Humility

That's a bad picture, the one I put up at the top of this post.

Humility is not about posting bad pictures.  Yet, pride can be about only posting beautiful pictures, only showing what you want to show, presenting an image that only reflects the best light.  "The me I want you to see," that's pride (also, it's social media).

The Lord seems to be teaching me a lot about humility lately.  Although, by virtue of what humility is, one can never become exactly adept at it, or comfortable in it, or proficient.

What would it even look like to be proficient in humility?

One thing I've learned that humility is not: Humility is not pre-emptive self-deprecation.  A lot of us can fall into doing this, this pre-emptive self-deprecation thing.  We apologize in advance for our shortcomings, the ones we are aware of, in hopes that people will then go soft on us, understand that we already feel bad about ourselves, desist in looking deeper for further flaws, since they've already been presented with some really outstanding flaws to distract them.  Yes, I do this.  It's a self-protecting technique.  It rises out of insecurity, and it is not humility.

Humility is the opposite of pride.  Sometimes when it is hard to understand a concept, it helps to look at the thing opposite it, to determine what it is not.

Pride is believing that you are important.  This may not mean that you think you are important to the world, like a king or a queen or an army commander.  It means that inside your head, you operate under the assumption that your feelings are very important.  You may not consciously realize it, but you think that people ought to treat you as you wish to be treated, fairly and kindly and respectfully.

Unlike a proud person, a humble person does not assume that he is entitled to be treated well wherever he goes.  Instead, a humble person thinks about how he is treating other people.  He is much more attuned to whether he himself is being fair, or kind, or respectful than to how others are treating him.

It's tricky, too.  Because it becomes pride again if, while thinking about the other person's perspective, you start to focus specifically on how the other person perceives you.  It's not about your image in the other person's eyes.  It's about the other person's feelings.  You have to lose track of yourself, and attend to other people, if you are to escape pride.

This sounds pretty good.  The idea of thinking about the needs of others, and being able to get one's eyes off one's own needs, actually sounds pretty freeing.  In fact, I'm sure it is very freeing.

But it's also stinking hard.

They have always said, "Don't pray for patience.  You'll get all kinds of experiences that test your patience."

Well.  Let me tell you.  If you pray for humility, you may find yourself having experiences that humiliate you.  Humiliate, shame and embarrass, not necessarily in that order.

Still, if God has chosen to grow you in humility, you won't escape the process by not asking for it  (that would be the proverbial you, which is to say, me).  The same holds true for patience, and any other virtue.  God will do what He needs to do.

It will probably hurt a lot.  But it will be good, profitable, worth every agony.

If Jesus emptied Himself of all His divine glory and became a human with a body of skin, bones and blood, we need to be willing to empty ourselves of our ideas of what is due us.

If Jesus humbled Himself to death on a cross, we need to be willing to make personal sacrifices and pour ourselves out for the good of others.  (Oh how difficult this is.)

If Jesus was raised and glorified following His obedience, we can have hope that our faithful God will also raise and glorify us, after we have served in obedience, and there is great joy to come in the future, certain joy that gives us strength to carry on.

In humility.



This post is based on Philippians 2:1-11 and Hebrews 12:1-3.