Low Anthropology Quotes

“A truly high anthropology views weakness and limitation as an aberration among otherwise decent people—something to be suffered, lamented, judged, or fixed, but not something to be taken lightly or laughed at. A low anthropology sees those same hurts and blind spots as humanizing. Humor is the form that freedom often takes.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“If you want to find common ground with someone, then don’t start with what they put on their résumé. Start with what they leave off. If you want to find a basis for connection and compassion, gloss over what a person is proud of and hone in on what causes them hurt.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“The only reason another person (or couple, or family) seems to have it all together is because we don’t know them very well.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“Our deepest problems seldom boil down to ignorance or a lack of knowledge. Most of our problems boil down to an inability to follow our own advice. They boil down to a lack of wherewithal.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“Those who claim to harbor no regrets about their lives are usually pretty insufferable, either because they are deluded enough to deny any past wrong turns or because they look down on those who haven’t been as fortunate.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“After all, high anthropology allows people to hold their convictions—about the world, about themselves, about others—with an ironclad certainty unavailable to those who embrace a thoroughgoing fallibility in human affairs. Such certainty, whether from the left or the right, is rooted in a rational view of other people and ourselves. We have the right information; they have fake news. We trust the science; they believe lies. We are so convinced that different information will change people’s minds that when they don’t agree with our carefully crafted Twitter rant, we assume they must be willfully idiotic.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“But to those who have a hard time loving themselves, who feel acutely their own failures and shortcomings, and whose personal narratives seem impervious to spin—which is to say, all of us in our unguarded moments—the words of Martin Luther might sound a bit more alluring: “God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind, and life to none but the dead. He does not give saintliness to any but sinners, nor wisdom to any but fools. In short: He has mercy on none but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“In trying to explain the appeal of marriage to an adolescent daughter who shows almost zero interest in the arrangement, columnist Heather Havrilesky says something remarkable about love: Marriage can’t simply be about living your best lives in sync. Because some of the peak moments of a marriage are when you share in your anxieties, your fears, your longing, and even your horrors. . . . That’s why sickness and death are key to marriage vows. Because there is nothing more divine than being able to say, out loud, “Today, I am really, truly at my worst,” knowing that it won’t make your spouse run for the hills. My husband has seen my worst before. We both know that our worst is likely to get worse from here. Somehow that feels like grace.4”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“The radical acceptance of the accumulations of our lives is born in the giving up, the acknowledgment of the artifice. It is what journalist Ken Fuson exudes in his self-penned obituary. Having been unshackled from pretense by a public struggle with addiction and freed from performance by impending bodily death, Fuson delivered a remarkable eulogy for himself: He attended the university’s famous School of Journalism, which is a clever way of saying, “almost graduated but didn’t.” . . . In 1996, Ken took the principled stand of leaving the Register because The Sun in Baltimore offered him more money. Three years later, having blown most of that money at Pimlico Race Track, he returned to the Register, where he remained until 2008. For most of his life, Ken suffered from a compulsive gambling addiction that nearly destroyed him. But his church friends, and the loving people at Gamblers Anonymous, never gave up on him. Ken last placed a bet on Sept. 5, 2009. He died clean. He hopes that anyone who needs help will seek it, which is hard, and accept it, which is even harder. Miracles abound.9 Fuson evinces true authenticity, something close to real freedom, and it is beautiful. His prose is not a parade of accomplishments but a catalog of embarrassing details and defeats—the kind that makes a reader’s heart beam with appreciation, identification, laughter, and hope.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“Once the run was over, however, something funny would happen. No matter how fast or far any of us had gone, everyone was exhausted. Spent. Keeled over. That’s when the backslaps and high fives would happen. We were bonded in our fatigue, whereas a moment before we were separated by our giftings. Physically drained but emotionally fortified, we laughed and kidded around, talked about how hard it had been. The feeling was always positive. Our shared limitation brought us closer together. A theologian might say that God has given everyone different gifts and abilities, yet similar weaknesses. This is one of the great insights of the Christian faith. The world runs after success and strength and perfection and finds that the track only gets longer, the runners more spread out. The Christian considers weakness the location of grace and unity, not evidence of their absence. You might say, then, We are separated by our virtues but united in our distance from virtue. We are divided by the specifics of our political or aesthetic ideals but united in the fact that we fall short of those ideals. We are separated by how and whom we love but united by our failure to love perfectly. We are separated by the career paths we’ve taken but united by the ubiquity of regret, both professional and otherwise. We are separated by how much we’ve gained or accrued but united in the experience—somewhere along the line—of loss (and the fear of loss). We are stratified according to how we live but re-democratized by the fact of death. If you want to find common ground with someone, then don’t start with what they put on their résumé. Start with what they leave off.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“While a low anthropologist may agree with the people around them that a given moral end is important, they will be hesitant to justify the adoption of unsavory means to achieve that end. That is, they will be quick to accept stepwise solutions, confident that pragmatism stands a better chance of exacting long-term change than ruthlessness.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others

“Low anthropology powerfully reframes the way we approach the good or beautiful things done by otherwise disreputable individuals -- namely, as evidence of grace rather than defilement. As musician Nick Cave notes, "Perhaps beauty can be measured by the distance it has travelled to come into being. That bad people make good art is a cause for hope.”
― David Zahl, Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others