March 4, 2009
Book Review: Humility: True Greatness by C.J. Mahaney
I’ve been planning to do this book review for several weeks, but just last week Trevin Wax beat me to it. I noticed in his review that he recommends that you make a practice of reading this book once a year (how many books have you been told to do that with?). For what it’s worth, I read Humility: True Greatness this time last year, so in a small way, I’ve kind of started doing what Trevin advises. I don’t regret it for a minute.
There is something inherently healthy about reading C.J. Mahaney’s books. You end up convicted, reassured, challenged and encouraged. I for one am more deeply convicted that I am proud to the core, and that this is profoundly offensive to God. At the same time, I am more assured of the Father’s love towards me in Christ, more filled with admiration for the Saviour who gave his life as a ransom for many, and more hopeful that by the Spirit’s help, I can progressively fight this.
The reason is simple; to borrow a phrase from Tim Keller, the Gospel penny has dropped. Indeed, I’ll wager that over the years a sustained torrent of Gospel pennies has dropped, and the riches of his deep cross centredness are very much on display here. Quite frankly, C.J. Mahaney is obsessed with Christ and him crucified. He can’t let you go two steps without taking you by the hand and leading you back to Calvary; he even puts in an epilogue to remind you one last time. The effect is practical theology at its very best – warm hearted and deeply evangelical.
But it’s not all airy-fairy talk in the abstract – this book is deeply practical. C.J. suggests a whopping 17 concrete things that you can be doing, meditating on and pursuing to weaken pride and cultivate humility in your day to day life. He finds ways to fight pride in places you (well, at least, I) would never have thought of looking. You’ll learn how to spot evidences of grace in others, pursue correction and study sin. It’s enough to have you fighting pride when you get up, humbly going to bed, humbly praying, humbly speaking. By the time you get to the end, you’ll start to wonder whether you’re going to be doing very much other than fight pride.
This is one of the greatest strengths of a cross and Gospel centred approach; it’s uniquely holistic. I don’t know what kinds of temptations you currently struggle with, but a life filled with the Word, with meditation on the attributes of God, on your sin, on the cross, and on Jesus’ return is only going to help you with that. Readers of C.J.’s other books need not worry that he’s traded in the Cross Centred life for the Pride and Humility Centred life, rather he’s explained in a specific way how to live the Cross Centred Life through the oft neglected window of the struggle between pride and humility.
If you’re worrying that this book is going to be dense, or you’re just not really in the habit of reading books, you really have nothing to fear with this one. It’s pretty short (172 fairly small pages in a normal sized font) and clearly structured into three parts with pretty short chapters. C.J. has a gift for explaining things effectively and simply, and has a knack for knowing how to throw in a well chosen quote. In particular, his stuff on Mark 10 will stay with me for a while. You can read this book.
All in all, this book is superb. It doesn’t have the breadth of the Institutes. It lacks the scholarly credentials of a Don Carson. But in its profundity clothed in simple language, its relentless focus on the Gospel, its practical usefulness and its willingness to seriously tackle an area which we as evangelicals have a sad – not to mention disastrous – tendency to neglect, it may be one of the best and most important books on my shelf. I’m sure it will do a lot of good to many people, and am deeply grateful for it. Trevin is right, it deserves reading and rereading.
One of the most enlightening things about rereading a book after a fair length of time (in this case, pretty much exactly a year) is the opportunity it gives you to see what you’ve learnt and what you’ve forgotten. I was ashamed to find out how little of this book I’ve taken in. Of all the things C.J. suggests, I think I may have only retained one or two of them. I know it’s cheesy and what you’re supposed to say and all that, but while I know that pride is a sin everyone has to deal with, I think it’s a particular temptation for me – and not one I’m dealing well with at that.
For that reason, I want to look at the whole issue of humility and pride in a bit more detail over the next few weeks, and the posts here will reflect that. This isn’t me trying to teach you how to be humble. Rather, this is a proud person trying to repent and thinking about that repentance out loud. What you think about all this is as important to me as what I do (after all, our goal is to work towards finding out what the Bible writers think). I hope to be able to bounce ideas off you and get your advice. At the same time, I’m hoping to be able to harvest the insights of other writers on this topic, and I’ll be sharing the results with you. I hope you enjoy reading.
