Christian Thinking
Humility…a Christ-like Virtue

There is no evil now which did not exist then, two thousand years ago. Nevertheless, our Lord came. He came into the midst of it. And he found the shortage of residential accommodations so acute that He had to be born in a stable like the child of refugees or squatters. But He came, and He grew here, talked and taught here. He didn’t come in style. He didn’t wear an old school tie. He didn’t flourish duplicated testimonials. He didn’t have a good Oxford accent or an assurance bred of Public school conditioning. He came from a working class home; He spoke a provincial dialect; and He had a body of followers some of whom might well have failed their eleven plus or their college entrance examination. He came here at the humblest level because, as God, that was where He wanted to be; where best He could work and serve and love. At the level of the factory-worker and the farm-worker, at the level of the underprivileged. He came. And He wasn’t a great success in the world. He didn’t have a brilliant career or climb the social ladder. He didn’t acquire more and more prestige, status, and possessions. He didn’t get on. He was more like you and me than like those expensively suited gentlemen in the glossy magazines who are surrounded by sleek cars, sleeker women and smart furniture. He came, by every act and word to show up the world’s evil, yet never to pretend it was not a world fit for Him, the divine, to be in, and on the bottom floor.

Harry Blamires, The Christian Mind, How Should a Christian Think? (Ann Arbor, Mi: Servant Books, 1963), pp. 103-04.