March 11, 2009
So then, what is Humility anyway?
If I’m going to be thinking about humility for a while, it seems logical to start off by thinking a bit about what humility is. After all, how can I aim at cultivating humility if I don’t even know what humility is?
C.J. Mahaney gives us a handy definition of humility in his book Humility: True Greatness. According to Mahaney, humility is:
“Honestly assessing ourselves
In light of God’s holiness
And our sinfulness”
There are a number of things I appreciate about this definition:
- It’s dead simple; you could memorize it in about 30 seconds and say it in about 2 seconds, and under temptation, you rarely get longer than 2 seconds.
- It’s all about God and our relationship with him. You couldn’t have this sort of humility if you were a reasonably moral atheist.
- It’s trying to look at what’s going on in our hearts, only secondarily our actions. We’ve all seen (and, if we’re honest, on occasion, all been) that creep who says or does some humble sounding thing, all the while dripping with insincerity. Mahaney’s not trying to make us any more like that sort of person.
Nonetheless, I do feel it’s a bit incomplete. After all, man was originally, morally speaking, perfect. He represented the glory, justice and holiness of God as perfectly as a finite creature could. When it came to honestly assessing himself in light of God’s holiness and his sinfulness, man before the fall had nothing to be ashamed of. Nonetheless, he still had to be humble. C.J. Must know this because he holds that pride was the first sin. While we’re at it, even the spotless, perfect Lord Jesus was “humble in heart” (Matthew 11:–). So, while I agree that God’s holiness and our sinfulness are very important and should be motives for humility, it got to be more than that. What I’d add is some element of an understanding of our creatureliness, the fact that we are not God and are very much not at the centre of the universe, indeed, we depend on him for life and breath and everything. This is the kind of humility that gets David saying “What is man, that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:5) So perhaps humility is more:
“Honestly assessing ourselves
In light of God’s glory and fullness
And our utter dependence
God’s holiness
And our sinfulness”
There are just a couple of things I’d add to that. I understand what C.J. was trying to say, but his reflection on whether our children will look back and think “They had humility, they had what mattered” (Page 24) made me a little uncomfortable. A big part of me would love to be remembered for my humility. But I know that within me lies a deadly tendency to try to appear humble so that people will think I’m humble. At the end of the day my better mind would prefer it if those who I leave behind also honestly assess me in light of God’s holiness and my sinfulness – as well as God’s grace. C.S. Lewis’ thoughts on pride (which will probably come up again later on) also highlight the self-justifying nature of pride. That’s to say that when I am proud of my achievements, I’m taking pleasure in the fact, not so much that I’ve done well, so much as that I’ve done better than other people. This kind of self-justification comes as much into our relationship with God as it does with man. It bothers me that by the definition I’ve set up above, a thorough legalist could have a good deal of that kind of humility – and despair! That makes me wonder to what degree the definition describes the Christian virtue of humility, and whether on can be humble and reject the Gospel. I’ve tried to gently introduce that idea below.
Something that occurred to me as I was reading Tim Keller on Humility (also likely to feature later on) made me keen to root humility deeper into the heart, and have humble actions flow from a humble heart. With these tweakings to the definition done, I’ve come up with:
Humility
Is a disposition of the heart:
Which causes us to honestly assess ourselves
In light of God’s glory and fullness
And our utter dependence;
God’s holiness
And our sinfulness
And brings us to
Act, think and feel in light of that
Before God and men.
Ultimately, I’m not sure I prefer my own definition to C.J.’s. What it gains in technical precision, I worry it loses in its serious lack of catchiness. What’s more, there are more things I could say (and will say in other posts), which leads me to suspect that, as with all true virtue (and vice), humility is probably a multifaceted thing which can be approached helpfully from a number of angles. Perhaps at the end of the day, C.J.’s definition helpfully crystallises one of those facets for us.
