The virus that stopped Leroy Jethro Gibbs: Learning the transforming power of humility

The coronavirus pandemic is doing what nothing else has been
able to do: shut down Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

NCIS has been one of my favorite television shows for
seventeen years. Mark Harmon has played “Gibbs” for all of these
years. He leads a team that investigates crimes against naval personnel, coming
up against murderers and terrorists regularly.

Over the years, Gibbs has been kidnapped, imprisoned, and
tortured. He has survived more trauma than any fictional character this side of
Superman. Through it all, he has been the iron man of television.

But now we have learned that NCIS is closing production early because of coronavirus. This season’s eighteenth episode airs on March 24; after that, there are only two episodes left.

‘No man is an island’

I don’t know of a television character who is more
self-reliant than Gibbs. He lives alone, builds a boat in his basement alone,
and deals with a lifetime of trauma alone.

In many ways, he is the quintessential hero of our day. Gibbs
is a kind of American James Bond, another celebrated loner. They hearken back
to the Horatio Alger stories of an earlier day, which were famous for their
portraits of self-made success.

There is much to commend hard work, of course. And to
encourage self-reliance and entrepreneurial creativity.

But, as John Donne noted, “No man is an island.” None of us was made to live without the rest of us.

When God created Adam, the only person who was truly alone
in the world, the Creator soon stated, “It is not good that the man should
be alone” (Genesis 2:18). From then to now, he has made us to do life
together. We are branches on a vine, parts of a body, each of us participating
in what all of us can do in Christ.

“Humility comes before honor”

To that end, one of the ways I am praying for God to redeem
the pandemic is to use it to show us the folly of Gibbs-like self-reliance.
That’s because depending on God and…