Humility

 

Humility is not exactly the flavour of the month.  In fact humility is a notoriously difficult virtue to cultivate at the best of times.  But as someone once said, “You need humility because it’s like a lighthouse to guide you through a sea of ego!”  And that’s the persistent problem isn’t it?  Our ego!  Pride – one of the seven deadly sins – and that deadly sin of pride so often gives humility the boot.  I suspect that maintaining a degree of humility in our life has become even harder in our age of social media.  Think about it!  Can you really be dinky-di humble when that superb nature photo that you pasted on Facebook gets twice as many ‘likes’ as a similar photo posted by one of your Facebook friends?  We do well to remember that Satan’s original sin that kicked off the world’s troubles was pride.

Our common tendency towards a lack of humility once struck me in a particularly vivid way.  An older lady (about my age) had just moved into town.  Being a church-goer she had decided to check out a church that conformed to her own religious background.  However, later she was scathing in her assessment of that experience.  I’ll go even further and say that she was quite angry.  The preacher had dared to tell the congregation that they were all sinners in need of Jesus and His forgiving mercy and grace.  Well... she didn’t actually mention the last bit.  I’ve taken the liberty to add that in because I know the preacher well and he would never call his congregation sinners without also stating that through faith in Jesus Christ they are forgiven sinners.  This lady merely mentioned that he had dared to label everyone – including her – a sinner... shock, horror!  However she wasn’t done yet.  She told me in no uncertain terms that the Bible nowhere supports the idea that all people can be labelled as sinners.  That was actually a second manifestation of her lack of humility.  She knew she was talking to a man who had spent most of his life studying the Scriptures as a preacher and pastor but not once did she pause to ask me for my opinion on what the Bible might actually have to say about the matter.  She was too intent on airing her own indignation.

A lack of humility can manifest itself in many, many ways but it particularly comes out when we start thinking about our relationship with God.  That lady found it impossible to humbly consider the possibility that she might actually fall short of God’s expectations of her.  And isn’t that one of the key problems in our day and age.  We’ve been taught for far too long that we are all basically good.  The problem is that God doesn’t do ‘good’.  God only does ‘perfect’.  In the Old Testament part of the Bible we are called to be holy.  And if we were to ask, “How holy?” then God’s answer is, “Be holy as I the Lord your God am holy.”  In the Sermon on The Mount Jesus spoke about the need for us to be perfect.  And if we were to ask, “How perfect?” the answer would be, “As perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”  It is a lack of humility to reserve the word sinner for criminals and con-artists, for terrorists and rapists.  Humility is recognising not only our vulnerability as human beings but also our moral shortcomings.  It’s this idea that God demands perfections that is the best remedy against pride.  Even this lady who could not conceive of herself as a sinner in need of God’s pardoning grace would have admitted that, although not a sinner, she was not perfect either.  Most people readily admit that.  So there’s a good remedy against pride.  God demands perfection and we don’t have it, therefore we need Jesus’ saving work on the cross if we want to make it with the Almighty Creator of the universe.

There are some words the Apostle Peter wrote about pride and humility that are just so pertinent for our day and age.  Peter spoke about that in the context of human relationships because he knew that humility is essential for good relationships.  Peter said, “All of you, cloth yourself with humility towards one another because ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’.  Humble yourselves therefore, under God’s mighty hand that He may lift you up in due time.”