Is Humility about Self-Hatred?
Humility is not the opposite of pride.
Often we think humility is the opposite of pride. We think pride is thinking too much of ourselves. So humility must be thinking really little of ourselves — almost like self-hatred.
If this is humility then it is pretty close to “self-shaming” and all those associated negative emotions.
But this is just false-humility, a humility where we debase ourselves and tear ourselves down before others (which some of us do quite naturally).
But this is not the true definition of humility — and therefore not what it means to “humble ourselves before God.”
Pride and false-humility are just things we do to protect ourselves from negative feelings.
Instead,
· Humility is being honest about who we are — the good and the bad.
· Humility is having the honesty to say who and what we really are — not making it more or less than it really is.
· And MOST IMPORTANT, humility helps us to love and serve others.
BEFORE GOD
I remember one morning in college I woke up well before my alarm. And I had a feeling in my spirit that something was about to happen.
It was as if God was talking to me about how I interact with people. God was showing me all the prideful ways I turned conversations toward my accomplishments, manipulating friendships and extorting compliments to feed my own ego.
God was showing me how I was both extremely insecure and extremely arrogant at the same time. I was desperate for approval and praise from others.
In other words, I was stuck in a vicious cycle of pride and false-humility, making people serve the whims of my ego in new and creative ways every day.
It was devastating.
That morning I was humbled before God through honestly seeing who I really was.
It’s not that God wanted me to feel bad or look bad (though it was tough to be that honest with myself). It’s not that God was shaming me and telling me that I was a bad person (though I was alienating friendship for selfish gain).
God wanted me to be free from all that, and I needed a little honestly — a little humility — to get there.
HUMILITY FOR SERVICE, JUST LIKE GOD DOES
Humility, really, is when we are ready and able to love and serve others. Pride is when we want others to serve us (even if it is just giving our egos a little boost through self-affirmation).
And as I say when I preach and teach, God never calls us to do something God didn’t already do.
The Bible says humility is “not looking to your own interests but also looking to the interests of others” (Phil. 2:4). And we learn how to be humble like this because Jesus,
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness. (Phil. 2:6–7)
Jesus — who was God — didn’t pridefully use that status for his own advantage. Instead he humbled himself and became a servant of all.
Humility before God doesn’t mean we are in competition with God. Humility helps us become like God in the love and service of humanity.
Humility makes us more like God — ready to serve and love others.
HUMILITY TO LOVE AND SERVE OTHERS
So, if we are called to be humble before God that is just because God is calling us to love and serve humanity.
· We don’t need to hate ourselves.
· We don’t need to control others.
· We just need to love others.
And that might take a little more honesty.
Please subscribe to receive “Does God Even Like Me? The good news of not being alone.”
