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
