Thoughts on Humility
Jul. 17th, 2003 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elenearielHumility has always been a sticky topic for me. What is it? How do I be truly humble? Should I always pass of complements to someone who deserves them more--say someone tells me that I made a very good loaf of bread. Should I say that it was because of my mother's excellent teaching, or the good type of flour, or just because I followed the directions to the letter? Or do I just say that oh, I really didn't think it was very good at all?
I've had people do these very things when I said something complementary to them, and it's really disconcerting. I've always been taught that the proper way to receive a complement was to graciously accept it and say "thank you." But THAT sure doesn't seem very humble.
Or, does being humble mean that I should belittle myself, never thinking that what I can do is of any significant value? How can I be humble if I honestly know I can do a certain thing well?
Then there's the problem of being TOO humble. How easy it is for me to fall into this trap, as so wonderfully expressed in this quote: "[He] has become humble...all virtues are less formidable [...] once the man is aware of them, but this is especially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By Jove! I'm being humble!', and almost immediately pride--pride at his own humility--will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt--and so on, through as many stages as you please."
That's from C. S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters". I'm just now reading it for the first time, and chapter 14 has given me so much to think about on this subject. It has also helped me see that having a low opinion of myself in an attempt to feel "humble" is a lie from Satan. Another Lewis quote:
"Let him think of [humility] not as a self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. [...] Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be...By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible."
But finally I'm getting a grasp on what true humility means--turning my attention from myself and what I can do to God and to the people around me. I sure don't practice it, and it seems almost impossible. But at least I have something to strive for. More from "The Screwtape Letters":
"[God] wants to bring man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it then he would be if it had been done by another. [God] wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall...[God] would rather that the man thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one."
I've had people do these very things when I said something complementary to them, and it's really disconcerting. I've always been taught that the proper way to receive a complement was to graciously accept it and say "thank you." But THAT sure doesn't seem very humble.
Or, does being humble mean that I should belittle myself, never thinking that what I can do is of any significant value? How can I be humble if I honestly know I can do a certain thing well?
Then there's the problem of being TOO humble. How easy it is for me to fall into this trap, as so wonderfully expressed in this quote: "[He] has become humble...all virtues are less formidable [...] once the man is aware of them, but this is especially true of humility. Catch him at the moment when he is really poor in spirit and smuggle into his mind the gratifying reflection, 'By Jove! I'm being humble!', and almost immediately pride--pride at his own humility--will appear. If he awakes to the danger and tries to smother this new form of pride, make him proud of his attempt--and so on, through as many stages as you please."
That's from C. S. Lewis's "The Screwtape Letters". I'm just now reading it for the first time, and chapter 14 has given me so much to think about on this subject. It has also helped me see that having a low opinion of myself in an attempt to feel "humble" is a lie from Satan. Another Lewis quote:
"Let him think of [humility] not as a self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. [...] Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be...By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible."
But finally I'm getting a grasp on what true humility means--turning my attention from myself and what I can do to God and to the people around me. I sure don't practice it, and it seems almost impossible. But at least I have something to strive for. More from "The Screwtape Letters":
"[God] wants to bring man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it then he would be if it had been done by another. [God] wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favor that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbor's talents--or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall...[God] would rather that the man thought himself a great architect or a great poet and then forgot about it, than that he should spend much time and pains trying to think himself a bad one."