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Throughout the month of November we’re looking at civility – how trusting God can help us cultivate a disposition of the mind and heart that has the potential to revolutionize our culture and ourselves.
Alexandra Hudson recalls that the colleague who requested her help with one of his projects was exceedingly polite.
It was 2017, and she had a job in politics in Washington, D.C. He approached her “with an earnest smile and in saccharine, honeyed tones” told her how radiant she looked that day. He politely asked if she would be willing to assist him. She politely agreed.
Soon enough she realized that he expected her to do the entire project, and that he would be taking all the credit. “He had gotten what he wanted from me, and because I was no longer useful, he no longer bothered with trivialities such as compliments and courtesy.”
In her book The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves – a volume she labored over for almost a decade – Hudson reveals that she quickly discovered there are two kinds of “successful people” in the nation’s capital: those who utilize the tactic of ruthlessness and those who manipulate others with “extreme politesse.”
No one disputes that our society stands in desperate need of a rebirth of civility.
But it’s going to have to go far deeper than people simply deciding to become nicer.
Hudson’s thesis is that civility is not the same thing as being polite.
Politeness – mastering the rules of etiquette that govern social relationships – can all too often become “putting a polished exterior over malicious intent.” That’s a tactic born of the conviction that human beings are just pawns to be moved around the chessboard of life.
Politeness is a technique. Civility is so much more.
It is a disposition – “a way of seeing others as beings endowed with dignity and inherently valuable.” Instead of seeing those around us as means to an end, we remember that they are bearers of God’s own image – indelibly stamped with his character, his uniqueness, and his beauty, even if those traits have been marred in every one of us.
Hudson points out that “’Civility’ comes from the Latin civilis, which relates to the status, conduct, and character befitting a citizen of the civitas, or city.”
As such, it goes far beyond simply mastering socially acceptable rules for being a thoughtful person – such as, don’t interrupt when others are speaking, say “please” and “thank-you,” and hold the door for an elderly person.
Does that mean we don’t need to bother with being nice?
Of course not. Social etiquette makes life infinitely more pleasant, especially when our rough edges come into contact with someone else’s rough edges.
But as C.S. Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, achieving “niceness” is hardly the most important thing in life.
He observes that “we must not suppose that even if we succeeded in making everyone nice we should have saved their souls. A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world – and might even be more difficult to save.”
Then he provides an unforgettable illustration.
If we picture God’s vision for humanity as equivalent to enabling a horse to jump higher than any horse has ever jumped before, there’s always the route of intense training.
But God, being God, can do something radical: Why not give that horse wings?
Lewis writes, “Of course, once it has got its wings, it will soar over fences which could never have been jumped and thus beat the natural horse at it own game. But there may be a period, while the wings are just beginning to grow, when it cannot do so. And at that stage the lumps on the shoulders – no one could tell by looking at them that they are going to be wings – may even give it an awkward appearance.”
God yearns for us to be so much more than just nice, polite people.
His call is for us to discover the very soul of civility – sustaining a heartfelt love for others in the midst of these profoundly unsettled times.
While we’re just beginning to grow our wings, so to speak, things may look pretty awkward.
What can we do in the meantime to advance God’s vision for our lives?
Throughout November it will be our joy to address that question together.