At a dinner to celebrate the work of a communal leader, the guest speaker paid tribute to the honoree, his many qualities: his dedication, hard work and foresight. As he sat down the leader leaned over and said, “You forgot to mention one thing.” “What was that?” asked the speaker. The leader replied, “My humility.”
I could believe someone saying something like that. Great leaders have many qualities, but humility is usually not one of them. With rare exceptions they tend to be ambitious, with a high measure of self-regard. They expect to be obeyed, honored, respected, even feared. They may wear their superiority effortlessly – Eleanor Roosevelt called this “wearing an invisible crown” – but there is a difference between this and humility.
This is one of the genuine revolutions the Mosaic Law brought about in the history of spirituality. The idea that a king in the ancient world should be humble would have seemed ridiculous. We can still today see, in the ruins and relics of Mesopotamia and Egypt, an almost endless series of vanity projects created by rulers in honor of themselves.
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