Christians obviously can't celebrate anything called "Pride Month." We want to celebrate graces and virtues, not deadly sins. Yet the antichristian spirit behind "Pride Month" could ask for nothing better than a month of feeble, pearl-clutchy reactions from Christians being taunted by (alleged) homosexuals. "Not very loving, are they?" the antichristians sneer, always seeking to goad homosexuals into more bitterly hostile relationships. "Don't have anything of their own to celebrate, do they? All these Christians do is sit on the sidelines, clucking and fussing, showing their envy of our wonderfulness."
That homosexual youth think these people have any wonderfulness is distressing, but the weakest point in their argument is that Christians don't have anything of our own to celebrate. The clearest opposite to the Deadly Sin of Pride is the grace of humility. Why not celebrate June as Humility Month?
Things to do in celebration of humility might include:
* Abstinence from publicizing sexual or otherwise purely individual love. (Fathers Day, graduations, birthdays, weddings, promotions, retirements, and similar personal milestones could still be celebrated in June, privately, without affecting the observance of Humility Month.) Focus on love in the form of public spirit. Celebrate philanthropy, humanitarianism, creativity, dedication to jobs, gifts to communities.
* Abstinence from engagement with people who stomp around screaming about how their sexual relationships embody the Deadly Sin of Pride. Return of awareness to the idea that people who are "in love" want to be alone together, and the better their understanding of love is, the more it returns them to the rest of the world with a sense of quiet contentment about their private feelings and renewed commitment to the practice of radical love for humankind.
* Attention to the question whether "altruism" can be said to exist in the real world, or for how long, given that generosity and service to others have measurable benefits, including medical benefits, to oneself.
* Attention to the idea that although individuals' ideas about what is good can be opposed to each other, their Highest Good is One. Discussion and dramatization of ways people seeking the Highest Good can reconcile their selfish ideas about what is good, first with objective reason (e.g., it's not good for anyone or anything to spray poisons outdoors; it's not good for one person or group of people to make decisions or plans for other people, it's not good to divorce and remarry and subject children to "blended families" lives) and then with one another's desires (possessions can be shared, healthy interpersonal distance can reduce conflicts of taste).
* It's not possible to parade around screaming and waving signs about one's own humility. But it's possible to celebrate the humility of public-spirited acts and ministries...especially, though not limited to, those of people who chose to abstain from sex.
We can't will ourselves to be humble. It's a grace that comes from beyond us. If we try to be humble by ourselves, we become proud of our own humility. We can get sucked into the "worm-ology" of proclaiming that we are worms and wretches, while still acting with selfishness, greed, and arrogance. We can try seriously to believe that we are inferior to other people even, and especially, in the ways we are farthest from it, and waste our gifts while showing ingratitude to their Giver, and still act with selfishness, greed, and arrogance.. We can enable, encourage, and aggravate bossy, bullying behavior in others, and form co-dependent relationships in which we tell ourselves that making other people worse human beings is somehow making ourselves better ones--and even in this we can act with selfishness, greed, and arrogance. We can get ourselves into all sorts of mental messes. Humility involves forgetting about oneself, so examining oneself for signs of humility is useless. But I think three little exercises I do can help to prepare people to receive the grace of real humility:
1. For at least one day at a time, listen twice as much as you speak. (Don't just passively be quiet and inattentive, or, worse, silent and sulky. Really listen. Speak enough to encourage others to tell you more.)
2. For at least one day at a time, read twice as much as you write. (In the same spirit as above.)
3. For at least one task at a time, volunteer for the task that it is most obvious that nobody wants to do. (If you are the only woman on the crew, don't let the guys have all the chivalry by pretending that this is the lightest, easiest task. The lightest tasks on many job sites are boring, but pick the heaviest task you're capable of doing, anyway.)
No quote marks: Humility does not mean good-looking people trying to believe they are ugly or clever people trying to believe they are stupid...If you meet a humble man, you would not notice him as resembling Uriah Heep, the Charles Dickens villain who was always hypocritically proclaiming "I'm a very'umble man" while cheating people out of money; you'd think that he was a cheerful fellow who took a real interest in what you had to say. C.S. Lewis said something like this, in his own words and in the context that made it better, but those two thoughts linger in memory.
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