This morning is the first in a series of services, to be scattered throughout this church year, looking at various virtues and vices, and considering how their presence or absence might affect the quality of our lives.  In fact virtues and vices are qualities that we bring to our living, that definitely affect, among other things, our relationships with others.  Virtue is taken to be a quality of moral excellence, of goodness, perhaps even righteousness.  Virtue’s opposite, vice, is a moral or personal failing, either great or small.  Vice represents a falling short, a manifestation of imperfection.

     Before getting down to particulars, I want to make one general assertion.  That is, given our human finitude, our inherent lack of perfection, no one of us is completely virtuous, and totally lacking in vices.  We are human; ergo, we are fallible.  Our primary purpose in exploring the nature of various virtues and vices is to better understand how they can enhance or detract from our quality of life, and to consider how we might shift the balance, at least a wee bit, from vice to virtue.

     Some of the virtue/vice pairs that we’ll be considering later in the year are tolerance and bigotry; generosity and greed; and courage and cowardice.  But this morning our focus is on humility and arrogance.  By humility, I mean an awareness of one’s shortcomings, of one’s imperfections, as well as behaviors that grow naturally out of that awareness.  By arrogance, I mean being overly convinced of one’s own importance, abilities, achievements, or virtuousness.

     Typically, the vice paired with the virtue of humility is pride.  However, I believe that pride is not, in and of itself, a vice.  I understand healthy pride as simple-self-respect; a sense of one’s own proper dignity or value.  Pride becomes a vice only when it is excessive or inappropriate, based on an unrealistic assessment of one’s self or group, when it assumes an unfounded sense of superiority over others.  It is such misplaced pride that I consider the vice of arrogance.

     When I was a self-conscious adolescent, carrying myself with a somewhat slouching posture, my father used to say to me: “Throw those shoulders back; be proud that you’re a Hayes!”  In saying that, he was not suggesting that I think any less of non-Hayeses, but was simply calling on me to take pride in myself, to recognize my own worth and dignity.  Even recognizing our faults and imperfections, we can each take pride in who we are, but without belittling anyone else.

     The keys to authentic, as opposed to arrogant pride are that it 1) be tempered by a recognition of shortcomings, and 2)  be based on the actual presence of some level of virtue.  I can be proud to be an American, based on our Constitution and the ideals that it represents.  But when that pride becomes an excessive sense of superiority, a justification for imposing American interests on the rest of the world, then pride is edging over into arrogance.  This caution is captured in the hymn we’ll be singing a little later:  “This is my home, the country where my heart is; here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine; but other hearts in other lands are beating with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”  This is a love of country grounded in humility.

     Looking at the flip side, there is also such a thing as false humility; that is, humility taken to an excessive extreme.  For example, a newspaper reporter was once interviewing an old rancher and asked him to what he would attribute his success as a rancher.  With a twinkle in his eye the man replied, “It’s been about 50 percent weather, 50 percent good luck, and the rest is brains.”  A charmingly self-effacing response, but not to be taken too seriously.  In an essay called “Characters of Virtues and Vices,” published in 1608, Joseph Hall, Bishop of Exeter writes of “the humble man”:

     He is a friendly enemy to himself: for, though he be not out of his own favour, no man sets so low a value of his worth as himself; not out of ignorance or carelessness, but of a voluntary and meek dejectedness. He admires every thing in another, while the same or better in himself he thinks not unworthily contemned: his eyes are full of his own wants and others' perfections. . .

     His words are few and soft; never either peremptory or censorious; because he thinks both each man more wise, and none more faulty than himself . . .

     No man is so contented with his little, and so patient under miseries; because he knows the greatest evils are below his sins, and the least favours above his deservings.

     While Hall is describing what he considers to be a man of great virtue, I believe he goes a bit too far, to the point of operating under the assumption not of superiority, but of abject inferiority; an assumption just as likely to be wildly inaccurate.  In my experience, thinking too lowly of yourself can lead to the undesirable result of hiding your light under a bushel; of not using your gifts to optimal effect through denying their very existence.

     That brings me back around to one of my oft-repeated themes: balance.  If it is possible to be too proud, to the point of arrogance; or too humble, to the point of self-denigration; then where is the proper balance?  And it seems to me that the answer to this question is not as obvious as it might seem at first thought.  Let me try to explain what I mean by that.

     The obvious answer, to me, is that I should make an honest, sincere, objective assessment of my abilities, achievements, opinions, virtues, interests, and desires, and then measure that against a similar assessment of the relevant “other”.  Then, if my interests clearly have more merit than the other’s, I should insist on my way.  If the other’s position has more merit, then I should give way.  That is, as long as I base my assessments on the realities of the situation, and not on a prior, unjustified assumption of either inferiority or superiority, then I should be on solid ground.

     Ah, would that it could be so simple.  The first problem with this formulation goes back to the first assertion I made this morning: our inherent human imperfection.  Given our fallibility, what is the chance of our being able to make a truly objective assessment?  Quite small, I would say.  To think otherwise is to underestimate our shortcomings, and to edge uncomfortably close ourselves to arrogance.  No matter how firm I am in my convictions, I always include a small footnote in the back of my own mind, saying “I might be wrong.”

     Another, related problem with the “objective assessment” method is that our objective assessment and that of the other may not agree, even if we are both able to be as honest and objective as humanly possible.  That’s because each of us works within the framework of a particular world-view, which consists of fundamental, subjective assumptions about things like the relative priority of various values that may come into conflict.  So even when you and I come to different conclusions, no matter how convinced I am that I am right, I need to have another little footnote in the back of my mind saying “You may be right.”  In fact, we may both be right, each within our own particular “big picture” of the situation.

     So for me, the hallmark of humility is the presence of those two small footnotes in my consciousness: “I might be wrong,” and “You may be right.”  So what does that have to say about how I behave in the world?  Well, if I’m one hundred percent convinced that I’m right and you’re wrong, then I might either fight for the victory of my position, or I might just agree to disagree and go my own way.  In either case, I’m relieved of the responsibility of continuing the dialogue, unless I still think I can win you over.  But if I give up the arrogance of certainty, then I’m called to proceed differently.

     If you and I disagree strongly about some idea or course of action, one thing I might do is to consider which outcome would be worse: that resulting from my being right but giving in, or that resulting from my being wrong but prevailing?  This is the kind of thinking that, for me, goes into issues like capital punishment.  That is, which is worse: executing an innocent person, or letting a guilty person live?  That’s one of the bases for my opposition to the death penalty.  Given the uncertainty, choose the path of least potential harm.

     Another useful course of action is for me to try and listen more deeply to your perspective so that, even if I don’t come to embrace it, I will at least understand it.  If my reaction to a disagreement is “I just don’t understand how you can think that way,”  or “if you would just listen to me, I know you would see the light,” then chances are I haven’t listened deeply enough.  Let disagreement mark the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one.

     The type of behavior I’ve observed as being perhaps most destructive of relationship is ascribing motives that aren’t there.  If my lack of imagination leads me to conclude that the only possible explanation for your behavior is that you mean me harm, then I probably need to dig into the situation more deeply and find some other possibilities.  To do less is another form of arrogance.

     When I was a child, my father believed in corporal punishment.  I didn’t get spanked very often, but often enough to leave a lasting impression.  I didn’t understand the rationale behind it then, especially when given the standard speech about it hurting him more than it did me.  I didn’t buy it.  The main product of those spankings for me was fear.  I never came around to my father’s views on corporal punishment, but I did eventually come to understand what those views were; that he was acting out of love, not anger.  That was an important part of my reconciliation with him.  It’s important to realize that understanding does not depend on or require agreement.

     One piece of practical advice from a relationship expert I would like to share with you.  It has to do with letting go of the need to be right all the time, even if you are.  And it has to do with the art of compromise.  Of course the theory of compromise is to meet halfway.  If I’m willing to meet you halfway, and you’re willing to meet me halfway, then we’re in business, right?  Not necessarily.  It comes back to making objective assessments in light of different frames of reference.  When you think you’ve gone halfway, and I think I’ve gone halfway, there may well still be some distance between us.  Thus the advice:  When the situation calls for meeting someone halfway, try going a bit beyond halfway, and you’re more likely to come together in the middle.  And even if you’re right, take into account the cost of insisting on your way.  A part of humility, in addition to acknowledging that you might be wrong, is being able to let go, sometimes, of the need to be seen as right, even when you are.

     In closing, I want to acknowledge an aspect of humility and arrogance that I have thus far neglected.  Positive human relations require some degree of equity and reciprocity.  If we are to live in a spirit of humility, don’t we set ourselves up to be trampled by the arrogant?  If they insist on being right, and we give up the need to be right, where does that leave us?  Well, let me tell you that you needn’t be intimidated by arrogance.

     The story is told that once, while Christian Herter was running for re-election as Governor of Massachusetts, he arrived late at a barbecue.  He’d had no breakfast or lunch, and he was famished.  As he moved down the serving line, he held out his plate and received one piece of chicken.  The governor said to the serving lady, “Excuse me, do you mind if I get another piece of chicken.  I’m very hungry.”  The woman replied, “Sorry, I’m supposed to give one piece to each person.”  Herter was normally a modest man, but he decided this was the time to use the weight of his office, and so he said, “Madam, do you know who I am?  I am the governor of this state.”  She answered, “Do you know who I am?  I’m the lady in charge of chicken.  Move along, mister.”  This was a woman who knew her position and wasn’t about to be intimidated.

     I have intentionally not emphasized this side of things – that is, dealing with the arrogance of others – precisely because many of us, myself included, are more likely to be able to recognize and judge arrogance in others than in ourselves.  And so my attempt to shift the balance by emphasizing the need for us each to take responsibility first for our own attitudes and behaviors.

     Then again, I may be wrong.