Healing Virtues of the Soul: Humility

In one of Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” cartoons Lucy is playing her role as psychiatrist. She sits in her booth with the sign that reads: "Psychiatric Help - 5 cents."    The sign below says, "The Doctor Is In."   Lucy says to Charlie Brown, "Your life is like a house."    

In the next frame, she says reflectively, "You want your house to have a solid foundation, don't you?" Charlie Brown has a kind of blank look on his face. Lucy says, "Of course you do."

Charlie Brown is still silent - saying nothing. Then in the fourth frame, psychiatrist Lucy says, "So don't build your house on the sand, Charlie Brown." About that time, a huge wind comes up and blows the booth down. Lucy, sitting in the rubble says, "Or use cheap nails."

In these past weeks, I’ve been talking about some “good nails” that can help to hold our soul together when the contrary winds of life blow hard against us.   These Healing Virtues of the Soul: honesty, hope, faith, courage, integrity and willingness are some of the “good nails” that help us stay strong and sound so we can withstand life’s storms.  They are virtues which work their healing both in preventative and curative ways, but the most important thing to remember is this:  Their healing powers work from the inside out. 

THE INNER CONNECTION TO HEALING

There is no better biblical picture of the inner soul connection to outward physical healing than the powerful miracle story of the healing of the Syrian general found in 2 Kings, chapter 5.  The drama going on here is a classic, in theology and also in psychology, as in life.  Before Naaman, who has leprosy, can receive the healing his body so desperately needs, there is a certain new path his soul must be willing to take.  Though the healing story is enacted through these “outward” things he must do, that is, the most obvious “hoops” he is required to jump though by the prophet Elisha, from the inside, in his heart.  But before we look closer into this ancient biblical story, let’s consider the need for this virtue of healing with an image much closer to us in our own times.

Harold Warlick, Dean of the Chapel at High Point University, tells two children walking opposite directions down a typical crowded hallway at school.  Neither of the two pay close attention to what they are doing.  They bump into each other with force.  One child reacts by pushing back against the other making a fist, crying out: “You bumped me.  You bumped me.”  He is ready to fight.  The other child realizes the incident was only an accident and simply wants to move on his way and get to class.  But the first child is still screaming threats: “You hit me!” and wanting to stay and fight.

What do you think is going on with the first child who over-reacts?  Is he ill-tempered, hyperactive (ADHD), and incorrigible?  Is this upset child bad and the other good?  Warlick suggests the first child does have an attention deficiency, while the second child does not.    The attention is deficient, not because the child can’t focus, but the attention is deficient because the child can’t focus beyond the moment.  The angry, upset child is only able to focus on the moment and stays and gets stuck with the pain saying: “You hit me! You hit me!” It is not that the child is still hurting on the outside, but the pain is on the inside.  With this deficiency within his soul, the child gets stuck having to defend his own ego.  He can’t get beyond himself because he can’t see beyond himself.   He can’t see beyond himself because he can’t see through some unresolved emotional pain.   (Incident from Harold C. Warlick’s sermon: “A Bad Temperament Can Kill You”, in Light in the Land of Shadows, CSS Publishing, Lima, Ohio, 1996).

We adults can have similar deficiencies in our attention, can’t we?  Perhaps you know someone who reacts in a similar way to the pains and hurts in life.   They have bumped some a sudden discomfort or pain and their attention gets stuck on one thing they can’t let go of it, or get around it.   It may be yet undiscovered, but the real problem is not what just hit them, but it’s something else they haven’t gotten around.  It’s something they need to deal with and resolve on the inside of themselves, not on the outside.

Let me tell you a little story of some very normal “attention deficiency”, which any of us can bump up against when we encounter life’s challenges.  When Teresa and I first moved to Germany to live in a different culture and in a big city, it was an adventure in dealing with challenges.   One challenge came as we walked on the streets in Germany or went in the stores, and we discovered how much more crowded it was.  You could not walk very far until you bumped into someone or someone bumped into you.  As a person from a small town, the thing we did was, stop acknowledge the incident, and politely say, “Excuse me.”  It was one of the first German words we ever learned: “Entschuldigen.”

During the first couple of months, we used this all the time.  We almost wore it out, saying “Entschuldigen” to everyone we bump into or who bumped into us.  But after a while, we realize something.  Nobody was saying it back.  When we bumped into each other we were the only ones saying anything and it left you thinking that the German people must really be a bunch or rude, crude, impolite people.  All kinds of thoughts went through my head, like “these people really do need Jesus”, or worse, “no wonder we had to go to war against this land where all the barbarians” came from.  I was really hard on these people.   I was being polite and they seemed to be down-right ugly.

Then was reading a book entitled “These Strange German Ways” about the differences in the customs in Germany and America.   I read through all kinds of ways that people were supposed to be polite in Germany.  When you go visit someone, you take them a gift.  When you enter a room, you don’t set down until you personally shake hands with everyone.  As I kept on reading, then it hit me, there is indeed some etiquette here.  In fact, because I didn’t follow these customs I could have been perceived as being rude and crude.  Then I came upon the next words which hit be like a ton of bricks: It is not rude in German culture to bump into somebody.  You don’t have to say “excuse me”, unless you knock somebody down.  In fact, in German culture, people live close together in large cities and are not only used to pushing up against each other, it is normal, and to be expected.  People will look rather strangely at you if you say ‘excuse me’ every time to simply make contact.  To a German, if you did this, it would be like counting cracks in the sidewalk.  You don’t need to be excused from something you didn’t mean to do.  If you bump into somebody, it’s o.k.  Only use the word when you do something you could have helped or if you hurt someone.  

I almost laughed when I read that.  Here I was, walking around trying to be polite, but I must have real looked stupid and over sensitive.  But more than that, I had all these negative feelings growing in me about Germans that weren’t true at all.  It was not a personal issue, but a cultural one.  What was really going wrong was inside of me, not outside in them.  I was still stuck living in America, and I now had to get myself “unstuck” by learning to live in Germany.     

Sometimes we have to choose which “land” we are going to live in.    When life bumps into us, or we bump into it (and it will, sometimes really hard), we have work through our pain now, so we don’t have it taking control over us later.   To find the healing we need, we have to find a way to get unstuck and to keep moving ahead.    Because so many times,  the real obstacle in our way of healing, is not what is going on outside, but what is going on inside, in our own mind, heart, soul, or our ego---which ever you want to call it. 

This is why the Healing story of Naaman the leper is so perceptive, long before any physical or psychological science is developed.   Even Jesus used Naaman as an example.   Jesus said, “Many lepers were in Israel in the time of Elisha the prophet; and none of them was cleansed, except Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4: 27).  Why was Naaman healed and others weren’t?  That is the question we want to answer and I can already tell you, the key to his healing was found within his own heart, which unlocked God’s healing power in his life.

NAAMAN’S OTHER NEED FOR HEALING

What we see first about this story is that Naaman was a man who was used to getting things his own way.   He was a successful general in Syria’s army; and a favorite of the king.  He not only had a high social position, but he was held in the greatest esteem by his people, and feared by all of Israel.   He was a man who got results and because of this life and all its treasures seemed to have fallen into his lap.  But now, before our eyes, two great problems arise:  One is obvious and on the outside:  Naaman was afflicted by an incurable disease called leprosy, which was eating away at his body.   The other is on the inside and inconspicuous:  As the story unfolds, through the prophet’s very shrewd and revealing prescription, Naaman’s bad temper and hidden anger is also revealed.   What we see clearly is that Naaman wants healing and he wants his life back, but he wants it on his own terms.

I wonder what it would have been like to live in Naaman’s home?  He was a wealthy, powerful man, who was used to getting his way and getting whatever he wanted, when he wanted it.   Now, he’s a man who suddenly has a disease that he can’t control and can’t conquer.  That new reality for him must have been more painful than the leprosy itself.   Do you think Naaman was the kind of guy who kept all this pain inside?   He didn’t.  We will see it come out with a lot of anger.  Now, if add Naaman’s bad temper to his loss of health, you’ve got more hurt.   When people like Naaman, who seem to have everything are at risk of losing everything, well, you could say, they don’t normally choose to hurt alone or go quietly into the dark night. 

Sickness has a way of taking over and possessing one’s life.  Anyone who’s been sick will tell you that losing control of your life can just as painful as having the hurt itself.   That’s why a lot of people don’t want to go to the doctor or into the hospital when they get sick.   It’s not just all the stuff they have to go through---the examinations, the tests, the shots, the medicine and the loss of all kinds of privacy and pride, but it’s also the stuff you have to let others do for you because you can’t do it for yourself.   And just as it’s painful to be a sick person, it can be painful and hard to help and live with a person in pain.  This was especially true of Naaman, because as we are about to see, he wanted healing, but he wanted only on his own terms.   

With all that is going with Naaman, both in public and probably behind the scenes, is there any wonder that the hurt goes down to the wife, maybe one to the children, all the way down to the little Israelite servant girl.  She’s the one who made the suggestion that there is a “prophet in Israel” who could “cure his leprosy”. (vs. 3).   Now things are really going to get interesting.  Not only is Naaman debilitated by the disease, he now must be humiliated as he finds himself taking advice from his servant, and from a girl, and he must consider getting help from a lesser country and from a strange religion he knows nothing about nor does he even believe in.   Oh, yes, one other thing.  As far as we know, Elisha has never even healed anybody either, though he has been given permission to kill (1 Kings 19:17).  

And if all this isn’t enough to humble him, there’s one more thing.  Now the King, who usually seeks the advice of his generals is joining in to tell this sick man what he must do: “Go, then, and I will send along a letter…” (vs.).  Along with the letter of recommendation Naaman takes gold and silver with him.  You might say he takes it in the form of an ancient insurance check made out in the sum of about $125 thousand in today’s currency.  So, everything is ready for Naaman to get his healing, right?

Not so fast.  This is where it gets ugly.   What happens next puts Naaman into a complete rage and he just about walks away from everything.    First Naaman has to go through customs, so to speak and makes the King of Israel know of his presence in the country.   This literally puts the fear of God into the King, because he’s thinking that it’s nothing but a political trap: Naaman gets sick, comes to get help from one of Israel’s prophets, doesn’t get what he wants or doesn’t like what he gets, then goes on a killing rampage.  He’s seen this kind of trick before.   So the King of Israel nervously sends a message to Elisha asking him what to do next.   “Let him come to me so that he may learn there is a prophet in Israel,” Elisha recommends to which the King of Israel nervously obliges. 

When Naaman finally arrives at the prophet’s house, “with his chariots and horses” (v. 9), you’d think the prophet should have come out to greet him with the red carpet treatment---especially since this guy is a “mighty warrior”, making two kings very nervous, and is a very sick and desperate man.  But what Elisha does next is undoubtedly one of most daring feats ever attempted by a prophet in the Hebrew Bible.  Instead of going out to greet him, Elisha sends his messenger boy out to him with detailed instructions:  “Go wash in the Jordan, seven times and your flesh will be restored and you will be made clean” (vs. 10).

That’s it.  With this seemingly “cheap” medical prescription and impersonal approach Naaman loses it.   But let the text speak for itself.  Read verses 11 and 12:  “But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy!   Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.”  

What in the world is Elisha up to?   Everybody knows when somebody’s got the money you’ve got the time.  Even today’s fundraisers know the contributing ones  want to be met personally.  But Elisha didn’t do that.  And Naaman grew madder and madder.  “He didn’t even come to visit me.”  “He sent his associate, instead of coming himself”.  “He didn’t act like a preacher”.   He didn’t come out, wave his arms, call on God or nothing!   (I once heard of a church that fired its pastor because he didn’t wear a neck tie when he serviced his car.  Seriously).

Naaman was hot!  He had all these preconceived ideas in his mind how it was all supposed to happen, but it didn’t.  He got even hotter.  Then came the most humiliating thing of all.  The insult of insult is when you’re in a foreign country and strangers start cutting down your homeland.  “Go, take a dip in the Jordan! And you’ll be cured”.   That’s it?  Why aren’t our own rivers beautiful enough?  I mean the Jordan, if you’ve ever seen it, it can ‘t decide whether it’s a creek or a river and it’s muddy most of the time.  “You call this guy a preacher!  Man, I can stay home and do much better that this watching church on T.V.!

There you have it.  Naaman leaves in a rage.  If everything were left up to Naaman getting his way, the healing would have never taken place.   He would surrender a lot of things to be healed, but he would not surrender his heart.  If he could not have healing on his own terms, then he would not have it at all.  Better go home and rot with your pride in tack than be humbled and then completely humiliated.  Now, as Harold Warlick says, Naaman is so much like that boy in the school hallway.  He’s not only got a temper, he’s got a real deficiency in his attention.  He can’t see beyond his own stuff.   He’s like me having to learn a different set of rules in a new country, but instead of learning, he’s fighting mad.  And this bad disposition nearly killed him. He’d rather had been a non-insulted leper, than person humbled who got over the insult and found the healing and grace of God.

Namaan’s ego and pride would have killed him, if it hadn’t been for his servants.  They saw his short-sighted, ego-driven, emotionally charged, attention deficiency.

“Sir,” they said.  “If the prophet had demanded something more difficult wouldn’t you have done it (v. 13)?”  Didn’t Namaan take $125 thousand in gold and silver with him and was prepared to give it all.  What if he ask Namaan to crawl back home on his hands and knees, wouldn’t he have done it? 

This word of intervention brought Namaan back to his senses.  He was able to see the big picture.  He decided to go down to the Jordan, just as the prophet demanded. Can’t you just see him dipping a few times, thinking to himself: Embarrassing, crazy, humiliating, what a cruddy little river?  He looked at his hand and said: “I’ve still got leprosy.”   “Keep going.  Keep dipping,” the servants yelled.  Finally he came up the seventh time, taking the final plunge, and he stood unable to take his eyes off his hand.  It was just like the prophet said.   His flesh was as smooth as the flesh of a child.

HEALING FOR THE HUMBLED SOUL

What a great miracle story of healing, isn’t it?  But what can this ancient story about humility and healing say to us?

First of all ask yourself:  Who really wants to be a humbled?  Remember that old country song by Mac Davis, “O Lord It’s Hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way.”   It can seem easier to be a non-insulted, physically sick person than to be a humiliated soul?   Our response to hurt is to fight, become defensive, rather than working to get past the bump or the bruise in our lives.  As human beings, our attention deficiencies can get in the way. 

·         How many people do you know who bit the hand of the very person who was trying to help them?  

·         How many times been learning something new from a teacher, but walked out of class saying “that teacher is stupid?”  

·         How many have a doctor give them advice to what they need to start or stop doing, and walk out shaking their head or knowing better to go right back to doing the same destructive things. 

·         How many go through some shaky times in a relationship and throw their arms up in disgust and walk away too soon?  

·         How many were in a church going through growing pains, but instead of hanging in, rising above it and growing through it, walked out the door never to come back? 

·         How many have gone through some hard, very unfair, and unwelcomed event in life,  blamed God for everything, loss faith and would rather stay home and rot, nursing their bruised ego, letting it kill them day by day, rather than find a way hope and healing.  

·         Finally, how many times do we prefer to protect our prideful egos, when being humbled is the only way to come out of or come through our pain?

Since it should be rather clear to us now what kind of dangerous position our own egos can be to us, what about humility?  What healing good is there in it? 

Look again at the biblical narrative once again.  Consider the little slave girl who first told Naaman about Elisha (vs. 2-3).  It is clear in the text that she was a casualty of war.  The Syrians, we are told, on a raid had carried her away into a strange land.  They had probably killed her family.  Whatever happened, in one fell swoop, she had lost her mother, father, her home, all her possessions, and of course, her freedom.  The only thing left to lose was her life.  The man who was to blame for all her problems and her slavery was deathly ill.

What would you do in that situation?  Would you suggest to him a way he could be healed?  Or would you wish him every pain he was about to experience?  Would you be glad he is getting pay-back, thinking to yourself: “He hurt me, my family, my people, not let him hurt?  This is God’s vengeance on him, who am I to interfere or intervene?”   

That could have been her thinking and her rationale for not saying anything to Namaan, but it wasn’t.   In some way, this little servant girl, this woman with so much pain in her life, this woman had been robbed of everything, had something that this great general did not possess.  He had a heart.  She had a soul.  She still possessed the faith and the desire to be a “light to the nations”.  She reached out to help a person she had every reason to hate.

Why did she do it?  Why did she humble herself in this way?  We don’t know exactly, except that people who serve seem to have a perspective on life that people who rule have the most difficulty having.  What we know better than why she did what she did is what happened because she took the role of the servant, the cross.   When she took this role, when she took the pain upon herself and wished nothing but healing for the other, healing took place.   And my best guess is that not only did healing come to Namaan, but healing also came more fully in her heart.  Somehow, long before Christianity and long before Psychology, she knew how unhealthy it was to hold on to hate and selfish pride in her heart.  She knew that holding on to pains in your heart was a sickness even worse than leprosy.

But is still so hard to do, isn’t it?  It is so rare and so hard to see what we do to our hearts when we hold on to selfish pride, we refuse to be humbled, and we don’t work to resist a bad disposition in our soul.   When you have been wronged by someone, especially someone stronger than you, it is so easy to hold on to the pain.  It is so easy, for women, who have been wronged by men, to hold on to their anger and hurt.  It is so easy, for children who’ve been wronged by parents take the pain with them all their lives.  It is easier, when we’ve been betrayed, never to forget or to let it go in our hearts.  We tend to want to meet hate with hate and to let evil be returned for evil, and to try to help God work out his vengeance.   It can even better, at least for a while, to go through life focusing on something you won’t let go, even when it sounds a lot like “he hit me” or “she bumped me” or “they hurt me!”  It can be a hard decision to make, whether to be a non-humiliated and proud sick person, or a humiliated, humbled, surrendered, well person.   It would take more than seven dips in the Jordan to wash all that hurt away.

Yet, this little, Jewish, slave girl--and I can’t seem to get my mind of her, was able to move on.  What was it in her that caused her to come forward?  What was it in her that enabled her to let go of all the pain, and to wish that her enemy might find hope and healing?   I can’t help but believe part of her healing came from her position.  She took the role of a humble servant, just like Namaan also had to do if he wanted the healing grace of God in his life.  And if you think, this humble way was just a stupid move of ignorance, and even if you don’t think her humility brought healing to her soul, I wonder what it did for her status, her position and her future as Naaman returned.  Wonder what Namaan might have done for her, when he returned home with his health fully restored? 

What about us?  What can humility do for our own health and healing? 

The book of James in the New Testament suggests that “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”   It goes on to call upon believers to “submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee”, and recommends, “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you, cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your hearts you double-minded…”  All this ends with these even stranger, even more humbling words, “Lament and mourn and weep.  Let your laughter be turned into mourning, and your joy into dejection. Humble yourself before the Lord, and he will exalt you” (4:7-10) and then finally, we get these next words which remind us again what this Jewish servant girl did her own great jester of humility: “Do not speak evil of one another…” (4:11).

What can dipping yourself in the river of humbleness and humiliation do for healing the pains that persist in your life?  You’ll never know until you get in the humble water yourself and wash.  You can’t be made clean, whole or healed, until you bow down in the humble waters.  It’s not just Elisha, but also Yeshua, (Jesus) who magnified the humble waters as the way of healing.  When Jesus humbled himself on the cross, he invited us all to the river of healing that still flows to those who will come and wash.  

What about you?  What do you need to bring to wash in the humble waters?  What part of yourself, what pain, what obstacle of character, what defect, what disposition in your life needs to be dipped in the healing waters?  The river of healing still flows, but who is willing, like Namaan, to humbly step away from their pain, away from their hurt, away from the deficiency in their soul, toward the healing, toward cleansing, toward wholeness and toward hope?  The healing waters wait on your next move.  Amen.