but stand in awe
I didn’t realize I had a problem with pride.
Arrogance felt to me like a mighty sin, a terrible sin, one I certainly didn’t, couldn’t, commit. Arrogance was spitting on another human. Arrogance was someone yelling at a customer service associate for not getting their order right. Arrogance was asserting with language, physical and spoken, I am better and you are lesser. And surely I didn’t do that. I’d never do that. Surely.
But Paul writes about arrogance in a different way.
The first he writes of is that of Israel. Paul says that Israel “failed to obtain what they were seeking,” failed to be faithful to God (Rom 11:7). As descendants of Abraham, they held a special place in God’s plan. They knew God, and He trusted them to honor Him and love their neighbors in return. And they didn’t. Once oppressed in a foreign land, Israel oppressed their own foreigners. Once they had what they wanted, they forgot their own weakness, and lost their connection with God.
The second is the pride Paul describes is the pride he suspects might tempt the Israelites. He describes the Gentiles as “a wild olive shoot” grafted in Israel’s place, because of their failure. But Paul warns the Gentiles against overconfidence. They, too, were once excluded but now included, but they must not hold that over their Jewish siblings. Their branch too could fail. Paul instructs them to not become proud, but to remember that the roots support the branches, not the branches the root. They must remember that it is only through Christ that they grow (Rom 11:17-21).
I started with the second, and melted into the first.
My sophomore year of college, I chose to be Christian with a spirit of need and defiance. I needed to believe in God - needed to believe that, despite everything, some being beyond my comprehension cared about me, and promised to somehow make the world right. But as a young woman with deep trauma, a person who needed to believe in a radically loving God, I claimed my space at God’s table with a spirit of defiance. I felt that my beliefs and wounds cast me out, so I cut into the fence I felt others trying to put up. Survival put a knife in my hand and a self-protective fire in my heart.
God is kind, and God led me to a community where I didn’t have to build my own chair. My ideas and my pain were welcome. This community gave me a home and a job, and nurtured my friendships and my faith. They taught me that God wasn’t just there, but God was an active force in my own life, one that valued me and named me as His beloved child. I felt myself growing solid in my faith, assured of my place as someone God loved, someone God wanted to be apart of His plan. And it felt good.
But it didn’t connect me to the power of His grace. I seldom felt that exhilarating sense of humility, that God adopted me despite all my failings. I chose not to recognize that if I was loved, despite my bitterness, my judgment, my unfaithfulness, the people I disagreed with were loved, too. Now with my own solid place at the table, I indulged the familiar impulse to keep others out. I build my own fence, one where only people who saw the world like me were allowed onto my idea of holy ground.
My heart was constricted. And that constriction didn’t lead me to bring others in, to continually build a spot at the table like I dreamed I would. My idea of God was still wound around myself. I felt that I was claiming the love that God owed me, and that entitlement didn’t make me feel inspired to turn and give that love to others. It just made me want to claim it, and hold it close to myself. I turned inward, and as I did, I found that connection to God, the connection I had so cherished, fading.
When I realized the extent of my pride, I finally found myself at the place Jesus had been asking me to go all along - the place of repentance, of recognizing my own sin, and feeling wonder at God for choosing to love me despite it.
After Paul tells the Gentiles not to become proud, he advises them to instead “stand in awe” (Rom 11:20). Venerate the God who is merciful to all, who makes not just the root and not just one branch but all the branches and the whole tree holy, who has chosen to show kindness even to you (Rom 11:32, 11:16, 11:22). Marvel at what He has done for you, knowing that He has done it too for those you have declared yourself above.
I’m still learning how to replace my cloak of arrogance with a cloak of humility. I’m trusting in God, knowing that it is only through His love that I can bear any fruit. But one thing has helped me: turning away from myself, out into the world, into the lives of others, and up at the stars. I don’t know where you are as you read this. However you receive these words, I hope you receive them with the knowledge that you are deeply and profoundly loved by God. May that love so overpower you that it breaks down the walls in your heart and flows like an ocean to nourish every person who needs it. May you dance, buoyed by His love. And may you reach out a hand for another to join you.