Have We Misunderstood Humility?

Joyful Realism

Humility consists in a recognition of (and a rejoicing in) the good limitations that God has given us; it is not a regrettable necessity, nor simply a later addition responding to sinful disorders. Even if there had never been a fall into sin, humility would still have the essential character of gratitude for our dependence on God and for his faithful supply of our needs. Humility is built on the Creator/creature distinction; its response to sin emphasizes our further need for God to restore us to the fellowship that he always intended us to inhabit.

It is very tempting to tell people that the reason they should be humble is that they are sinners. The logic of this is straightforward: if we think of humility as the opposite of self-assertion, then the obvious course of assertion is to make people think that the self isn’t worth asserting. Get them to believe that their actions are immoral, their motivations are twisted, and they themselves are just plain bad. Once people feel shame and guilt, they will live more humbly, if we define “humbly” as thinking only bad about yourself and never asserting yourself. This mistake confuses humility with self-loathing. Instead of starting with sin, we must ground our theology of humility in the goodness of creation. Humility is a distinctly biblical virtue because it begins with the knowledge that there is a good Creator Lord and we are the finite creatures he made to live in fellowship with him. Everything from the air we breathe to the water we drink, from our eyes to our taste buds—everything goes back to this gift of blessed existence. Our being itself comes out of the overflow of divine love and creativity.

What difference does this make? Building on creation rather than sin avoids distortions like un-Christian self-hatred (“I’m so terrible that I am not worth anything”) and self-absorption (“Look, Mom, I’m humble!”). While our struggles with sin and the ways sin distorts our lives can, of course, reinforce the need for taking a posture of humility before God, his actions of creation and redemption alone (not our sin) are the solid foundation on which we can build our doctrine. True Christian humility does not make us simply bow down and worship our triune God; it also allows us to elevate others and gives us an appropriate assessment of ourselves.