The Advantages of Humility

The advantages of humility. What a notion that must be rejected by most people, and most Christians, in this modern age. Is there really such a thing as advantages of being humble? Most of us today have been taught the advantages of going out and “getting all we can”, “nice guys finish last,” and “work harder.” We have all been bombarded by the notion that we must strive, plan, and create exhaustive list of goals that we must meet in order to get what we want out of life and find “God’s will.” We all learn from the moment of birth that we are separate from God and that to gain anything we must try and strive. We spend out lives attempting to be better and smarter than those around us. Parents are encouraged to place their children in school at an earlier and earlier age. If you aren’t having your child listen to classical music and singing the ABC’s while they are in the womb, your child is at a disadvantage. Parent’s plan before birth what school their child will attend and push their children to get it right and “color within the lines.” Acknowledging anything less than perfection is admitting weakness and humility is pushed aside as a characteristic of the shy and the ones who will get left behind. This spiritual truth is one of the most important that Jesus himself taught, yet today it is a forgotten teaching. Phillipians 2 reminds us that humility is good in every situation. How contrary to the modern western life, even the modern western Christian life. We are taught that we are to “stand up for our rights,” and be assertive and even aggressive in situations that we feel like someone may be taking advantage of us. We are even taught that to “allow” someone to “win” over us is a weakness and we are to assert that we are right. “humility produces a teachable spirit that makes everything easy.” Most of us are told just the opposite and believe that to be the case. Stand up to that teacher that has pick you out of the class as the one talking. Make sure that someone knows that they are wrong and will apologize for their mistake. Be sure that you are running with the big dogs because if you can’t you must leave the porch. Something that I have learned through my counseling and therapy, for myself and with others that I have seen, is that to actually “win” a power struggle you have to be the one to stop fighting. I always imagine the scene of two powerful people standing up in the middle of a room with their arms outstretched pushing on each other hands. The goal is to make your opponent fall over. I ask people what is the quickest way to make this happen? My thought is to just get out of the way and let them push has hard as they want. When they have nothing to push against they fall right on their face!
I have practiced this for years when working with individuals who have alcohol or drug addiction problems. If I spend the first few times meeting with them trying to convince them they have a problem, all they do is push back against me as I attempt to push to them to admit they have a problem. They come in and say “I would not have to be here if that stupid cop would not have searched my car, they did not have a right to search me anyway.” If I attempt to respond with some convincing evidence about how this is their third arrest, or if they would not have had the substance in their car it would not have mattered – all I get back is a power struggle and them attempting to convince me that they do not have a problem. However, I have found that if I am just humble and agree that the cop was out of line, they have nothing to fight me about anymore. Soon, usually about three sessions, they have nothing left to talk about and begin to be open to the idea that their may be a problem that they need to be looking into. This could only come about with someone interacting with them that practices humility.
This made my life as a psychotherapist very easy. When I could take off the hat of “expert” and no longer felt like I had to assert my self as right and they need to see it my way because “I am the expert,” it was no longer my work to do. I could leave the problem with the person to figure it out on their own. My work became very easy in a sense. I learned a great deal about my own need to allow others to find their solutions. I learned a great deal about how people came to learn on their own. I became teachable and so did the people with whom I entered that relationship. Humility is good in every situation. What could you learn and what could you allow others to learn when you are humble? Is it possible that you and the other person would be able to have a teachable spirit? If this is true, the opposite is also true. If I do not have humility, there is no teachable spirit. I learn nothing and neither does the person with whom I am interacting.
Let’s take a look at little children before the age of about four. How teachable are they? I see them as little sponges with a knowing that they need to gain understanding and must have a humble, teachable spirit to do so. Fenelon writes in his book Let Go, “The Lord has taught you so much the necessity of becoming a little child.” Jesus says unless you have the faith of a child you will not see the kingdom of heaven. I always think of my son, age three and a half. He has not a worry or care in the world. When he was even younger he would ask for help with tasks, ask how things would work, and believe that he could be taught anything! However, as he grows he will take on what we in the psychological field choose to call an ego. He has already begun to say that he can “do it myself” and “leave me alone.” As we all grow up, we forget that we need to be like little children willing to learn from every teacher and circumstance. We lose the understanding that we do not know much and that we are always learning. We begin to assert our rights and have our “terrible twos” for the rest of our lives.
Few of us see humility as a “fitting” place to be. We believe that we have the “God-given” right to assertive ourselves and our ego. “How dare someone do that to me” is our mantra in these modern times – “don’t they know who I am.” We will not allow ourselves to experience anything that we perceive as weakness for fear of not being in control of our lives. We are so connected to our ego that we define ourselves by it. Ego is just that idea that we carry around in our head that tells us who we are. We like to tell ourselves that we are the stuff we have, the job title we hold, the care we drive, the friends we have, the money we make, and what others think about us. When we believe that we are these things we need to vigorously defend ourselves against attacks against the ego. This means that we must protect ourselves, defend our rights against those who would like to say that we are something different than our idea or do not recognize us, or our ego, as we do.
The good out of having humility is that we realize that we are dependent on God. We realize that Jesus has made a connection to God available all the time if we are willing act in humility and realize that we are still in need of being taught. We come to a place that AA talks about in its first three steps and we realize that we are powerless and that a power greater than ourselves can restore us, but first we must be act with humility. We must realize that we have to be willing to be taught and open to learning. We must realize that we are not alone and that all things come from the creator. Being open to humility will lead us to a greater understanding of who we actually are in God and Christ, and how we all are connected to each other and can learn and teach each other.