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Humility: The Antidote to Pride

  Humility: The Antidote to Pride

          Micah 6:6-8                 1 Peter 5:1-6      Philippians 2:5-13        John 13:1-5

 

I: — Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th-century philosopher, despised Christianity.  “A slave-mentality”, he labelled it.         The worst feature of Christianity’s slave-mentality, said Nietzsche, is that Christians think there is something virtuous about their own enslavement, and therefore they seek it and languish in it.  They think there is something virtuous about self-belittlement and the psychological crippling that goes with it.  Nietzsche despised Christianity just because he felt it undermined self-confidence; it promoted psychological feebleness; and it regarded all of this as honourable.

Was Nietzsche correct in his assessment?  Yes, at least to some extent.  (Remember now, we are not talking about the gospel or about Jesus Christ; we are talking about “Christianity”, the religious expression that Nietzsche saw every day.)  Psychotherapists tell me, for instance, that as a physically or psychologically abused woman (if she’s physically abused she’s certainly psychologically abused as well) loses self-confidence, her self-confidence erodes to the point where she no longer has enough self-confidence to leave the man who is tormenting her.  At this point she is trapped by her diminished ego-strength.  As her self-confidence continues to erode she sinks deeper into the swamp of immobility. Psychotherapists tell me it takes six months to eighteen months of intense therapy to bring an abused woman back to the point where she has enough self-confidence to escape the man who is assaulting her.

Is “Christianity” (so-called) responsible for this?  Yes, very often. Haven’t women been told it is their “Christian” duty to be submissive?

Nietzsche maintained that “Christianity” fostered passivity in people. It fostered capitulation, conformity, resignation.  It turned backbone into wishbone or worse.  It undercut protest, resilience, assertiveness; it replaced these with docility, apathy, sheepishness.

Was Nietzsche correct in his assessment?  Yes, very often. But we must be sure to note that it is a distorted “Christianity” that has done this, never the gospel itself.  The gospel (which is to say, Jesus Christ himself) never fosters self-belittlement, self-denigration, self-contempt; never. To be sure, the gospel does insist that we humble ourselves under God. But to humble ourselves under God is not to wallow in self-contempt.  It isn’t always to be putting ourselves down; it isn’t chronically to think ourselves inferior.

Yet this confusion is made all the time.  I understand how the confusion can arise.  Many people have been raised in homes where childhood difficulties, especially the fears and distresses and hurts of childhood, were not taken seriously.  It was assumed that adults have the right to feel insecure, but not children. Adults, after all, find themselves wounded at the hands of life.  Children, however, are never insecure or wounded.  It was assumed that the child’s pain doesn’t hurt; the child’s bewilderment isn’t upsetting; the child’s question isn’t important; the child’s opinion doesn’t count.  What else can the child conclude except that her grief or confusion or unnamed need doesn’t matter? that she doesn’t matter? The grooves that are etched in the tender psyches of little people are etched very deeply and are exceedingly difficult to eradicate.

Other people have been raised in a home where neighbours and relatives and colleagues were belittled regularly.  The atmosphere was one of contempt and the imagined superiority that underlies contempt. After they had heard everyone else put down for 20 years, their unconscious mindset became one of self-putdown. How could it be anything else? Why would they ever think themselves an exception?

The humility that the gospel urges upon us has nothing to do with a self-deprecation that leaves someone with zero self-esteem.  The humility that the gospel urges upon us has nothing to do with Nietzsche’s slave-mentality, fostering self-contempt and sheepishness as it does, all the while regarding these as virtuous.

 

Before we specify where gospel-humility differs from poor self-image and flattened self-esteem we should identify the signs of poor self-image and flattened self-esteem.

One sign is self-advertisement.  Self-advertisement is a cover-up.  It covers up deep-seated anxiety at being overlooked, at not being deemed important.

Another sign is sarcasm. The habitually sarcastic person speaks as she does in order to portray herself as superior; she portrays herself as superior lest others find her inferior.

Another sign is bullying. Inside every bully there is a frightened, shaking, little creature.  Yes, the bully is always a nuisance and frequently dangerous; yes, the bully has indulged his childishness for years in getting his own way. As difficult as it is to put up with the bully, however, he remains pathetic.  His insecurity is glaring. His trembling knees are pitiable. After all, his bullying covers up the greatest fear of his life: losing, losing any conflict, losing any struggle; and above all, losing face.  For him, losing even an argument amounts to annihilation.

All of these signs cloak or disguise a self-esteem that has largely crumbled, a self-image that is not only damaged but distressing and destructive to the person who is sarcastic or a bully or a ceaseless self-advertiser.

 

II: — Then what is the nature of the humility the gospel requires of us?  Where do we find it? What will it do for us and others?

Peter writes (1st Peter 5:6), “Humble yourselves under God, and in due time he will exalt you.”  The key is humbling ourselves under God. Simply to humble ourselves (or to try to) will result either in our belittling ourselves or bragging of ourselves (for now we are proud of the fact that we are humbler than most). The only self-humbling that is safe is to humble ourselves under God. For in humbling ourselves under God we shall always remember, with the psalmist, that God is for us. God is always for us. Because he is always for us, our humbling ourselves under him can be only positive. Not only is it always safe to humble ourselves under God, it is more than safe; it is salutary.         It can only prosper us.

 

Under God I recall that human beings and animals were made on the same “day” (Genesis 1:24 -31). Plainly, the animals are our “cousins”. (Not our brothers and sisters, to be sure, but certainly our cousins.)  I am humbled whenever I reflect on the fact that medical experiments with animals (who are themselves creatures of God) benefit human beings because — and only because — we and the animals have so much in common. (The digestive tract of the alligator, organ for organ, is virtually identical with ours. And is there any aspect of animal psychology that doesn’t have immediate relevance to us humans?) Under God I cannot pretend that animals haven’t suffered much through experimentation in order to spare me suffering.  Under God I cannot pretend that I don’t need them to survive (even as I know that they don’t need me to survive).

Yet under God I am exalted, for God has made us humans unique; God has made us “little less than God himself”, says the psalmist.  While God loves all his creatures, God addresses, speaks to, human beings only. Note this: God loves us and the animals, but he speaks to us, and equips us to speak to him in return; more than merely equip us to speak to him in return, he expects us to. He makes us able to respond, response-able, and because response-able, response-ible, responsible. Under God we are crowned inalienably with glory and honour.  What’s more, under God and in Christ, I am the person whom God identifies with his only begotten and beloved Son.  Which is to say, whenever God looks upon that Son with whom he is ever pleased, he sees me too; he can’t help seeing me in the same light, since I stand with Christ the Son by faith.

 

In the second place under God I am humbled to know myself a sinner. When all the allowances have been made for my upbringing, my present social environment, the victimizations I have suffered, the emotional deprivations visited upon me, the genes I inherited from my parents (my gosh, I do sound hard done-by, don’t I?); when all allowances have been made for the warps in me for which I am not entirely accountable, there yet remains that “I”, that “me”, which scripture speaks of as “the man of sin”. There is a perversity in me, a bias to ungodliness as irrational as it is deep-seated, for which no one else and nothing else can be blamed.  The more I search my heart the more aware I am of the subtleties and the subterfuges of the man of sin.

Yet under God I am exalted, for in Christ I am a pardoned sinner whom God cherishes. In Christ I am identified with the One whom the New Testament knows to be without sin. Have you ever noticed that while the Apostles’ Creed affirms the fact of sin, it does so only left-handedly, only in passing?  The Apostles’ Creed states, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty… I believe in his only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord…” and so on. Nowhere does the Creed say, “I believe in sin.” It says, “I believe in the forgiveness of sins.” The Creed invites us to admit we are sinners only at the same time that it insists, with much louder voice, that we are forgiven sinners. Yes, under God I am humbled to admit (to have to admit) that the designation, “man of sin” fits me; but I am exalted, exhilarated too, that since I am “in Christ” the designation, “man of righteousness” is the final truth about me, the characteristic truth about me, the “real me” despite all appearances, all contradictions.  I shall always be eager to humble myself under God since God exalts me eternally.

In the third place under God I am humbled to hear Jesus tell the disciples that at the end of the day they must say of themselves, “We are but unprofitable servants”. If James and Bartholomew, Andrew and Alphaeus must say this of themselves, I am not about to tell my Lord that I, on the contrary, am an enormously profitable servant and he is remarkably fortunate to have me on his team.

Unprofitable servants that we are, however, it is precisely unprofitable servants whom God exalts; as God exalts us he renders us profitable for his kingdom. It is unprofitable servants alone whom God can use. Whatever use would God have for servants who boasted that the kingdom couldn’t survive without them? We must never think that there was a “golden age” in the church when all was rosy and the church consisted only of “profitable” servants.  There was never a golden age.  The New Testament epistles were written to address the elements in the church that were anything but gold.  While the problems in Corinth differed from the problems in Galatia, and both of these differed from the problems in Thessalonica, at the end of the day the apostle Paul reminds Christians everywhere — even in the most troubled congregations — that they and they alone are the body of Christ; it is their work and witness that lend visibility to the rule of Christ throughout the world; they are the only manifestation of him whose triumph over the deadly powers they extol.

 

It is plain that to humble ourselves under God is never to be humbled only; to humble ourselves under God is always also to be exalted, just because God exalts the humble. Simply to humble ourselves might sink us into the slave-mentality that Nietzsche rightly deplored; but to humble ourselves under God will never sink us into such a mentality; to humble ourselves under God will always find us exalted — and therefore fit, ready, eager to be as active in the world as God himself is active in the world.

 

III: — I trust no one here today now confuses humility under God with self-belittlement or self-denigration.  To humble ourselves under God, rather, is to have a sober, realistic, yet positive understanding of ourselves.  Sober because our self-assessment is no longer emotionally inflamed, driven by emotional need or emotional distortion. Realistic because in Christ we have the freedom to acknowledge any and all negativities about us without thereby crippling ourselves or collapsing ourselves. Positive because in Christ we know that God is for us; God has made us the pinnacle of his creation, has soaked us in a pardon that discloses our guilt only to drown it, and has promised to use us on behalf of that kingdom which can never be shaken.

All of this adds up to enormous freedom; namely, freedom from self-preoccupation. After all, humility, free and cheerful in equal measure, is simply self-forgetfulness. We must always remember, on the other hand, that self-contempt (so often confused with humility) is still a preoccupation with oneself, and therefore a form of selfism. A false and destructive so-called “humility” remains no more than complicated self-preoccupation. Genuine humility, on the other hand, is always self-forgetfulness.

We see such self-forgetfulness over and over in Christ Jesus our Lord. Ruler of the universe, he subjected himself to Roman authority.  Saviour of the world, he went to the Synagogue every week and listened to a preacher who didn’t have much to tell him. As sensitive to pain as any of us, he pleaded for mercy for those who were nailing him to the cross. The result of all this? “God has highly exalted him”, says Paul, “and bestowed on him the name which is above every name.” (Philippians 2:9)

 

Nietzsche may have been right concerning what he called “Christianity”, the religious expression of people who, at best, only half-understood the gospel. But concerning the gospel itself; concerning the surge of Jesus Christ within his people; concerning this Nietzsche was utterly wrong.  The humility that the gospel requires of us does not sink us into a slave-mentality; it does not make a virtue of self-victimization; it does not encourage passivity and sheepishness and apathy.

The humility the gospel requires of us is but the other side of our exaltation at God’s hand; which exaltation elevates us as sons and daughters of God, servants whose kingdom-service is unfailingly profitable, self-forgetful people whom God is going to remember and cherish eternally.

 

                                                                                                   Victor Shepherd                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             April 2006