Dear Hillsdale students, and especially the class of 2016,
I must begin by apologizing to you for infringing upon the conventions of your commencement ceremonies by not being present. A very dear friend of mine is getting married on the weekend of your commencement, and I will stand with him. I must also leave you this summer for Virginia, so this letter is bittersweet in the truest sense of the word.
During my first year with you I was privileged to give a faux Last Lecture — a sobering experience. God willing, I will give such a talk, but the stark reality is that I will get old, as will each of you should you be granted health. And as I get older I have learned that I always need to learn and that I am never the smartest person in the room.
I might leave you with some admonition to go save the country, to rejoice in challenges, or some other well-intentioned platitude that will seem trite many years from now, when life is difficult. And life will get difficult, and you will find that even in your much-vaunted human capacities you are incapable of fixing whatever situation you find yourself in.
Strength indeed rejoices in challenges, and it is about the nature of that strength I wish to write to you. No greater strength may be found than that grounded in humility. A recent article in this publication (“From a Millennial: An open letter to those who raised us,” April 21, 2016)offered a truthful but perhaps too-confident criticism of our parents’ generation. It was hoped that the graduates of Hillsdale College knew truth better than their parents, and therefore would not make the same mistakes. I hope you are proud of your erudition and excellence, but humility — and an awareness that the class of 2016 (and myself as well) — will inevitably make mistakes calls us all not to pride, or an awareness of our own strength, but to a deep sense of humility. C.S. Lewis wrote in “Mere Christianity” that as long as man was proud, he could not know God. “A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
What is above are the permanent things that we are each graced to experience in some way. But we often experience those things by finally realizing that even our vaunted humanity, our excellence, and our success cannot provide salvation from bad times. Abraham Lincoln realized this. “I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom and that of all about me seemed insufficient for that day.”
The 16th President echoed a man who struggled with pride. St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians and noted that, lest he be puffed up by the bounty of magnificent revelations he’d been granted, God had given him a thorn in the flesh. The Lord spoke to Paul and said this: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9, ESV).
I wish you every success and wish you health, love, and prosperity. I wish you joy in your perpetual search for truth. And I wish you strength as you undertake this interesting pursuit of good, truth, and beauty. Dostoyevsky hoped that humanity might “always decide to use humble love. If you resolve on that you may subdue the whole world. Loving humility is marvelously strong, the strongest of all things, and there is nothing else like it.” I pray you will find beauty, good, and truth. But more than that, I wish you strength through humility.