I want to reflect once more on humility because I am convinced that a shortage of humility gets us into all sorts of trouble.  More than forty years of counselling as a church minister has driven home to me the problems that come from a lack of humility.  Often I have sat with alienated people trying to bring about reconciliation but one or both parties could not find the humility to say, “I’m sorry!”  Or I think of the man whose house burnt down and he had no insurance.  Our church wanted to give him some money to buy necessities for him and his wife but he was too proud to accept assistance.  He told me that with God’s help they would get back on top of things.  I said to him, “Right now God wants to help you through your church but you’re too proud to accept that help.”  He very reluctantly accepted.

But why talk about the many counselling situations where I’ve seen a lack of humility.  I am only too aware of it in my own life.  It’s my lack of humility that makes me exaggerate a story I tell… and before I know it I’ve moved from fact to fiction.  It’s my shortage of Christlike humility that makes it impossible for me to put myself into someone else’s shoes – and then the barriers stay because I can’t see things from their perspective.  Even more serious is my failure at times to humble myself before my God and so receive the joyful assurance of forgiveness – it’s much easier to pride myself in the rightness of my actions and my cause.

All this is not to say that there’s no humility among us today.  The problem is that we are often humble about the wrong things.  G.K. Chesterton once wrote:  “What we suffer from… is humility in the wrong place.  Modesty has moved from the organ of ambition.  Modesty has settled upon the organ of conviction, where it was never meant to be.  A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubtful about the truth.  This has been exactly reversed.  Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert – himself.  The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason.” (Orthodoxy p.3)

What Chesterton was saying is so true.  Today it seems to be commendable to appear humble and express one’s uncertainties about key elements of Christian teaching.  Even to the point of absurdity!  I recall a situation some years ago in Canada where a newly elected church moderator questioned the divinity of Jesus Christ, His resurrection from the dead and the existence of hell.  Even more startling was that the church’s executive committee supported their moderator when there was an outcry from the grassroots pew-sitters.  They declared that the moderator was still in “essential agreement” with biblical faith.  Apparently it’s hard to be humble… but not when it comes to confidently asserting the truth of the Christian faith.  When it comes to God-revealed truth many people today waver with false humility and cave in to a political correctness which prevents us from taking pride in the truth of God.

Jeremiah had a message from the Lord that hits home with uncomfortable accuracy: “‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom, and let not the rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for I delight in these things.’ declares the Lord.” (9:23,24)

The good news of the gospel ought to help us put things back into a proper perspective – to be humble about ourselves – just as our Lord humbled Himself; but to take pride in the truth that Jesus died for us and rose again that we might be spared from eternal damnation.

John Westendorp