I was thinking today about all the Christians who talk about practising humility.
How can any Christian be humble?
They believe that the world has been especially created for them by a God (who has made them in his own image) and who spends all his time watching everything they do and making judgements upon it. They believe that if they behave in the correct fashion (for example, exhibit humility) that they will go to paradise, whilst anyone who behaves incorrectly will burn forever in a lake of fire with monkeys nibbling on their nipples (in a bad way).
All right not all of them believe that very last bit, though I am sure some do.
Surely humility would be to recognise that we are essentially insignificant products of a bizarre (and sort of wonderful) process of evolution. That none of us are that important in the end and nobody beyond our immediate friends and neighbours has any interest in what we do. That when we die, like when an ant gets squashed or a fox gets run over or a fish finally succumbs to cancer after a brave struggle, we don't go to any magical place for our punishment or reward, we just die (and thank God for that small mercy- oh hold on.)
I don't think this is nihilistic. In the end our lives are more significant, but only to ourselves. Our lives are both pointless (in the long term) and extremely meaningful (to us and maybe a handful of other pointless idiots).
Let's all be really humble and accept that mankind isn't the ultimate species and that the world wasn't made for us and that we're not the centre of the Universe and try and refine our behaviour accordingly so that we no longer appear like arrogant, deluded fools that we are.
Those monks who spend their whole lives living in silence, eating gruel or sitting on the top of a thirty foot pole - Humble? Bollocks. They are the most self-inflated egotists men on this earth.
And if any monks don't like what I'm saying, then come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.
Oh, but you're not allowed to are you? You've got to turn the other cheek. Well come on then. Let me give you another smacking!
(A lot of monks read this web-page apparently).
