Concepts of Humility

Introduction

Humility is the state of having a low opinion of oneself and of one's achievements. Humility seems to be a kind of inaccurate assessment of oneself, but it is still widely taken to be a virtue. For Christian ethics, we are from God and are determined by God, and every merit we achieve we owe to God. We should be grateful rather than proud. Accordingly, humility is viewed as a distinctive virtue in dealing with the relationship between God and human beings, and in putting human beings in their proper place. For other ethical theories, humility involves not crediting too much to oneself. As human beings, we are determined by nature, helped by the contributions of others and are subject to various kinds of luck. Humility reflects these facts and is therefore admired. (Anscombe, 1)

The Hebrew word anah and is the primary scriptural word for humility. It literally means to be humbled by being made to kneel, or voluntarily kneeling.

When someone is kneeling before a conqueror or king, they are focused on that person, not themselves. This is the idea behind the scriptural concept of humility. (Hare, 19)

Secular language normally thinks of humility in terms of emphasizing one's weaknesses, or downplaying one's strengths. Neither is relevant to the scriptural concept of humility. Any definition of humility that beings, "Humility is seeing yourself as..." is wrong. Scripturally, humility is not seeing yourself at all because you are looking at God. (Hare, 145)

Humble and Humility

Humble and humility are words we regularly use in the English language. We define a humble person as someone who doesn't brag. A humble background means poverty. At least within the Christian environment, humility is an esteemed virtue that is often the result of difficult circumstances. (Hartz, 65)

Because the word is commonly used, it's easy to miss the deeper spiritual concept behind what true humility is. Humility is not inferiority or self-hatred. Many people assume that a person with poor self-esteem is humble. They believe that the road to humility involves dwelling on personal inadequacies and failures. But true humility has nothing to do with feeling less valuable than anyone else. Philippians 2 highlights the fallacy of this belief. Jesus humbled Himself not because He was convinced of His inferiority but because He chose to lay aside His agenda for the will of His Father. (Peter, 29)

As This Paper suggested before, inferiority and self-hatred are actually expressions of pride. Remember the Bible story of Cain and Abel from Genesis 4? Was Cain proud or humble after he presented his grain offering to the Lord? His inadequacy, jealousy, and anger were ignited by God's rejection of his offering. He might have thought something like this: Why does God reject me but bless my brother? This Paper must not be good enough for God. Cain's thoughts and actions were rooted in his wounded pride.

True humility frees us from the bondage of inferiority and self-loathing because it frees us from self. (Peter, 29)

Humility isn't a circumstance. Although what happens in ...