HUMILITY

January 28, 2009

I have to mention that last week's post created some of the most diverse and interactive response in the three or four years these weekly emails have endured. The discussions were great, and some still are waiting replies. This week, in my readings, there was something written on humility. See what you think I would love to interact with your ideas on the subject. Somewhat lengthy, but well worth considering.

What we suffer from today 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 undoubting 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...The new skeptic is so humble that he doubts if he can learn...There is a real humility typical of our time; but is so happens that it's practically a more poisonous humility than the wildest prostrations of the ascetic...The old humility made a man doubtful about his efforts, which might make him work harder. But the new humility makes a man doubtful about his aims, which make him stop working altogether...We are on the road to producing a race of man too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication table.

Modern-day humility is firmly rooted in the relativism that recoils from knowing truth and naming error. But that is not what humility used to mean. Well, if humility is not compliance with the popular demands of relativism, what is it?...

1. Humility begins with a sense of subordination to God in Christ.

2. Humility does not feel it has a right to better treatment than Jesus got.

3. Humility asserts truth not to bolster the ego with control or with triumphs in debate, but as service to Christ and love to the adversary.

4. Humility knows it is dependent on grace for all knowing and believing.

5. Humility knows it is fallible, and so considers criticism and learns from it; bit also knows that God has made provision for human conviction and that He calls us to persuade others.