humility is more than diplomacy

I received my first subscribed issue of Conversations: A Forum for Authentic Transformation a few weeks ago. Last night I finally found the time and suitable frame of mind to open it up. The theme of the current issue (fall/winter 2009) is "Following the Jesus Way," which has something to do with one of Eugene Peterson's latest book, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways that Jesus is the Way. I know Eugene Peterson only from The Message, a much "alive" but non-literal translation of the Bible, not having read anything else from him.

Half-way reading the first article, I thought this issue is not half as deep as what it used to be. Then all of a sudden I read this, and my mind hasn't been quiet since:

But here's the hard part. There is a great attraction in these matters to finding access to an "inner ring," an inside track--being an insider in a group of specially sensitive and motivated men and women regarding the things of God. But the Jesus way has no inside track. It might be hard to give this up but "insider" stuff in matters of spirituality is an illusion of the devil. But I can assure you, once you give up this illusion, you are soon compensated by admission into a much larger community of men and women who are experiencing the ways of love and forgiveness and grace, people you would have otherwise never known in personal detail...to say nothing of the relief of escaping the claustrophobic confines of spiritual elitism.

No spiritual elitism? That was a blow. Pride must have been at work to blind my sight: I didn't realize that subconsciously I always thought that I was better than some other Christians. In fact, I worked hard to stay in that imaginary "inner ring." What a trap! And how long would it take to dismantle such thinking, which has been with me for so long?

I guess humility is more than a way that church leaders put on in order to better manage their flocks, and humility is more than diplomacy. It's no pretense but what one must genuinely feel after one has experienced utter desperation. How many of us--even though truly repented Christian--ever got a taste of what true despair is?