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| My friend Timothy Chung, one of the humblest men I know. |
Humility is the foundational attitude of spiritual transformation. Pride is the enemy of all change. James 4:6 states: “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Moses, the great leader, “was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (Numbers 12:3).
Our English word “humility” comes from the Latin humus, which means “earth” or “soil.” Our hearts must be like good soil to receive the things God wants to plant in us. Pride, on the other hand, is hardness. Hardness of the heart is the great barrier to spiritual change. C.S. Lewis thus refers to pride as “the complete anti-god state of mind.”[1] Francis Frangipane calls pride “the armor of darkness.”[2] Are you a humble person, or a proud person? One indicator is how you handle criticism. A humble person doesn’t mind being critiqued, even welcomes constructive criticism if it brings more truth. A proud person doesn’t need any advice, and pride’s counterpart, shame, fears criticism.
Like the hidden pride of Isaiah, we need personal encounters with the Living God to see how undone and needy we are. Thomas Kelly has written: “But what trinkets we have sought after in life, the pursuit of what petty trifles has wasted our years as we have ministered to the enhancement of our little selves. And what needless anguishes we have suffered because our little selves were defeated, were not flattered, were not cozened and petted.”[3]
Humility, says Kelly, rests upon a holy blindedness, like the blindedness of him who looks steadily into the sun. “The God-blinded soul sees naught of self, naught of personal degradation or of personal eminence…”[4] Alan Nelson writes, “Growth in humility is a measure of our growth in the habit of the Godward-directed mind. And he only is near to God who is exceedingly humble.”[5]
Thomas Merton writes:
“A humble man is not disturbed by praise since he is no longer concerned with himself. A man who is not humble cannot accept praise gracefully. One who has not yet learned humility becomes upset and disturbed by praise. He may even lose his patience when people praise him; he is irritated by the sense of his own unworthiness. And if he does not make a fuss about it, at least the things that have been said about him haunt him and obsess his mind. They torment him wherever he goes. At the other extreme is the man who has no humility at all and who devours praise, if he gets any, the way a dog gobbles a chunk of meat… The humble man receives praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass. Humility is the surest sign of strength.”
“A humble man is not disturbed by praise since he is no longer concerned with himself. A man who is not humble cannot accept praise gracefully. One who has not yet learned humility becomes upset and disturbed by praise. He may even lose his patience when people praise him; he is irritated by the sense of his own unworthiness. And if he does not make a fuss about it, at least the things that have been said about him haunt him and obsess his mind. They torment him wherever he goes. At the other extreme is the man who has no humility at all and who devours praise, if he gets any, the way a dog gobbles a chunk of meat… The humble man receives praise the way a clean window takes the light of the sun. The truer and more intense the light is, the less you see of the glass. Humility is the surest sign of strength.”
James 4:6 states that God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. This is one of those great biblical either-or ideas which states that it’s not simply a bad thing to have a proud heart but it is an anti-God thing. If you are proud God is against you. My own understanding of this is that, where there is some area of one’s heart that is hard towards God, God stands in opposition to that area. I’m saying this because I don’t believe any of us are totally free from pride. If that is true than God is opposed to us all. I think the human heart can both have areas that have been conquered by God and are humble and have areas of hardness that are not open to God. In this sense it’s not either proud or humble because I can’t imagine a follower of Jesus claiming to be wholly, perfectly humble.
A.W. Tozer once prayed, “O Christ, make me strong to overcome the desire to be wise and to be reputed wise by others as ignorant as myself. I turn from my wisdom as well as from my folly and flee to You, the wisdom of God and the power of God. Amen.”
This is the appropriate attitude. This kind of humility is the necessary precondition for spiritual transformation. Pride dies, the soft heart prevails, which allows God to shape one’s spirit into greater Christlikeness.
This is the appropriate attitude. This kind of humility is the necessary precondition for spiritual transformation. Pride dies, the soft heart prevails, which allows God to shape one’s spirit into greater Christlikeness.
