality of the Rules of St. Basil by Augustine Holmes OSB, Cistercian Publications, WMU Station, Kalamazoo, Michigan, 12000, p. 142

Bearing with One Another - 10. Interpreting One Another with Charity

Stephen Fowl teaches theology at Loyola College, Baltimore and is a member of the Cathedral of the Incarnation. He is also a member of the House of Bishops' Theology Committee. I am grateful to count him among my friends.

In his book, Engaging Scripture, Fowl writes about the habits of a charitable interpreter which are essential for any true engagement with scripture and other interpreters. Though he addresses charitable interpretation in that particular context, the practice of charitable interpretation is a virtue to cultivate more generally – with family and friends, at work, with other church members, in our larger political discourse, engaging one another on the internet – in any situation where we are likely to disagree with the way another person interprets things. Interpreting others with charity is a basic gospel discipline.

What follows is taken from Engaging Scripture:

When Christians’ convictions and practices regarding sin, forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation are in good working order, the recognition of oneself as a sinner works to keep one’s eye single. Further, this recognition draws one into a collection of practices designed to restore, reconcile, and subsequently deepen one’s communion with God and others. p. 86

Short of the eschatological completion of the promises in Jeremiah 31 and 1 Corinthians 13 . . . Christians will need to engage scripture in the recognition that they will disagree with each other. Christians ought to expect that their scriptural interpretation will be marked by sustained disagreements about how best to interpret and embody scripture in any particular context. In fact the absence of such arguments would be a sign of a community’s ill health. p. 87

A charitable interpreter will both recognize interpretive differences and refuse temptations to reduce or rationalize those differences and disputes away. p. 88

Initially, it may be extremely difficult to make sense of the claims of others, particularly those most different from us. This, however, is a contingent problem which can be addressed through hard work and patience. Rather than assert that such differences render conversation and debate impossible, the charitable interpreter will begin the slow, often tedious process of learning the presumptions, conventions, and idioms needed to make others’ views intelligible. Charitable interpreters will resist the move to close off this activity prematurely; they will always recognize the provisionality of their work. That is, interpretive charity entails both a willingness to listen to differences and a willingness to hear those differences in their fullness. p. 89

[T]he real question facing the charitable interpreter concern how to address differences in interpretation. The first step is to note that all differences, all disagreements. Are only intelligible against a background of similarity and agreement. . . . Agreement may not be easy to display. For example, such things as the use of common vocabulary might actually obscure real differences and agreements. Charitable interpreters, then, may need to begin to address an interpretive dispute by exposing the nature and types of agreement lying beneath its surface. By doing this one sharpens and thereby clarifies the nature and type of disagreement. p. 90

A related habit of the charitable interpreter is the practice of maximizing the reasonableness of those with whom one differs. p. 90

[T]he charitable interpreter presumes that those who differ hold their differing views for good reasons and tries to display what those reasons are or were. p. 91

This entails that a charitable interpreter should deal with the strongest versions of opposing arguments. This may even require the charitable interpreter to recast opposing views to make them as strong as they can be. p. 91 (footnote 65)

[I]n any interpretive conflict, one’s ability to give a charitable account of a differing position is crucial to developing a superior position. As Alasdair MacIntyre has argued, in any interpretive conflict which is rationally resolved, the position which prevails will be the one that can show how it accounts for the strengths in alternative positions while avoiding the weaknesses in those alternatives. p. 91

[T]he presence of interpretive charity will not necessarily reduce interpretive disputes. Christians must recognize that disputes are constitutive of being part of a living tradition of people reading scripture in order to live holy lives and to worship God truthfully. Rather, interpretive charity is one element that shapes the ecclesial contexts in which we might then expect interpretive disputes to result in faithful living and truthful worship. p. 96

Next:

11. Working Out Our Salvation

Previous:

Bearing with One Another When We Disagree

1. Broken Love

2. A Life Worthy of the Calling

3. Grace First and Last

4. Three Movements of Mercy

5. Gathered Together at the Foot of the Cross

6. Free to be Wrong

7. Free to be Vulnerable in Love

8. Only What is Said Kindly is True

9. On Not Bearing False Witness

Bearing with One Another - 7. Free to be Vulnerable in Love

At the foot of the cross there is freedom.

At the foot of the cross we are free

          because we hear Jesus say,

                   “Father, forgive them,

                             they don’t know what they are doing.”

                  

At the foot of the cross, we are free

to know ourselves to be truly seen

          and understood

by God in the person of Jesus

At the foot of cross we are free

to know ourselves to be frail and fallible.

At the foot of the cross we are free

to know that we are guilty –

our fingerprints are on the hammer and nails,

We are complicit in the sinful, broken mess of a world

          where we nail one another to the cross.

We are the reason Jesus hung on the cross.

At the foot of the cross, we are free

to know ourselves to be forgiven;

we know ourselves to be loved with infinite love.

At the foot of the cross we are free –

          set free from guilt, shame, and fear

At the foot of the cross we are free

          to commend our spirits into the hands of God

                   assured that God will not let go.

At the foot of the cross we are free

to love as Jesus loved us,

to love with vulnerable, self-sacrificial abandon.

At the foot of the cross we are free

          to forgive as we have been forgiven.

I encourage you to watch this video by Brene Brown who is a member of Christ Church Cathedral in Houston:

 Here are a couple of quotes about vulnerability and love:

“To read the biblical narratives is to encounter a God who is, first of all, love (1 John 4:8). Love involves a willingness to put oneself at risk, and God is in fact vulnerable in love, vulnerable even to great suffering. God’s self-revelation is Jesus Christ, and, as readers encounter him in the biblical stories, he wanders with nowhere to place his head, washes the feet of his disciples like a servant, and suffers and dies on a cross–condemned by the authorities of his time, undergoing great pain, “despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity” (Isaiah 53:3). Just this Jesus is the human face of God, not merely a messenger or a prophet but God’s own self come as self-revelation to humankind. If God becomes human in just this way, moreover, then that tells us something of how we might seek our own fullest humanity–not in quests of power and wealth and fame but in service, solidarity with the despised and rejected, and willingness to be vulnerable in love.”

― William Placher, Narratives of a VulnerableGod

“There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

The freedom to be vulnerable in love is key to any relationship and any community. It is key to our being able to bear with one another when we disagree. Jesus sets us free for that kind of love.

We are freed to be less certain, less defensive; freed to be more open, more vulnerable. We are freed to speak the truth about ourselves and then about one another in love.

Jesus then said to those who had believed in him, "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

(John 8:31-32, 36)

Next: Only What is Said Kindly is True

Previous:

Bearing with One Another When We Disagree

1. Broken Love

2. A Life Worthy of the Calling

3. Grace First and Last

4. Three Movements of Mercy

5. Gathered Together at the Foot of the Cross

6. Free to be Wrong

Bearing with One Another - 6. Free to be Wrong

All human life is marked by frailty, fallibility, brokenness, and sin. None of us is immune. None of us is innocent. Yet, the God we know through Jesus Christ is always offering the healing and forgiveness of his merciful love and calling us into fullness of life, love, peace, and joy. And thus we are free.

Among other things we are free to be wrong. Before you read any further, I encourage you to watch this video:

In this brief lecture, Kathryn Schulz, poses the question, “How does it feel to be wrong?” We all know the feeling. It is usually unpleasant – embarrassing, shameful, etc. It is a feeling we try to avoid. But, Schulz points out that that feeling is not the feeling of being wrong, but the feeling of realizing we are wrong. Before we realize we are wrong, being wrong feels just like being right.

She goes on to point out that while we all acknowledge that we could be wrong in theory, we mostly avoid thinking about the possibility we ourselves might actually be wrong.

It is unsettling to concede that right now there are things about which I am convinced I am right, but about which I am in fact wrong. Of course, if I realize I am wrong, I hope I will adopt a more correct view. But, at the moment I cannot think of a single thing I know that I know I am wrong about. Can you?

Schulz observes that we are, “Trapped in a little bubble of feeling very right about everything.”

Assuming we are right about everything is, of course, presumptuous. But, trusting too much in the feeling of being on the right side of anything is also dangerous. It is dangerous to our own spirits because it is an expression of the deadly sin of pride. And it is dangerous because attachment to our own rightness causes us to treat each other badly – a failure of charity which is also deadly to the spirit.

Given our habitual assumption of our own rightness – morally, politically, religiously, professionally, scientifically, or whatever – we are faced with a problem – how do we explain all those people who don’t see it our way?

Schulz suggests that we typically make three “unfortunate assumptions” about those who do not agree that we are right. We assume they are:

1. Ignorant – they don’t know the facts that we know

2. Idiots – if it becomes clear that they know the facts, but still resist our rightness, we assume they are not smart enough to draw the right conclusion from those facts.

3. Evil – if it is clear they know the facts and are actually quite smart, we resort to the assumption that they are deliberately misconstruing things for malevolent purposes.

I would add two more unfortunate assumptions that seem pretty common:

4. Fearful – those who disagree with me are afraid of what it would mean for them if I am right.

5. Biased – informed, bright, and well-meaning though they might be, those who don’t see things my way must be blinded by biases that prevent them from coming to the proper conclusion.

It is not hard to find examples of these unfortunate assumptions at work. They are pervasive in our political discourse. And each of them shows up regularly in church debates.

The problem is it is always easy to see how those with whom we disagree make these assumptions. It is harder to acknowledge the same assumptions in those with whom we agree. And it is almost impossible to admit them in ourselves.

This gets tricky because there are indeed people who comment or act while ignorant of the facts. And some people are brighter than others. And there are people who manipulate information for selfish gain.

But it is also true (unless I am wrong) that some configuration of all five of the above assumptions is true of each of us all the time.

Humility

That is why cultivating humility is so essential

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge"

(1 Corinthians 8:1-2)

If we want to resist pride and cultivate humility, we will accept the reality that we are wrong. We will look to our own ignorance, lack of intelligence, maliciousness, fear, and prejudice. And confess them. We will take to heart John Calvin's warning, “There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.”

This does not mean everything is up for grabs. It does not mean that everyone’s guess is as good as anyone else’s. It does not mean that we ought not to give due deference to those who, due to study and experience, can speak with more authority in areas of their expertise (always recognizing that they still could be wrong). 

Within the Church, we continue to recognize authorities like scripture and tradition (about which we sometimes disagree in particulars). And, in confessing the Creed, we acknowledge that within the Church some questions are settled.

But humility does mean holding what we think we know with a certain lightness – refusing to presume to grasp equality with God (Philippians 2:3-8).

It does mean we will engage others with deep humility.

If we want to live in charity, we will resist the temptation to bear false witness against our neighbor. Rather than making the “unfortunate assumptions” about those with whom we disagree, we will begin by assuming the opposite of those assumptions.

And we will embrace with sincerity the possibility that we are the ones who are wrong.

I suggest that Christians are both bound to practice such humility and charity and freed to do so. We are bound by the commands of our Lord to do so. We are freed to do so by the fundamental reality of grace – God's unshakable love and mercy – that frees us from the obsession with being right and the fear of being wrong. 

This frees us to bear with one another when we disagree. This is true whether those disagreements are due to differences of personality or perspective. It is true whether those disagreements are about relatively minor things or things that cut close to the bone.

Perhaps this is what it means to speak the truth in love. (Ephesians 4:15).

1. The truth – as best I understand it and sincerely confessing that I could very well be wrong

2. In love – with gentleness and reverence toward those who I am trying to persuade (1 Peter 3:15). In love – which, by any Christian account, is more important than being right.

Next: Free to be Vulnerable in Love

Previous:

Bearing with One Another When We Disagree

1. Broken Love

2. A Life Worthy of the Calling

3. Grace First and Last

4. Three Movements of Mercy

5. Gathered Together at the Foot of the Cross

Bearing with One Another - 5. Gathered Together at the Foot of the Cross

God’s grace – love and mercy –

meets human frailty, brokenness, and sin

at the Cross

Imagine with me: We are standing at the foot of the cross. Jesus is hanging there, dying. Who are you in the cast of characters gathered there?

The First Last Word

Gatherd at the foot of the cross, we hear Jesus speaking the first last word from the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34)

We need to hear that before we can hear anything else.

         

Have I like Peter denied Jesus?

Have I denied my neighbor created in God’s image?

Have I, like the other disciples, abandoned him?

Have I abandoned my neighbor?

Am I like the handful of women standing witness, but powerless?

Have I refused to use what power I have

on behalf of my neighbor?

Am I one of those who condemned him to die?

Have I condemned my neighbor?

Am I one of those who nailed him to the cross?

In what ways have I nailed my neighbor to the cross?

One way or another, I am each of these. And so are you

My fingerprints are on the hammer and the nails.

I am guilty. Me.

I am the one who does not know what he is doing.

I am the who does not do what I know.

Things done and left undone.

I am the one who has failed to love God

with all my heart mind, body and soul.

I am the one who has failed to love my neighbor

I am the one whose mercy

falls far short of the mercy of God

I am the one who needs to hear Jesus say,

“Father forgive.”

The irony is I can only truly dare to look at the extent of my own complicity in the reign of sin and death, violence and greed, if I am first able to hear, in the deep places of my spirit, Jesus speaking his mercy, his forgiveness. Even before I know I need the forgiveness – like the Centurian, who too late recognizes that he has helped to crucify an innocent man, let alone the Son of God.

The Last Last Word

Receiving that word, I am able to pray with Jesus his last Last Word from the cross, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46) It is a prayer taken from Psalm 31 (vs 5). We also pray it in Compline.

Into your hands I commend my spirit. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrews 10:31). But, if that God has already declared his love and mercy I can dare to do so.

And dare is the right word.

Because one of the things that must happen if I stay at the foot of the cross, is my own dying. My own dying to self. As we will hear Jesus say in tomorrow’s Gospel,

"If any want to become my followers,

let them deny themselves

and take up their cross and follow me.

For those who want to save their life will lose it,

and those who lose their life for my sake,

and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

I can do that because I believe that such dying to self is a dying into the hands of the merciful Father who will not let what is truly me be lost.

What needs to die?

Certainly we will all eventually die physically. On our dying day, we hope to be able to say with Jesus, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” But, if we are going to enter fully into what God desires for us, we need to do some dying along the way.

What needs to die? All the ways I nail God and others to the cross

My sense of my own rightness

My desire to make myself out as somehow innocent.

Or, at least, less guilty than others.

There is always the temptation to justify oneself or one's group

and point to the fault (fingerprints) of others.

But that is the way of Adam blaming Eve

and Eve blaming the Serpent.

It is the way of the Pharisee,

“God, I thank you that I am not like other people:

thieves, rogues, adulterers,

or even like this tax-collector." (Luke 18:9-14)

Judging others

Focusing on others' fingerprints

          and excusing mine

My own certainty that I know right from wrong

My defensiveness

My every failure to love,

My indifference

My hardness of heart toward others

Minimizing the pain, suffering and anguish of others

whose pain suffering and anguish is inconvenient

Thinking and speaking of others with disdain and contempt

Thinking of others as ‘other’

Every allegiance and loyalty – family, nation, political conviction, career

It all has to die.

It might not all stay dead. But, it must die if it is to be resurrected –

chastened, refined –

and lived in light of Christ.

God is love. But, that love is not sentimental or ‘nice’. Julian of Norwich, that great exponent of God’s delight, understood that God’s love is not sentimental or simple affirmation. It also entails the promise (sometimes experienced as a threat?) of transformation:

He [Jesus] says: I shall completely break down in you your empty affections and your vicious pride, and then I shall gather you and make you meek and mild and holy through union with me.

This is why it is misleading to say, “God loves you. Period.” It might be true enough as far as it goes. But it does not go far enough to be sufficiently Christian. God intends our transformation. God intends that we learn to die so that we can truly live.

Everything must die. Everything must be put in the crucible and melted down by the refining fire of God’s severe mercy. The dross must be removed – however dear to me it is – so God can heal me and restore me to the life for which he created me.

This is hard. It is a kind of religious extremism. But this is what it means to take up my cross, deny myself and follow Jesus.

So, here we are – all of humanity – gathered at the foot of the cross.

The Church is the community of people 

who have heard Jesus speaking his first word,

“Father forgive.”

And we need that forgiveness because we know

that it is our fingerprints on the hammer and nails.

We know, as we will hear again on the Sunday before Easter,

that we have responded to God

(and those created in his image)

with words and actions akin to

“Crucify him!”

And we know we need to die

to the tendency to use the hammer and nail

to crucify one another.

We need to die

and commend our spirit

into the merciful hands of the Father.

Finally, though we continue to walk in the valley of the shadow of death, now we recognize that that shadow is a shadow cast by the cross. And that shadow is cast because of the light of resurrection glory on the other side of the cross. The reality of death has forever been changed.

If we know that, we can know freedom. Among other things we are free to bear with one another with open hearts – even when we disagree.

Next: Free to be Wrong

Previous:

Bearing with One Another

1. Broken Love

2. A Life Worthy of the Calling

3. Grace First and Last

4. Three Movements of Mercy

Engaging Enemies (and others) with Severe Humility

On September 10, 1939 at the beginning of World War 2 C. S Lewis wrote this in a letter to his brother, Warnie:

In the Litany this morning we had some extra petitions, one of which was, ‘Prosper, oh Lord, our righteous cause’. Assuming that it was the work of the bishop or someone higher up, when I met Bleiben [the vicar] in the porch, I ventured to protest against the audacity of informing God that our cause was righteous – a point on which he has his own views . . . I hope it is quite like ours, of course, but one never knows with him.

– The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis, Volume 2

And here is something by Lewis’ friend, Charles Williams, written in the middle of WW 2 (1942) when the outcome was still unclear:

The conversion, where it is demanded, of the wild justice of revenge to the civil justice of the Divine City is the precise operation of the Holy Spirit towards Christ. All we need to do is attend to the goodwill, to the civility; the justice (in the personal relation) can be left to Christ. ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, sayeth the Lord.’ It is perhaps desirable to notice that the repayment is not limited to our enemy. We shall be unfortunate if we forget the trespasses, the debts, which our enemies desire to repay with their wild justice and are content to leave to his promise. It is important that we should be ready to forgive the Germans; it is not unimportant to recognize that many Germans (including Herr Hitler? Possibly; we do not very well know) may feel that they have much to forgive us. Many reconciliations have unfortunately broken down because both parties have come prepared to forgive but unprepared to be forgiven. Instruction is as badly needed in this as in many other less vital things; that holy light which we call humility has an exact power of illumination all its own.

– The Forgiveness of Sins, p. 113

It is hard to imagine saying such things about our enemies. I don’t want to. But, then, it was hard to say them about Germany or Japan during WW 2. It was hard to say it about the Romans in Jesus' day. Do we dare to contemplate that people in the Middle East just might have much to forgive us in the West? And we Americans in particular? That the actions of, for example, Al Qaeda of Iran, however horrific and inexcusable, might be understood in some sense as acts of “the wild justice of revenge”? That things have been done on our behalf in the Middle East over the last 100 years that have contributed to the chaotic rage that seems epidemic there? Even a little understanding of our history in the region over the last century would indicate that it is so. It might require a sort of severe humility but I believe it is a faithful Christian approach to contemplate such things in our day just as Lewis and Williams did in theirs. We need to disabuse ourselves of the myth of our own innocence. Everyone is complicit in the mess the world is in. Some more. Some less. But all.

A couple of things strike me in the above quotes. Both Lewis and Williams refuse to get caught up in nationalistic rhetoric that assumes that "God is with us" or that their country is particularly blessed by God. Even in the midst of war, they were compelled by their Christian convictions to accept the possibility that their nation was (at least partly) wrong and that their enemies might well have grievances of their own.

I am also struck that this severe humility leads both Lewis and Williams to demonstrate an admirable reticence to claim to know overmuch about God's mind or to assume their side is necessarily God's. Both recognize that all humans are fundamentally bound to one another in a relational web and all humans are caught in the sin that infects that web. We should thus be wary of presuming our own innocence or consigning  total blame to others – both are awe-full things to contemplate if we recognize that we all live under the awesome gaze of God's love and judgment.

I know enough of both Lewis and Williams to know that neither would advocate anything like a posture of moral equivalency. And that is not what I am suggesting. And neither of them was a pacifist. But, what both do seem to advocate is a deep humility and reticence to assume the innocence or righteousness of their side. And I find both refreshing. I am convinced it is a fundamentally Christian posture, however difficult.

"For our enemies and those who wish us harm,

and for all whom we have injured or offended,

we pray to you, O Lord."

(Book of Common Prayer, p. 391)

See also:

God, Be Merciful to Us All

The Humility and Generosity of Lincoln

The Humility and Generosity of Lincoln

I love the movie Lincoln. It captures some of why Abraham Lincoln has been such an iconic figure in American history. He was truly a great man.

Among other things, the movie reminds us that politics in a democracy has always been a rough and tumble affair. However, much we might bemoan the current state of American politics, there is no such thing as a 'golden age' in which everyone just got along and cooperated toward a shared vision of the common good. And the movie shows Lincoln himself resorting to unsavory tactics to achieve good ends. Things might or might not be much worse now than they were then (though I do wonder about the effects of contemporary media and the influx of unprecedented amounts of money to skew things).

But, one thing has changed, unless Abraham Lincoln was truly a unique historical figure. The movie ends with the closing lines of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address, which is itself one of the great political speeches of American history. The movie inspired me to reread the whole of that address (Second Inaugural Address). I am struck by two virtues Lincoln demonstrates that it would be good to see more commonly in contemporary politics. Those virtues are humility and generosity toward opponents. Here are the last two paragraphs:

Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all.

Note first, that, though Lincoln seems fairly confident he knows what is right, he almost instinctively qualifies his own "firmness in the right' with the caveat 'as God gives us to see the right'. Recognizing and naming the uncomfortable fact that both his side and the other 'read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other", Lincoln further affirms that "The Almighty has His own purposes" acknowledging that those purposes might or might not line up with his own. This admission of partial vision is a fundamental aspect of the virtue of humility.

Such  humility allows Lincoln to entertain the possibility that others might also be right – even those who "dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces." I confess I find that hard to entertain.

Whether such humility was common in Lincoln's day, it has become rare in ours. Instead, the rhetoric, both left and right, would suggest that what is right is so clear that all reasonable people will agree. Which means that those who do not agree must be either unreasonable or nefarious. Thus, it is either impossible or unnecessary to engage them with respect.

But, Lincoln did engage those with whom he disagreed with respect. And with a notable generosity. Allowing for the likelihood that he was not altogether right and that his opponents were not altogether wrong created space for Lincoln to resist malice and extend charity even toward those with whom he was at war.

We would do well to cultivate the virtues of humility and generosity that we too might live with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right – as God gives us to see the right.

See also:

Engaging Enemies with Severe Humility

God, Be Merciful to Us All