Humble Yourselves

This afternoon, I visited the flagship REI store over in South Lake Union to pick up a variety of items for my upcoming trip to New York City, Greece, and Israel. It's impressive how the South Lake Union neighborhood is getting built out. To my excitement, I noticed a Portage Bay Cafe within walking distance of the new Amazon.com campus. Score.

If anyone was to look at all the items I was carrying, it was obscenely obvious that I was going on a trip. Convertible cargo pants. Voltage converters and adapters. Neck pillow. There would be no hiding my intentions this afternoon.

As I was checking out, there was a girl who asked me where I was going. So I told her. To which she asked if I had seen this documentary, about Christians committing genocide in Lebanon called Waltz with Bashir. I immediately began to try to explain away, defend, and justify the inherent goodness of Christianity. I told her that clearly, genocide is not Biblical (at least in the new covenant) and that maybe these people were not very good Christians. She then asked what I thought about the crusades -- which I tried to explain away as a political issue, since the state was so closely wed to religion.

But none of these explanations were right. My response was entirely wrong. It was born out of pride, a want to be righteous, and a desire to see the glory of my own in-group. The correct response is, "Yes. I know Christians suck. Please forgive me and my fellow believers. We need to be rebuked and it makes me sad that it takes non-believers to point this out. Christians do good, but for the grace of God -- we can't take credit for it. Please bear with us."

To "Humble yourselves, therefore under the mighty hand of God" (1 Pet5:6) turns out to be harder than would first seem. I will watch Waltz with Bashir next weekend with this conversation close to mind.