Humility

Ok, so I was thinking that I need to write more on this blog… I mean, I practically never write here. But the truth is, I find it kind of hard to write here quite as easily as other places. But I want to be able to talk more on here, and so I’m going to try to write something—even if it may end up being a little short post—every day—or nearly every day.

I thought I’d do for this post something about humility. I feel sort of inadequate to talking about it, but I feel like I should say something anyway.

There are so many ways we can show humility in our lives. One of them is through the headcoverings that we wear. Another way is to help out by working somewhere no one else want to work in. Another way is by listening to someone, instead of talking to someone.

I just looked up the word in my Noah Webster 1828 dictionary. (I love old dictionaries! Back when theology was common knowledge!)

“In ethics, freedom from pride and arrogance; humbleness of mind; a modest estimate of ones own worth. In theology, humility consists in lowliness of mind, a deep sense of one’s own unworthiness in the sight of God, self abasement, penitence for sin, and submission to the divine will.”

I’m not sure if I would agree with all that, but a lot of it is right on! I love that part, “freedom from pride and arrogance.” I don’t know what it means in ethics, but we can apply it in our own lives. Think about it—Christ, when He came and saved us from our sins, set us free from our sins. And what is sin, but a very horrible kind of pride, thinking that we ourselves can have the right to do anything we want, because we want to. That is pride, that is thinking of ourselves before we think of God and others. But once Jesus set us free from our sins, He set us free from our pride. We no longer need to do it, pride is no longer our master.

And humility, once you really get into it, once you really have that feel of “unworthiness in the sight of God”, then is when you can actually begin to do something. God can still use you, even if your pride is taller than the Tower of Babel. But God doesn’t want it to be that way! He wants to use a humble heart. I can’t remember how he said it, but C. S. Lewis talked about this in “Screwtape Letters”. He says that once the Christian is at the point where he so continually sacrifices himself, and loves others, then he can finally start to love himself for the human that God made. That sounded absolutely ridiculous when I first heard it, but I think I know what he meant. I think he’s talking about the gifts that God gives us, the ability He gives us, and the individuality. Each of these are so precious, that God gave them only once, and to only one person each. It is only our selfish nature that dictates that we horde these gifts to ourselves. But God asks us to take our gifts, still remaining the one who holds that gift, and bestow the benefits of it to the world.

I feel like this post should be much, much longer—there is so much to say about humility that truly needs to be said. But I said this post would be small—although it really is not very small at all!—and so I’ll stop here. Please leave comments! I’d love to here your thoughts on humility, the forgotten Christian virtue, or anything else you might want to talk about!

 

Shalom