The text for today's sermon — I mean today's column — is Philippians 2:3.
"Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves."
Vainglory (vanity) has been a human bugaboo for eons.
I have my bouts of being vain. You do. And so does a prominent American government official, who probably thinks this column is about him.
Actually, it's a “cautionary column” for us all.
I get my own streak of vanity from my father. At my mother’s viewing, people would see Dad in the old wedding photos on display and marvel at how handsome he once was.
Dad was dismayed. I think he wanted me to say he still looked like the young Sean Connery. I thought about it, but flattery can only stretch so far.
I also remember the way Dad would mug for the camera. He always wore a facial expression that made him look strong or wise or energetic.
I see that in our current president. When he attempts to look profound or powerful, or playful, I sense him posturing. I see my father’s faces in his.
Vanity, they say, is the sin. Affectation is the punishment.
As for the president, I know many leaders struggle with self-admiration. Chester A. Arthur, I’ve read, needed to be the groom at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.
Other presidents likely felt that way, but they did a better job of hiding it.
Our current president isn’t big on hiding how he feels.
The problem with vanity is the people with the biggest cache of it also cause the biggest explosion when they’re exposed. Ridicule unleashes their “inner Hulk.”
My father battled that inner Hulk.
Apparently our president does as well. One prickly television skit claimed when he's challenged he reacts like a monkey with a machine gun.
The concern is that the shrapnel from such outbursts can lead to needless suffering.
In 1968, the Olympics were headed to Mexico City and its climate of unrest. Feelings flared. A throng of student protesters gathered in Tlatelolco (The Plaza of Three Cultures) and around the residence of President Gustavo Diaz Ordaz.
Like pulp fiction writers, Mexicans at times define their presidents by a single trait. Luis Echeverria was “stupid.” Carlos Salinas de Gotari was "weak." And Diaz Ordaz, alas, was always “ugly.”
They said he looked like an ape.
They said he set evolution back a million years.
He was also a vain man who harbored an inner Hulk.
The night of the protests, students at his home chanted:
“Sal al balcón, chango hocicón!!!” (Come out on the balcony, you snout-faced monkey!).
Hours later, the military slaughtered between 30 and 300 students and civilians. No one knows the number. Many bodies were never recovered. Today, “Tlatelolco” is still an ugly scar on Mexico’s heart.
Analysts offered reasons for the massacre: a fear of bad publicity, a fear of escalating violence. But along with others, I’m convinced the students had no idea of the consequences that came with stripping the president of his pride.
I’m not predicting anything similar for us. I see no Kent State in our future. I’m just here to say that vanity in our friends, our leaders and in ourselves often hides a Hulk. Relationships, careers and regimes can be shredded by fury and rage.
Vanity and its sister — violence — appear in Genesis.
They appear today.
And they’ll be waiting for us in whatever brave new worlds we create.