Is it too much for
us to humble ourselves?
What does humility
look like? Does it mean weak or
poor? Does it imply that you will be a
door-mat for people to walk on? Does it imply passivity? Can a humble person be successful?
No! Discard these illegitimate notions. Humility is grossly misunderstood. Jesus performed the greatest act of humility
in history: He left Heaven to be born as
a human baby! Was Jesus weak? Was He poor?
Was He passive? Did He succeed at
His mission?
We need a corrected
view of humility. Notice the following
verse from Proverbs: (29:23) “Pride
lands you flat on your face; humility
prepares you for honors.” ™ What? Read that again: “Pride
lands you flat on your face; humility
prepares you for honors.” ™
I read a book that defined humility as “an attitude of personal modesty, which recognizes
that self’s priorities and preferences should be held in check so that others’
needs can also be addressed.” Rather
than focusing on self’s agenda only, humility causes people to consider their
needs in the context of the greater world.
[The
Significance Principle, Les Carter and Jim Underwood, p.44]
Near the end of 1996, Kingston Technology
Corporation, a California-based computer memory products maker, made headlines
across the country. Three months earlier
Japan’s
Softbank Corporation had agreed to pay $1.5 billion dollars for a controlling
interest in the company, making its founders, John Tu and David Sun, enormously
wealthy. But as exciting as the buyout
was, that is not what made headlines.
At that year’s office Christmas party, Tu
and Sun announced to their 523 employees that they would be receiving $100
million in bonuses. Forty million would
be paid immediately, with the remaining sixty million set aside for future
bonuses. The average bonus amounted to
slightly more than $76,000, while some were slated to receive up to $300,000.
Employees were thrilled…but not
surprised. One employee explained,
“Several times a year David and John make these spontaneous gestures. There’s an envelope on your desk and you open
it and say, ‘Thank God I work for this company.’ Then you put the envelope away and start
working twice as hard.”
Tu
said he could use only so much money for himself and added, “We want to do a
lot of things to return to the community, the people who have made this
possible.”
Humble people see beyond their own needs. The word balance describes them best since they
are neither too selfish nor too deferring.
Unlike people who worry about jockeying for prime assignments or for
special treatment, humble people do not take themselves too seriously. A sense of community, not ego, seems to drive
these people.
In order to have
an appropriate measure of humility, one must also have a healthy sense of
pride. Healthy pride realizes that
personal significance is never achieved by undercutting others. Persons with healthy pride want to establish
themselves as viable, respectable individuals, and to that end cooperate with
the larger community.
Is there a
check-list for keeping humility in balance?
Some starter thoughts:
ü Do I nurse thoughts of envy or jealousy?
ü Am I an angry person? Do I hold a grudge?
ü Do I notice and affirm the positives in
other people?
ü When something good happens to someone
else, do I think, I wish that would
happen to me?
ü Do I get caught up in my own busyness so
much that I overlook others’ needs or feelings?
ü Do I work hard to cover my negatives, not
wanting others to know my weaknesses?
ü Do I withdraw from people, even when I know
it may not be the best?
ü Do I get defensive when someone suggests
improvements I could make?
ü Do I secretly wish others would handle
problems with the same common sense that I use?
ü Is maintaining a proper image so important
to me that I deliberately misrepresent myself to others?
ü Do I interrupt others too easily in
mid-sentence?
ü Do others see me as hard-headed or
stubborn?
In all
seriousness: Are you as aware as I am of
how far I am from genuine humility? Is
the Holy Spirit as faithful with you as He is with me at pointing out my
persistent sense of pride? Do you lose
that sincere experience of humility as quickly as I do? Suddenly, I’m so humble that I’m proud of my
humility! J Are you as plagued as
I am with the notion that it’s all about me?
Do you have to fight pride and self-centeredness as hard as I do? Are you occasionally embarrassed at how deft
we’ve become at bringing the conversation around to our achievements or
interests?
What’s the cure
for this insatiable need/desire for attention?
There was only one
Perfect Man! I’m convinced that all of
us will struggle with personal pride and self-centeredness as long as our feet
are firmly planted on this earth. Some of
us will make small gains. I read a
wonderful story about Mother Teresa.
When she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, someone came up to her
and asked her if there wasn’t at least a little pride in having received such a
noteworthy award. Her response was
golden. She asked the person: "When Jesus was coming into Jerusalem for His Triumphal Entry, do you
suppose for a moment that the donkey thought all of the fanfare was for him?"
How many times do
we accept the praise, when in reality it should go to others or to God? The late singer, song-writer, and musician,
Larry Norman developed a simple way to direct people’s praise not to him but to
his Lord: the one-way sign (index finger
pointing to the heavens)!
I read this week
of a woman who begins every day with ten coins in one pocket. Every time she compliments someone, she takes
one of the coins out of that pocket and puts it in the other. If she slips up and criticizes someone, she
moves a coin back to the first pocket.
At the end of the day, the emptying of her pockets is a ritual of
evaluation on her humility!
What a wonderful
way for us to intentionally gauge our humility.
Jesus’ humility
was purposeful. He came to show us what
God was like. He came to reveal the
Father! He modeled perfect dependence on
God. He gave us a vivid picture of what
it would look like to live full of the Holy Spirit! He modeled the godly life flawlessly and then
beckoned to us saying: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is
perfect”.
