Humility

“I tell you that this man … went home justified before God. For all those who … humble themselves will be exalted.”

Luke 18: 14 (New International Version)

Exalt means held in high regard. Good when this high regard is by others, problematic when this high regard is about ourselves. In this passage, Jesus is pointing out that proper self-awareness contains a dollop of humility.

Honest humility is an endearing quality in our interaction with others.  An honest humility, backed up by a true and honest self-assessment of strengths and weaknesses, is a positive human characteristic. In contrast, few take pleasure in being in the company of those who are compelled to be the smartest person in the room: wearying.  This is hubris, a word of Greek origin.

Hubris “came to be defined as overweening presumption that leads a person to disregard the divinely fixed limits on human action in an ordered cosmos.”  Some of that bothers me, but overall, it resonates.  My take is the disregard of who we really are. When acting in a state of hubris, we are fakes, charlatans, or to put a twist on Shakespeare “a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.”

Humility and hubris are opposites. To balance humility and hubris requires excellent emotional intelligence and a high self-awareness. 

Hubris is a character flaw, but too much humility can also be a flaw. What about those for whom it isn’t honest humility, but rather an unconscious inability to see ourselves as worthy, successful, fun, and all of the things that help lead to a well rounded soul? 

Self doubt eats at our very core and saps us of the strength for living life abundantly. 

Carl Jung, the noted Swiss psychiatrist, once wrote:  “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

I love baseball. Former major leaguer Manny Ramirez provides an excellent example of the unconscious staying unconscious. Manny was a great hitter but less than thoughtful in the thinking elements of the game. His Hall of Fame manager Joe Torre was once asked why Manny did something less than helpful, and Joe said “it’s just Manny being Manny.” Some would say it was Manny’s fate to live in a world of self-absorption. Maybe because he could hit a baseball an incredible distance on a regular basis but not understand other elements of the game, Manny possessed what was arguably low self-awareness. He had hubris as it related to his hitting prowess, but a profound lack of honest humility in how all of that fit together to make him a complete player in all phases of the game. 

Our walk, in community, with Jesus is at least in part so that we can be complete players in all phases of the game of life. Jung would suggest this means we conduct an honest inventory of who we are. This can be tricky because, in the words of David Foster Wallace, “the most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”

Jesus would suggest a proper self-awareness contains a dollop of humility, the type that is healthy and interested in growth. The commendation is not to beat ourselves up over our failures, but rather to quietly assess and inventory who we are. This is done in healthy conversation with those we trust and love, on long walks alone in the creation, and a thousand other approaches to be appropriately alone or with others for the purpose of growth. 

Selah

Persist

“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.”  1 Timothy 4:16 (ESV)

I suspect most, if not all, of us have heard part of the purpose of education is to help us learn how to think, rather than what to think.  Critical:  both what and how are important.  Balance is also important.  People who win on Jeopardy have what mastered.  There are probably few how questions on Double or Final Jeopardy.  Much of our spiritual thinking is how over what. 

How over what leads me to self-awareness.  How we see ourselves and, importantly, others, is beyond important, it is vital!  Paul knew this well enough in the scripture above to admonish Timothy to be sure to “keep a close watch on” himself and that watch would be of salvific value, to Timothy as well as those interacting with him. 

This watch keeping is to be more than occasional, Paul encourages persistence.  To be persistent is to be doggedly engaged in this “close watch” for an extended period of time.  I liked doggedly.  It implies a tenacious spirit. 

Vital -- Self-awareness hinges on reflection and how we integrate this reflection into our own emotional intelligence.   

Emotional intelligence is our own reflections in terms of our own knowledge about our emotions, and our ability to observe and draw meaning from the emotions of others.  There is in this a “what” (reflection) that leads us to deeper understanding of how (we relate to others and ourselves.) 

David Foster Wallace sounds like Paul when he said in This is Water: 

“Learning how to think" really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.  It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

A person with high self awareness, high emotional intelligence, is one who makes their own choices rather than operating from some internal default setting.  A derivative of this level of self awareness is remembering to listen, think, speak, rather than listen, speak, think.  For many, our default setting is listen, speak, think.  This is low self awareness, low emotional intelligence. 

This reflection leading to a better understanding of self and others is arguably more important than pure facts and figures, dates and heroes, theorems and formulas. 

We absolutely need what to be a success in the world, but how we are in relationship is also critical.  A positive relationship with ourselves, and with others, leads to success and our success depends on our ability to properly read other people and react appropriately to them.  Remember Paul?  Keep a close watch on yourself. 

To keep this watch, we must look, in as well as out. 

Now here is the paradox in all of this:  we learn a lot by failing.  That great bard of life truths, Anonymous, once said: “Those who have never failed have never attempted anything.”  There is no shame in failing, the shame is not learning from it, and not conducting the inventory afterwards of what was learned. 

Brené Brown, writes in Rising Strong:  “We need more people who are willing to demonstrate what it looks like to risk and endure failure, disappointment, and regret—people willing to feel their own hurt … willing to own their stories, live their values, and keep showing up.”

She nails it:  feel our own hurt but at the same time own the story from the hurt, the pain.  To live our values, we must reflect enough to know what those values are, and to keep showing up.  Key is that single idea from Paul -- persistence. 

Selah, Pastor Dennis