Humility and Dignity
Written by Aaron Miller | Pastor of Equipping
When Charles Eliot, then President of Harvard University, was deciding how he would dedicate the Emerson Building of Philosophy at Harvard, he needed a suitable inscription to put over the main entrance. One of the other professors suggested a quote from the Greek Philosopher Protagoras, "Man is the measure of all things."
But at the unveiling, the crowd was shocked. Many, if not most, were expecting to see the Protagoras quote, but what they saw instead was a quote from 500 years before Protagoras: "What is man that thou art mindful of him?” And that question has followed humanity throughout all of history. The 20th Century exposed humanity at its best and its worst; technological achievements staggered the imagination and were then used for the destruction of millions of people. There were moral failures and atrocities, the kind that sear the conscience. There were also great acts of courage and valor that were inspirational. And through it all, by the 1950s and ’60s, the question was still being asked, “What is man?”
In his opening lines to the Institutes, John Calvin wrote one of the greatest statements in the history of theology: "Our wisdom in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom consists almost entirely of two parts, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves."
“In other words, to truly know what it means to be human, we must first know God. A faulty understanding of man is the root of all the great heresies in church history.”
In effect, Calvin says we cannot know what it means to be human without knowing God first. Therefore, for this reason, some of the most intelligent scientists in the world, brilliant in their fields and able to articulate their views, blindly grope around in the dark trying to figure out what man is, trying to find understanding in bone fragments that will piece together the truth about the true essence and purpose of humanity. They have only one conclusion: There is no soul or human imagination, only neurological chemicals in the brain. This is purely a materialistic explanation of the question, "What is man?"
Thankfully, we are not left in the dark. King David wrote an astonishingly brief Hebrew poem, 71 words in the original, in which he answers the question in the context of God’s majesty, “What is man?”
Meditating on Psalm 8 is like coming to a breathtaking clearing on a rugged mountain trail. When you give yourself over to the words of David, allowing them to read you, it can be overwhelming to the mind in the way that its beauty saturates the senses. God's name is the most majestic, the most glorious thing in all the earth. Before it, all the power in the universe, combined and multiplied, trembles before him. David says his glory is set above the heavens. Space is infinite in scope and is just another of God's built-in object lessons about his nature woven throughout the universe. Therefore, David's statement means that God's glory and power are higher than something that cannot be measured.
If you were able by some power to move through the universe, you would not feel any waxing and waning of the presence of God. He is everywhere and all at once glorious, and then some. So, if you were to arrive at the edge of the universe, God would not run out to meet you, He would already be there, for nothing can contain him. His glory is above the heavens. Perhaps a better way to say this is that the heavens don’t contain God, God contains the heavens. Isaiah 40:12 says, “Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and marked off the heavens with a span?” The cosmos cannot be measured. Scientists have discussed it being between 10 and 20 billion light-years across based on assumptions that cannot be proven. But God’s response is, “It’s the breadth of my hand if you’d like to know!”
David then turns to meditate on the smallness of the human race: “What is man that you even take note of him, Lord? He's so small and insignificant!” That is the crux of Psalm 8: only a glorious and majestically powerful God could set an insignificant creature like man at the head of His created works. Were it not for the spark of intellect, God-like heart and character, and creative ability God endowed the human race, we would be almost the lowest mammals on the food chain.
“We are, intrinsically, nothing except what God has made us to be. So, David, in the ‘humility that comes from wisdom’ (James 3:13), turns the very fact of man's glory and pre-eminence into a meditation on God’s majestic name, for only a majestic God could esteem such lowly creatures.”
Then there is the benefit of asking David's probing question: “What is man, that you are mindful of him?” The fact is, God is intensely mindful of you. He thinks about you all the time. Psalm 139:17-18 states, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I would count them, they are more than grains of sand.” God’s intense watching of us is even described as being somewhat oppressive. Job said in Job 7, “Will you never turn away for a moment, O watcher of men?” It’s an intense thought. His ever-watchful eye leads us to the humble recognition of our place before him. We tend to become inflated in our conceits. We are impressed by our achievements - our technological advances, the breadth of our knowledge because of our scientific inquiry into this universe, our successful imitation of creation for our purposes (creating mechanical arms that are stronger than ours, mechanical flying devices faster than a bird, mechanical swimming devices that go deeper than any fish), etc. But we forget the humility of David's question and the corresponding humility of John the Baptist in John 3:27: “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given from heaven,” and Paul in 1 Corinthians 4:7: “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” God delights to remind us of these truths by pointing to the immensity of deep space, the strength of an elephant, or the ferocity of a lion. God uses his creation to keep us humble. He did so with Job and David, who both received the same lessons in humility. We would also do well to heed them.
For David, this is a sweet death of his pride and arrogance. He's made very small in his own eyes, and that's good. He actively seeks this meditation, "God, make me small. Remind me that the heavens are yours, for you made them." There are two great realms of physical creation. Genesis 1:1, says, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." According to Genesis 1, God set the great light in the sky to govern the day and the lesser lights in the sky to govern the night. Notice, he has not put us over the heavens. It's the sun and the moon that rule up there. We can look at them, admire them, and praise the God who made them, but we can't change them. God has set the heavens above us, so David considers these celestial bodies and is humbled. And in that humble recognition, we understand, along with David, that our identity and worth are not intrinsic to our biology; they are given to us by our Creator, whose power, beauty, and majesty are above the heavens.