Humility is reality

I am fascinated by the concept of land. In particular, the people and events that have occupied any given patch of land throughout the course of time. If I had been a little more ambitious, I may have majored in anthropology. I read and write often about the historicity of the land we live on.

A favorite line from a poem I’ve been working on for months is these three words:

All is land. 

The human experience is bound to the land. We cannot separate our anthropology from the dirt we've anthropologized on. Land is the literal and metaphorical foundation of civilization. 

We run marathons on the land. We walk our dogs on the land. We build skyscrapers on the land. We draw imaginary lines across the land, then hurl bombs at each other like children playing with slingshots in the backyard. We put price tags on the land and dare to say we own it.

Because when we own land, we have something real. The land and everything attached to it is real estate. It’s the realest thing we can own. Land property is real, because unlike personal property it cannot be moved or destroyed. Our clothes burn up, our cars get totaled, our pets die. But the land will remain. The land is real. 

When you have land, you have a place in the world. A place that belongs to you and a place to belong to. 

When you have land, you have options. You can dig a hole, plant a seed, build a house, play a game, leave a legacy. 

But when land is stolen—and billions of acres have been—the thieves don’t remove the dirt, they remove the people from it. They don’t only want the soil; they want the space. 

When the land is yours, so is the air above it. "Air rights" is a real legal concept stemming from the Latin phrase cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos. It means “Whoever owns the soil, it is theirs up to Heaven and down to Hell." 

When the land is yours, you can build as high and dig as deep as you want to. It’s not only your place on earth to live, it’s your space in the world to occupy as you wish. 

Some people own land they choose not to occupy. Others seek to occupy land they do not own. The former is a privilege. The latter is the cause of almost every war, including the 110 armed conflicts that are happening as I write this. It’s an easy case to make that when ownership and occupation are at odds, unrest ensues. 

This is akin to the biblical concept of humility. That may seem like a sharp right turn, but it’s true. 

The Hebrew word for humility is anav. The literal definition of anav is “to occupy one’s God-given space in the world”. To claim your territory and live in it with purpose. To find your sweet spot. Not ambitiously going beyond your space, but not sheepishly shrinking into a tiny, shadowy corner of it.

When we fail to find our sweet spot, unrest ensues in our souls. 

Moses uses the adjective form of anav when he declares himself “the most humble person in all the earth” (Numbers 12:3). It’s written in third-person, which is usually a sign of arrogance. But he puts it in parentheses, as if to say, “No big deal, though."

But can someone be and proclaim to be the most humble person on earth? My answer to this question has recently shifted from “no way” to “absolutely”. When you realize that your space is a free and clear gift, and you can never build high enough or dig deep enough to escape that truth. When you realize that you’re not a conquistador, but you’re not a squatter either. 

You did not create your space. You did not earn it. You did not steal it. But it’s yours to occupy as you wish. (Of course, if your wish is to hurt others or serve yourself, you are not occupying your space, you are exploiting it.)

Humility is living in reality. Pride is delusion. Pride is the notion that I am bigger than my God-given space, or that my God-given space is too big for me. In either case, pride leads to unrest in our souls.

When Moses proclaims to be the most humble person on earth, he’s not operating in pride, he’s operating in reality. And his reality was that he was occupying a unique space given to him by God. A space that dwarfed him. A space so big and so important that you wonder why God would trust any human being to occupy it. A space he was reluctant to step into, but eventually came around to the idea. 

But Moses, the disarticulate orphan-prince-murderer-shepherd, found a way to fill his God-given space. No one else on earth had depended on God so much to fill a space so large. Moses’ understanding of this is sober realism, not pride. Moses’ soul is at rest.

During her 2002 MTV Unplugged performance, Lauryn Hill made a poignant statement. As she fiddled with her guitar between songs, she said, “Fantasy is what people want, but reality is what they need.”

Yes! Reality is what we need, because without it, we cannot attain humility. And humility is the prerequisite for grace. And without grace, we are disqualified from even setting foot into our God-given space. Only grace can recognize a gift.

Grace is the cause and the effect of humility. It’s how we arrive at the realization that our space is a gift, and it’s what we get when we surrender to that realization. It’s a simple feedback loop.

Reality. Humility. Grace. Back to reality.

The fact that reality and realty are near homographs is not lost on me. Understanding our true real estate in the world—our God-given purpose and design—is the beginning of humility. Living in the reality that my “land” is 100% God-given and 100% mine to occupy is what cultivates the anav with which Moses self-identified. 

The land is real. The land is mine. And it’s up to me what I do with it. I can build, I can dig, I can plant, I can play. I can choose.

I have a place in the world. I have options.

Suggested Reading:
Humility by Andrew Murray
Humble Roots by Hannah Anderson