Humbled
By Lu Kepron

I once read that humility is not so much about thinking less of ourselves but about thinking of ourselves less.

Honestly, is there anything harder?

These days, if you don’t toot your own horn, you get trampled by a thousand competitors who think humility is for sissies. Squeaky wheel gets the oil. With our global stability at stake, that little aphorism has taken on a dark and complex meaning.

So where does humility fit into humanity?

Who, in their right mind, is focused on growing humble in a self-help culture that goads us into carving out our slice of the pie and devouring it, too?

Anthony Robbins roars, “Awaken the giant within!” Oprah charges, “Live your best life!” We make best-selling authors out of life coaches, deities out of doctors, and gurus out of successful entrepreneurs. All around us, we are told to be great, to sell ourselves, to dream big and live bigger. We not only feel defiantly deserving of our own potential success, we feel downright entitled.

But somewhere beneath our sense of entitlement lies a low-grade nausea. Maybe we aren’t deserving after all, we fear. We feel a strange betrayal. Weren’t we supposed to have it all? Or maybe we think we do have it all, but still feel empty.

For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14)

Nobody wants to be humbled, because we all assume that has something to do with defeat, failure, and a public flogging. But left to our own devices, or rather, our own vices, we don’t tend to humble our own selves easily. Often, we don’t know how. Many of us may not see any value in it.

We are caught in a double bind of our own making. We create an image of ourselves as we would like to be, but, for many, that discrepancy begins to feel like a chasm that’s just too wide to cross.

So, we circle back. Anyway we do the math, it still adds up to a colossal amount of our waking lives devoted to our own desires. Our frustrations. Our checklists. Our own master plan for life.

In life’s humbling paradox, we become so insistent on steering the bus that we wind up feeling utterly lost. Maybe finding our way home requires us to first admit that we are white-knuckling the wheel.

And then just let go.

Not only of the desire to direct every aspect of our life, but of the need to camouflage our real, vulnerable self quivering in the fetal position underneath that hard shell of pride. Our fear keeps us on the run. When we turn our backs on humility, we swerve right toward what we fear most: humiliation.

But, God doesn’t want us to have egg on our face.

Insecurity is not His goal for us. On the contrary, He wants us to be full of security that, in our doubt and fear, He’s got our backs. It’s a humbling experience to realize we have failed at our own self-help. It’s a humbling experience to receive God’s help. The two go hand in hand.

So how do we manage to feel humble in a world that pressures us to be larger than life?

Paul said, “Do not conform to the patterns of the world…” in Romans 12:2.

Humility takes khutzpah. For that we need a keen awareness of our own ways, habits, and thought processes, to know ourselves in the face of peer pressure, and hold on. Paul believed that we not only could do it, but must do it if we are to live the life God wanted for us.

Still, looks easy on paper, but in practice? When we begin to feel our knees buckling, it’s tempting to think like lemmings. Trouble is, lemmings don’t leap with the end goal in mind. We need courage in the face of overriding pressure to jump with no faith. Courage to leap with faith, even if we seem to be the only ones doing so in a sea of lemmings.

Humility takes guts. And with that, we feel safe to question things. The humbling process is not a one-time event. It’s not a money-back guarantee. It’s not an overnight victory. It is, however, fueled by God’s favor.

Humility takes grace. When Paul said, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment,” he didn’t mean ‘put yourselves down.’

He meant put yourselves out.
He said, “Take an interest in others.”
He was saying don’t be full of yourselves.
Be full of Jesus.

Humility takes love. It got me thinking. What if I replaced the word self with Jesus? If every time I thought of myself, I thought of…Jesus?

I think to my Jesus, who do I want my Jesus to be in this world? How do I want my Jesus to be known? Am I willing to let my Jesus fulfill my calling, my purpose in this life? If I think of my Jesus before all else, who might I become in this world—and who might others become beside my Jesus? S&L