Humility – [part one]

By Pastor Paul Gauche

Today’s Word: ‘HUMILITY’ as in… Part One of some really well developed, finely honed, and helpful thoughts on Humility.

Please tell me you caught the irony, if not the sarcasm in that.

Understanding and practicing humility is complicated. Part of what makes humility such a challenge is the temptation to reduce humility to a checklist of activities that we believe will make us humbler people. For instance, I read an article in Forbes magazine recently that featured “13 Habits of Humble People.” The more I read, the better I felt about myself. I discovered that “Humble people listen well. Humble people put others first. Humble people speak their minds, are good at setting boundaries, have a high degree of Emotional Intelligence. Humble people have a great deal of self-awareness, they have an abundance mentality, they take time to say, “Thank you.” Humble people accept feedback, and humble people have a lot of patience.

I’ll just pause for a moment and let you think about that one.

If you were keeping track, that’s 10 out of 13. That’s pretty good! I do have to say, that generally speaking, I am more or less—mostly more—killing it on the “humble-o-meter.” Thankfully, it didn’t take long for me to snap out of that and begin to ask, “Is humility really about crushing a list of behaviors that lead to becoming a humbler person?” Of course not.

In an ancient story from Luke’s Gospel, Jesus attends a dinner party with some Pharisees, a 1^st-century group of religious lawyers known for their strict observance of the traditional and written law. They had perfectly mastered keeping all 613 laws which, from their perspective, set them apart from everyone else. While jockeying around the table for the best proximity to the host, they were actually degrading each other and themselves. That’s when Jesus said, “If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face.”

We’ve all been there. Let me ask you: how is this timeless truth true for you? What have you learned from that experience?

#100days50words

Paul Gauche is the Pastor of Life Transitions at Prince of Peace. His posts are part of his #100days50words project, where be blogs about a different word each day. You can follow his project on Instagram (@pgauche), or on his blog, Thriving Rhythms.