Seven years ago I sat in Maroochydore, Australia, with my YWAM staff mentor. Once a week we trekked to the Starbucks near the beach, sat on the patio, and watched the waves and people roll by. Isaac taught me a lot, and one thing I specifically remember him saying was about humility.
“You want to know a scary prayer to pray?” he asked one day while we sipped our matcha lattes.
I nodded.
“Ask the Lord to humble you,” he continued. “That’s a scary prayer because God will answer it and you will be humbled.”
To be honest, I don’t think I ever got around to praying that prayer. If you think about it, it’s a pretty scary thing to pray. An invitation to God to reach down and put you in your place is downright terrifying. I think we have several misconceptions about humility and what exactly it is, but that’s for another blog.
Humility is the opposite of pride. Pride also is an oft-misunderstood concept, as people think they are being humble whenever they speak ill of themselves or how much they hate themselves, when in reality, they are just taking on another form of pride.
C.S. Lewis defines pride as “ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration on the self.” If we can define pride this way, then both the cocky male model and the self-deprecating high schooler are equally guilty of being prideful.
There is no humility in constantly bringing up how terrible you are.
Tim Keller talks about pride as a calculation. When we calculate ourselves against others, sometimes we come out on top, and sometimes we come out below them, but either way, we are being prideful. No matter who you compare yourself to, you’re participating in pride. The devil doesn’t care how you place as long as you keep up the comparison.
So, I never really got around to praying the prayer for humility. I was too chicken. In many ways, I didn’t have to ask for it, because God will always send us opportunities to humble ourselves. We will always have the option to choose humility or arrogance in those situations.
For instance, take a look at my first year at Moody Bible Institute. I showed up thinking I was hot baloney. I thought I knew more about the Bible than all of my peers (and professors), and that I knew all about city life, despite never having set foot in Chicago before.
I had the opportunity to humble myself, learn from my classes and classmates, and create lasting friendships. Instead, no one wanted to be around me because I reeked so strongly of arrogance and I didn’t learn as much as I could have because I went in thinking I knew everything.
Over my three years at the school, I learned something: God is not about humility as much as He is about humiliation.