Article
America
Character
Culture
Politics
5 min read

What would make America great again - humility

Hubris, Hope and Humility - and how they fit together in the court of King Donald

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Elon Musk sits next to Donald Trump on a plan, while giving the thumbs up gesture with both hands.
Office of Speaker Mike Johnson, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Over the inauguration weekend, I was in Texas. Trump-Vance flags still fluttered in the cold wind, now more in triumph than soliciting votes. This was in the middle of the biggest winter storm to hit the southern coast of the USA in 65 years, where four inches of snow ground cities to a halt. The seemingly endless cycle of American TV news channels were caught between fascination with Storm Enzo, and the return of a political hurricane in Washington DC.  

President Trump’s first few days broke upon the world rather like a fresh storm. When a new government takes over, it is customary to sound a note of hope for the future, uniting the nation, cautious anticipation for a new dawn, pledging to try one’s best for the people and so on. Yet Trump’s speech was optimism on steroids. He announced the beginning of a ‘golden age’ for America. “From this day forward” he claimed, “our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer.” 

Elon Musk went even further. This election, he said, was a “fork in the road of human civilisation.” As a result of the good Republican voters of the USA, “the future of civilisation was secured”, as he looked forward to a day when the stars and stripes would even be planted in the soil of the planet Mars.  

There is a fine line between hope and hubris. Many commentators have contrasted the gloomy outlook of Keir Starmer with the upbeat optimism of the Republicans in Washington. American always outdo us Brits when it comes to can-do optimism, yet this was something else.  

Hope lifts people’s spirits. It gives a sense of possibility and points to an unknown but bright future. St Paul asks “who hopes for what they can see?” Hope recognises that the future is not entirely in our hands, that events - and our own stubbornness and pig-headedness - can derail the best laid set of plans. It knows that the future is uncertain and yet, because of a simple trust that the world came from goodness and will end with goodness, believes that sometimes despite, rather than because of our efforts, the future is bright.  

Hubris, however, is when human confidence goes into overdrive. In the classical world, writers such as Hesiod and Aeschylus saw hubris as the dangerous moment when a mortal claimed to be equal to, or better than a god.  

Phaeton was a teenage boy racer, a son of the sun god Helios. He took hold of his dad’s chariot for a day, thought he could steer better than his aged parent, drove too fast, too close to the earth, burning it up and thus earning a trademark lightning bolt from Zeus for his pains. Arachne was a weaver who thought his cloth more beautiful than that of Athena, the goddess of all weavers. And of course, the most famous of all, Icarus, made himself a pair of wings, soared just a bit too high, melting the wax that held them together, plunging him into the sea like a burnt-out satellite falling, falling and then sinking into the dark blue depths of the vast ocean. A trip to Mars anyone?  

Yet without a dose of humility, the modesty that recognises not everything is in their control, that they will get things wrong, and need to admit it when they do, they will only generate antagonism and disharmony. 

There are, of course, parallels in Christian literature. The Tower of Babel is the story of a civilisation that thought it could build to the skies, to reach and rival God himself. God was not impressed and confused the speech of the uppity humans so they could no longer understand one another. King Herod - grandson of the one visited by the wise men at Christmas - dressed himself in finery, smiled smugly at the acclaim of the crowds that his was ‘the voice of a god and not a mortal.’ No sooner had he said this than ‘an angel of the Lord struck him down, he was eaten by worms and died.’ 

These are ancient stories of brash and overblown self-confidence, that a human could do what only the gods can. They recur in pretty well every human strand of wisdom. Hubris usually arises from an insecure desire to be better than anyone else, better even than the gods, or God. It is essentially competitive. If greed is the desire to be rich, then hubris is the desire to be richer than everyone else. It creates comparison, jealousy, and yes – envy - in fact, that is the point - to be the envy of everyone else. Of course, social media is full of it. It is hard to like hubristic people. They generate envy or resentment, or when they fall, a delicious dose of Schadenfreude. None of which are particularly good for us.  

The opposite of hubris is humility. The root word for humility is the same as humus, humour, humanity. It derives from that ancient biblical story of the human race being fashioned by God out of the dirt. It punctures holes in our self-importance, reminds us of our lowly origins. It is the precious ability to laugh at yourself. Humility is appropriate for us precisely because we are not gods, and woe betide us if we think we are. We are instead poised between the earth and the heavens, sharing in the divine image, capable of great things, maybe one day even reaching Mars. Yet we are also capable of great cruelty and harm, frail and liable to get things badly, sometimes catastrophically, wrong. Once we forget our dual nature, made to be like God, yet moulded out of the earth; with huge potential for creativity and yet with a tendency to over-reach, a flaw within that leaves us vulnerable to temptation, we are in danger of blundering ahead like bulls in the proverbial China Shop.  

And this is the danger that Trump and Musk are flirting with. I wish them well. I really do. Maybe they will make America great again. Maybe they will usher in an age of prosperity and order. Yet without a dose of humility, the modesty that recognises not everything is in their control, that they will get things wrong, and need to admit it when they do, they will only generate antagonism and disharmony. And they will probably do more harm than good.   

Fyodor Dostoyevsky once wrote “Loving humility is a terrible force: it is the strongest of all things, and there is nothing like it.” Humility ends up being stronger and achieves more than hubris. Jesus was said to be “gentle and humble in heart.” And he changed the world more than anyone else. Donald and Elon – watch and learn. 

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Article
Books
Culture
Morality
Sin
7 min read

After the Salt Path revelations I’m liking it even more

We edit our own reality by the stories we tell ourselves

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London. 

A newspaper front page shows its title and a falling sea bird
How The Observer broke the story.

The Observer held nothing back in its exposé headline:

“The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were spun from lies, deceit and desperation”

The truth behind the summer’s feel-good movie and the reputation of author Raynor Winn lie in tatters, shredded by the revelations unearthed by relentless investigative journalism.

The uplifting story of how a couple face financial ruin, homelessness and a terminal illness by walking the South West Coast Path has been an inspiration for many who’ve either read the book or seen the film, or both. The story works because it reflects back to us the life we know, the lives we live. And when you add the seaside of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall and Dorset, what’s not to love?

But now it needs to be seen in an altogether different light.

The article beneath the headline was thoroughly researched, carefully constructed and uncompromising in the allegations implied by the discoveries, observations and commentary of its narrative.

“… not her real name”

“… she was a thief … embezzled the money”

“… arrested and interviewed by the police”

“… five county court judgements”

“… they owned land in France”

“… nine neurologists … were sceptical”

Point by point the back story of the Salt Path is pulled apart.

First, Raynor and Moth Winn are not the “real”, “legal” names of Sally and Tim Walker.

Second, The Observer uncovered that the couple had money troubles for reasons other than the failed business investment they had claimed. Rather, as a part-time bookkeeper for an estate agent and property surveyor, Sally was accused of syphoning off £64,000 from the company’s accounts. Concerning which, it was reported that she was arrested and interviewed by the police.

Third, it was mounting debts from settling the matter with her former employer, alongside other debts, that actually led to the repossession of their home and their resulting homelessness. Not the failed business venture.

Fourth, they weren’t actually homeless as they owned a property in France, near Bordeaux. While it was in a state of disrepair and not habitable, they had previously stayed on site in a caravan.

And then finally, in a revelation that undermined the very heart of the story of their journey together, medical experts observed that it was extremely doubtful that Moth had suffered from corticobasal degeneration (CBD) for 18 years. The journalist had consulted nine neurologists, and this was the reported consensus. Not only were Moth’s presenting symptoms not what were expected, the normal life expectancy with the condition was tragically short at six to eight years.

Pulling the various strands of its investigation together The Observer thumps the tub about the importance of ‘truth’. It is not acceptable to be mis-sold an idea of truth where important passages of the book are invented. There are both “… sins of omission and commission”:

“The story, no doubt, has elements of truth, but it also misrepresents who they were, how they started out on their journey and the financial circumstances that provided the backdrop.”

However, life is complicated and there are always two sides to a story.

In a response posted to her website Raynor Winn answers each of the accusations in turn. Amid the storm of vitriol and threat unleashed online by the article, she protests that, “… [it] is grotesquely unfair, highly misleading and seeks to systematically pick apart my life.”

Most distressing has been how Moth has been traumatised by the suggestion his diagnosis was made up. Along with her online statement Winn has posted appropriately redacted letters from the neurologists treating Moth that confirm his diagnosis and the narrative of the book.

As for the charges of embezzlement, she does concede that there were difficulties with a former employer. Allegations were made to the police, and she was questioned about them. However, no charges were brought, and a settlement was reached that included her paying back money on a “non-admissions basis”.

“Any mistakes I made during the years in that office, I deeply regret, and I am truly sorry.” Raynor Winn

This, however, was not the failed business deal that lay behind their financial difficulties and which triggered their homelessness and the Salt Path story.

Winn reports that the property in France is an “uninhabitable ruin in a bramble patch” with its own, unrelated, back story. When they did explore selling it at the height of their difficulties, a local French agent valued it as virtually worthless and saw marketing it as pointless.

Ultimately, they chose not to declare themselves bankrupt and simply wipe out their debts. Rather, they made an agreement with their creditors for minimal repayments. The success of the book has enabled all their debts to be cleared.

Which leaves the implicit accusation of not being who they said they were, of hiding behind pseudonyms and not owning their “real”, “legal” names. She explains that the reasons Sally Ann and Tim Walker are Raynor and Moth Winn is really quite straightforward.

In the early years of their relationship she told Moth how much she disliked being called Sally Ann and would have preferred the family name, Raynor. Moth called her Ray from that point on. Winn is her maiden name. As for Moth, well his name is Timothy, get it? Friends and family use the names interchangeably, Sal/Ray, Tim/Moth.

Having read the book and seen the film earlier this summer I was particularly taken with The Salt Path. The humanity of their story, the journey they’d been on and the insights to a life well-lived that it offered.

Goodness, which one of us has never made a mistake, a bad call, or a wrong choice, “through weakness, through ignorance or through our own deliberate fault”?

When The Observer’s bombshell broke my heart fell. Moral high horses were being mounted and outrage expressed. Raynor Winn was being cancelled, literally cancelled.

She pulled out of her forthcoming Saltlines tour, which would have seen her perform readings from her books alongside the music of the Gigspanner Big Band during a string of UK dates. There were also calls for Penguin to cancel her next book, On Winter Hill, set for publication in October.

But do you know what? On reflection, after the revelations about the Salt Path story I’m liking it even more. And for exactly the same reasons I liked it before. Because it reflects back to us the life we know, the lives we live.

For a start, life is messy. Sometimes it’s even murky, full of misunderstanding, misinterpretation and constructed narratives. Goodness, which one of us has never made a mistake, a bad call, or a wrong choice, “through weakness, through ignorance or through our own deliberate fault”? Skeletons and cupboards come to mind.

Then, on the back of that, we all fashion the story of our lives. Whether it’s curating our online presence with the images we post to social media, or the anecdotes we share and the face we present to those who are part of our day-to-day lives. The pull is always towards a version that shows us in the best light.

In fact, it can even go right down to the stories we tell about ourselves, to ourselves. The interpretation of what has happened to us and why. Interpreting how much of our experience is down to what has been done to us or is the fruit of our own responsibility.

Now, I may not want to go as far as University of Sussex Professor of Neuroscience, Anil Seth, whose books, articles and Ted Talks see us living in a kind of ‘controlled hallucination’. An interpreted version of reality constructed and calibrated by our brains out of our experience. But there is no doubt in my mind that we edit our own version of reality by the stories we tell ourselves and each other.

This is how things are. This is what it means to be human. Some bits are edited in, others edited out. Some experiences we can interpret in one way, while others might view them very differently from where they stand.

When we feel the temptation to write someone off because of what they’ve done we do well to reflect on our own experience. Then we may well be grateful that we haven’t been cancelled because of our past indiscretions.  As the old saying goes, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

I’m reminded of how Jesus handled himself is such circumstances. When a self-righteous crowd were swiftly wanting to rush to judgement on a woman’s flawed sexual choices, Jesus encouraged those who were without fault to be the first to act. Slowly they all realised what he was saying and backeddown.

For myself, I have always found the prayer of confession to be profoundly helpful. It keeps us grounded in the reality of our own experience and should caution us about cancelling others and writing them off.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father,

we have sinned against you

and against our neighbour

in thought and word and deed,

through negligence, through weakness,

through our own deliberate fault.

We are truly sorry

and repent of all our sins.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

who died for us,

forgive us all that is past

and grant that we may serve you in newness of life

to the glory of your name.

Amen.

For our skeletons there is forgiveness.

For what lies ahead, we have the possibilities of starting over.

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