By Richard E. Simmons III
My Personal Takeaways →Simmons makes the counter-cultural case that humility — not talent, ambition, or networking — is the foundation of a life well-lived. Drawing on Scripture, history, and practical wisdom, the book explores what true humility looks like in work, relationships, and self-understanding, and why pride quietly destroys what we most want to build.
The key insight is that humility is not weakness or low self-esteem — it is an accurate view of yourself before God and others, which paradoxically produces more confidence, relational depth, and influence than pride ever does. Read this if you want to grow in character without the self-absorption that so often comes with self-improvement culture. Implement it by examining one relationship per week through the lens of humility: where are you keeping score, seeking credit, or resisting correction?
By Richard E. Simmons
PRIDE HAS BEEN THE CHIEF CAUSE OF MISERY IN EVERY NATION AND EVERY FAMILY SINCE THE WORLD BEGAN. – C.S. Lewis
Why do we feel so compelled to impress other people? What is that all about? And why are we always comparing ourselves with others? Why can’t we just be content with who we are and what we have? Then there is, of course, the big question. It is the one question we are always asking ourselves. It often seems to be the central question that must finally be answered before we will make certain decisions or take definitive courses of action. It is a question that I believe haunts many people’s lives: What will people think about me?
There is a simple answer: the pride of life.
There is one vice of which no man in the world is free, and which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else, and of which hardly any people, except maybe some Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls, or drink, or even that they are cowards, but I don’t think that I have ever heard anyone accuse himself of this vice. And, at the same time, I have very seldom met anyone, again, other than some Christians, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault of which we are more unconscious of than others, and the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others. The vice I’m talking of is pride, or self-conceit.
Lewis describes pride as a spiritual cancer that destroys our ability to genuinely love others and prevents us from being content. As a spiritual cancer, pride slowly grows and develops in our lives, becoming well-established without our knowledge.
Webster’s defines it in two ways: The first is a “justifiable self-respect”—the idea of taking pride in doing the best that you can do. The second definition is what Lewis is speaking of—“an arrogance, an unreasonable conceit and feeling of superiority.”
PRIDE GETS NO PLEASURE OUT OF HAVING SOMETHING, ONLY OUT OF HAVING MORE THAN THE NEXT MAN. (C.S. LEWIS)
I have seen that every labor and every skill which is done is the result of rivalry between a man and his neighbor. (Ecclesiastes 4:4).
Most of us are rarely satisfied and content in our own work and achievements. We constantly compare ourselves with other people and desire to be more successful than they are because we have a great desire to impress others. Despite our many achievements, we don’t feel we are successful unless other people are aware of them. In other words, we seek more than just success—we long for proper recognition of our achievements.
Having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others.
You have to wear a certain kind of clothes, drive a certain car, speak a certain way, live in a certain neighborhood, whatever, all of it so you can be higher on an invisible hierarchy. It’s an obsession! You are trying to feel right by comparing yourself to others. It is ridiculous. Who told you there was anything wrong with you in the first place?
In the Bible, the word “glory” means importance. It means “to matter.” Fundamentally we are haunted by a deep fear that our lives don’t really matter. Keller says the worst thing for a human being is really not being disliked or vilified but instead being ignored and considered insignificant. The human heart fears being so unimportant and worthless in the eyes of others that our lives don’t matter to the people around us. For this reason, though we may not be aware of it, every human heart in its deepest recesses is seeking extensive glory.
Vanity Fair magazine featured an interesting interview with pop icon Madonna in which you can see this desire for cosmic significance. Madonna commented: I have an iron will, and all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy … I push past one spell of it and discover myself as a special human being and then I get to another stage and think I’m mediocre and uninteresting… Again and again. My drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre. And that’s always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I’ve become Somebody, I still have to prove that I’m Somebody. My struggle has never ended and it probably never will.
We travel through life on an unending quest to prove to the world our lives matter and that we are important. What better way to do that than to prove we are better or superior to those around us? This striving lies at the heart of pride and arrogance. However, even if we do find the success and fame that make us feel significant, we still have to deal with the reality that these will eventually fade. They will not last because we are disintegrating. We yearn for a glory that is permanent, but our lives are slowly passing away. We will never find peace and contentment in this life until we come to terms with this conundrum. The ultimate solution is humility. The humble are continually at peace with who they are in the eyes of others. They are content with their position in life and what they possess. The humble are the only ones who are delivered from this great drive to prove to the world that “I am important!”
We must prepare for pride and kill it early— or it will kill what we aspire to. – Ryan Holiday
The great French author Victor Hugo remarked, “Pride is the fortress of evil in a man.” G.K. Chesterton said, “Pride is a poison so very poisonous that it not only poisons the virtues, it even poisons the other vices.” Pride is often the sin that lies beneath so many of our flaws. I remember hearing Charlie Munger of Berkshire Hathaway remark about the corruption on Wall Street that contributed to the financial crisis back in 2008. He said most people blamed it all on greed. However, Munger believes so many of the traders were driven to unethical behavior when they when they learned a colleague several doors down was making a million dollars a year more than they were. They were controlled by pride and jealousy, not greed.
You would think Larry Ellison has it made with nothing to worry about. However, his life is fixated on Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft. Ellison compares his life, his company, and particularly his wealth to that of Gates and Microsoft. Those who have worked for him will tell you that his greatest desire in life is to dethrone Gates and be recognized as America’s richest person. You would think he could find contentment with all of his wealth and accomplishments, but he continually compares himself to Gates and is driven to overtake
But what can a man do? He wants to be great but he finds that he is small. He wants to be happy and finds that he is unhappy. He wants to be perfect and finds that he is riddled with imperfections. He wants to be the object of men’s affection and esteem and sees that his faults deserve only their dislike and contempt. The embarrassing position in which he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passion that can possibly be imagined. He conceives a mortal hatred of the truth which brings him down to earth and convinces him of his faults. He would like to be able to annihilate it, and not being able to destroy it in himself, he destroys it in the minds of other people. That is to say, he concentrates all his efforts on concealing his faults, both from others, and from himself, and cannot stand being made to see them, or their being seen by other people.
Over time, our lives are riddled with imperfections in that we all have weaknesses, inadequacies, and many types of fears. So what is a person to do? We hide our true selves from the outside world. We fake it. We hide behind smiling, pretty faces that we put on to impress the public. However, in hiding our true selves, we fail to realize that we become imposters.
Pride has so impacted us that outward appearance is much more important than inward character. Image rules over substance.
Fear of failure is one of our greatest fears. It is a psychological death. Bernie Madoff, perpetrator of the largest financial fraud in U.S. history, in his first interview from prison said he was motivated to pull off his grand Ponzi scheme because he feared failure. As he put it, “I did not want to lose the honor and esteem of men.” David Sokol was considered by many to be the person who would one day replace Warren Buffett as the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway before he was forced to resign because of unethical conduct.
It seems that most of us are not driven to succeed, we are driven not to fail. We are not running towards something positive; rather we are sprinting away from failure.
Pride and arrogance manifest themselves most frequently in the workplace. Our work is clearly visible and easily measurable; for many of us, it is the part of life that lets us know if we are successful.
What many people do not recognize is how pride impairs our ability to learn, grow, and thrive in our careers, particularly if we are in a leadership role.
Every conference seems to have a Proud Peter. He’s the guy in your organization who is moderately talented and charming but whose years in the business have created an inflexibility when it comes to learning from others or implementing changes. His natural wit is able to point out the smallest difficulty with a new idea, and so he quickly convinces himself and sometimes others that the old way—his way—is probably best.
Several years ago, an article appeared in the Harvard Business Review on why leaders in various business organizations fail. The core data came from a study that revealed the following four primary factors that brought about the failures of those senior leaders:
It is the humble leader who has a learning predisposition, recognizing there is so much that he and those who lead the company do not know. No matter how successful they become, humble leaders remain students of their work, relentlessly asking questions and always seeking continuous improvement.
In American society, individual achievement is supremely important. In itself, this is neither good nor bad. It’s merely part of the script. The trouble is that it becomes difficult to assess achievement and monitor happiness without surrendering to the impulse to adopt comparison as a prime measure of individual worth. Some comparisons are harmless enough, and many are, in any case, unavoidable. We take standardized tests. We get accepted or rejected by various degree programs, we accept a job that someone else does not get, and we lose a promotion that goes instead to a colleague. But there is a darker side to comparison. It’s the dirty little secret of our society, and we all share in the effort to keep it under wraps. We all know the dark conversations in our hearts, even if only intermittently and selectively, and most of us choose to keep them to ourselves.
We will never know how many children have had their lives made miserable by being pushed to achievements which makes their parents look good. Children who are driven to psychological exhaustion for academic achievement often know that their labor is primarily to enhance the status of their parents.
Palo Alto is located in the San Francisco Bay area. Stanford University is located there, and the city is also headquarters to a number of high tech companies including Hewlett Packard, Loral, Tesla Motors, and Ford Research and Innovation Center. Not surprisingly, Palo Alto is one of the wealthiest cities in the country, and its residents are some of the most well-educated.
For this reason, it seems perplexing that in the two high-achieving high schools in Palo Alto, the ten-year suicide rate among their students is four to five times the national average.
She says it is not uncommon for children in affluent families to experience a high rate of anxiety and depression. These children feel a great deal of pressure to excel at multiple academic and extracurricular pursuits. They see themselves as catastrophically flawed if they don’t meet the highest standards of success.
A great shift has taken place in our country. If you go back 100 years, parents focused on their children’s character development. Today the emphasis is placed on their performance, and look at what it is doing to them.
Pride devastates clear thinking. As we have seen, arrogant people seek to be superior to others. Although they believe themselves to be great and powerful, in reality they are crippled with a sense of fear, inferiority, and insecurity. They are extremely needy. They need to feed their egos; they need compliments; they need to be stroked; they need recognition. Though they do not realize it, the proud are actually quite weak, which causes them to be internally filled with shame.
People would rather be envied for their material success than respected for their character. This is what pride has done to us and it also explains why humility is not of great value in our modern world.
Sociologist Donna Freitas discusses this in her wonderful book, The Happiness Effect; How Social Media Is Driving a Generation to Appear Perfect at Any Cost. She did most of her research through interviewing 200 college students at 13 universities.
Freitas sees that their problem is the same one that all people have who are full of pride and arrogance. They cannot be transparent and vulnerable with anyone since they cannot discuss their inadequacies, struggles, and fears. If they did, they would not be a person who is happy and who has their act together. People today are more concerned with appearing to be happy than actually being happy.
Conspicuous consumption is when you buy something, not primarily for its usefulness, but for the way it makes you look in the eyes of others.
It is important to recognize that pride emanates from a multitude of sources: wealth, achievement, power, beauty, and knowledge. However, there is a pride that Reinhold Niebuhr believed is the most dangerous—the pride of virtue, or what the Bible calls self-righteousness. In the four Gospels, you see Jesus’ most searing words aimed at the Pharisees and their self-righteousness. It is the one sin that quickly brings forth His anger.
This is at the heart of life’s greatest paradox. You would never expect the strongest, most influential, and most inspiring people to be humble. As author John Dickson has observed, you would never expect true greatness to go hand in hand with a virtue that, on its face, would appear to curb achievement and stifle your ability to influence. Yet, that is the great paradox. There is power in the humble life.
The Beatitudes we hear Jesus say, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Of course, meekness rhymes with weakness, so who in the world would possibly want to be meek? I have never heard a father say, “I want my son to grow up and be meek.” The word “meekness” surprisingly comes from the word praus, which is a powerful animal that knows how to restrain its power. The idea here is that meek and humble people are powerful people, though they do not flaunt their strength and power.
There is a great and awesome God who created the Heavens and the Earth and you are not Him. There is a God who knows all, and understands all, and is in control of all, and you are not Him.
We are not in control. We are weak creatures; our bodies are wasting away, which in itself should cause us to see our great need for God. Only when we understand our need for Him does true humility begin. As Andrew Murray puts it, “Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is the first duty of the creature and is the root of every good human quality.”
We think we can accomplish great things, achieve prosperity, and find a purpose that is big enough to discover meaning in life, and do all of this without God. The prideful heart of man causes him to believe, “I do not need God.”
I think it is significant that God has such high regard for the humble, and such great contempt against the proud. In the Old Testament, in Isaiah 2:12-17 we are told:
The pride of man will be humbled, and the loftiness of men will be abased, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.
In Proverbs 16:5, Everyone who is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord; assuredly, he will not go unpunished.
On the other hand, it is quite clear that God has special regard and honor for the humble. We are told: Oh, Lord, You have heard the desire of the humble. You will strengthen their heart. You will incline Your ear (Psalm 10:17). He leads the humble in justice. He teaches the humble His way (Psalm 25:9). When pride comes, then comes dishonor, but, with the humble, there is wisdom (Proverbs 11:2). A man’s pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor (Proverbs 29:23). Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and He will exalt you (James 4:10). Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time (1 Peter 5:6). And then most significantly, in both James 4:16 and 1 Peter 5:5, we are told that “God gives grace to the humble.” Under no other circumstances does He ever promise to give His grace—only to the humble. This is a very significant promise. Grace is a word that is often misunderstood and literally means receiving God’s favor.
It is like the saying, “He was born on third base but somehow thinks he hit a triple.” Pride looks at life and takes credit for all the good things. Pride says, “I accomplished it; I worked harder than everyone else; I deserve it, and therefore I should receive all the glory.”
Tim Keller says that pride claims to be the author of everything good we do and accomplish. Therefore we believe we deserve all the credit. He says it is a form of cosmic plagiarism, where you have been given something as a gift but then you take all the credit for it and say, “I did it; it is my work.” In the Old Testament, Moses said that arrogance is looking at your life, your abilities, and your achievements, and thinking in your heart that it is your strength, your power, and your ability that has led to all your success. Humility helps you to recognize that all you are and all you have is a gift from God and a result of other people contributing to your life.
Let’s take the example of a tailback who wins the Heisman Trophy. This Heisman winner gets his name in the paper and his face on ESPN. But where did he get the DNA that created the strong body? And where did he get the great coordination that helped him win the prize? How many of the one hundred trillion cells in his body did he create? We are told that for each of these cells there is a bank of instructions more detailed than the thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together. Does this tailback understand even one of these instructions? (For that matter, does even the smartest doctor or biologist in the world fully understand the marvel of a single human cell?) “But I worked so hard,” the tailback might say. “I went to the weight room. I practiced harder than anyone else on the team.” To him we could reply: “But who taught you to work that hard? Who built the weight room? Who bought the equipment? Who built the university, including the stadium you played in? Who cut the grass there and laid out the lines and boundaries? Did you hire or pay your coaches? Did you recruit your teammates? Did you open up those holes in the line that you ran through? If this tailback has humility, he will express nothing but overflowing gratitude when he wins the Heisman—to his parents, to his teachers, to his coaches, to all the players on his team, to everyone who helped him along the way. Most of all, time and time again, he will express gratitude to God.
Humility is a form of wisdom. It is thinking clearly. It is simply being realistic. It is knowing who really deserves the credit and the glory for what we do.
“We drink from wells we did not dig and we are warmed by fires we did not build” (Deuteronomy 6:11).
A man’s pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor. –Proverbs 29:23
A number of years ago, Jim Collins, who was a faculty member at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, wrote a best-selling book entitled, Built to Last. It was based on a management study of companies that he and his associates made back in the 1990s with the intent of analyzing and demonstrating how great companies sustain themselves over time.
What I find interesting is that Collins gave his research team explicit instructions to downplay the role of top executives. He did not believe that the business community needed another book on leadership. Although he had insisted they ignore the role of the company executives, the research team kept pushing back. They soon came to recognize something very unusual about the executives in these good-to-great companies. The debate between Collins and his team went back and forth until, as Collins put it, “the data won.” They recognized that all the executives from these good-to-great companies were cut from the same cloth. They all were what he called “Level 5 Leaders.” Collins wrote, “Level 5 Leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless.” These good-to-great leaders never desired to be celebrities or to be lifted up on a pedestal. Collins declared that they were “seemingly ordinary people quietly producing extraordinary results.” What Collins and his team of researchers clearly observed is that a Level 5 Leader builds enduring greatness through the paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
Tim Keller makes a similar observation when he says, “The humble are kind and gentle, but also brave and fearless. If you are to be humble, you cannot have one without the other.” You see this attitude in a number of the great leaders in the Bible. John the Baptist is a great example. When John’s disciples were complaining that all the people were leaving him to follow Jesus, John made it clear that Jesus must increase and that he must decrease. On the other hand, you see John courageously confront King Herod about how corrupt he was to take Herodias, his brother’s wife, to be his own unlawful wife. It landed him in jail and eventually cost him his life. The Apostle Paul considered himself to be the chief of all sinners and openly shared his struggles, yet boldly went into the streets of Athens and Rome to proclaim the gospel. One of my favorite examples of true humility in a man is found in Numbers 12:3 where we learn that Moses was the most humble man on the face of the earth. Yet we see Moses go before the most powerful man on earth at the time—Pharaoh, king of Egypt—who could have easily had him killed if he so desired. Moses boldly stood before Pharaoh and said to him in essence, “I want you to let my people go. I want you to give up your entire slave labor force, the key to your entire economic and military superiority. I want you to do it without payment. And I don’t want you to mess around; I want you to do it quickly.”
Lewis matured as a Christian and became more alert to the presence of pride in his own life. Twelve years before he died, he wrote in a letter: I am now in my fiftieth year. I feel my zeal for writing, and whatever talent I originally possessed, to be decreasing; nor (I believe) do I please my readers as I used to. Perhaps it will be the most wholesome thing for my soul that I lose both fame and skill lest I were to fall into that evil disease, vainglory. What is ironic is that Lewis produced some of his greatest books over those next twelve years.
ESPN and Sports Illustrated call Coach John Wooden the greatest coach of the 20th century. His stats bear that out. In 40 years of coaching, he compiled an 885-203 record—a winning percentage of .813. His historic tenure as coach of the UCLA Bruins, which spanned 27 years, included four 30-0 seasons, an 88-game winning streak, and ten national championships—seven of those in a row (1966-1973). And he is one of only two people enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. As I have researched the life of John Wooden, every source I read pointed to his humility as the key to his success. Wooden was wary of recognition and fame because he understood that pride was dangerous and could easily ruin a player or a team. Dr. Ronald Riggio, a psychologist who specializes in leadership, wrote an article in the publication Psychology Today about the leadership of John Wooden. He writes that the first lesson to be learned from the life of Coach Wooden is to be humble.
In his own words, Coach Wooden said, “Confidence must be monitored so that it does not spoil or rot and turn into arrogance. I have never gone into a game assuming victory. All opponents have been respected, none feared. I taught those under my supervision to do the same. This reflects confidence, not arrogance. Arrogance will bring you down by your own hands.”
Pat Williams believes that the outcome of John Wooden’s life can be boiled down to this simple equation: “Confidence plus humility is the simple formula to greatness.”
One of the greatest quotes of John Wooden is very simple but quite profound: “Talent is God-given; be humble. Fame is man-given; be grateful. Conceit is self-given; be careful.”
As a staff officer—never a coveted or glamorous role—Eisenhower learned to master procedure, process, teamwork, and organization. He learned the secrets of thriving within the organization. “When I go to a new station I look to see who is the strongest and ablest man on the post. I forget my own ideas and do everything in my power to promote what he says is right.”
“Always take your job seriously, never yourself.”
Eisenhower would later write in reference to Connor: A sense of humility is a quality I have observed in every leader whom I have deeply admired. My own conviction is that every leader should have enough humility to accept, publicly, the responsibility for the mistakes of the subordinates he has himself selected and, likewise, to give them credit, publicly, for their triumphs.
He was also prepared to take all the blame on D-Day if the invasion had failed. He had even prepared a memo to release if they had experienced failure. The memo that never had to be released said, Our landings … have failed … and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.
In the book, The 9 Virtues of Exceptional Leaders, author Rob Jenkins writes of Dr. King’s exceptional leadership skills. He refers to the famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” where King calls upon white Christian ministers to acknowledge the justice of his cause. This letter has come to be regarded as one of the most significant documents of the Civil Rights Movement. So many of the changes that were championed by Dr. King came to pass rather quickly after this letter was written.
If I have said anything in this letter that overstates the truth and indicates an unreasonable impatience, I beg you to forgive me. If I have said anything that understates the truth and indicates my having a patience that allows me to settle for anything less than brotherhood, I beg God to forgive me. I hope that circumstances will soon make it possible for me to meet each of you, not as an integrationist or a civil-rights leader but as a Christian brother.
This letter demonstrates how Dr. King was humble and meek, and yet quite forceful. Though he is challenging the white clergy on their moral responsibility, in no way does he act condescending toward them nor come across as if he is morally superior to them.
In his own words, King said, If you want to be important—wonderful. If you want to be recognized—wonderful. If you want to be great—wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.
The thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.
Perhaps one of the most popular people to hold the presidency of the United States was Ronald Reagan. Not only did he have a winsome personality, but he was incredibly humble.
His son Michael wrote these words in his book, Lessons My Father Taught Me: My father wasn’t hungry for praise and applause. He just wanted to achieve the goal. One reason my father was willing to let Mikhail Gorbachev take all the credit was that he knew Gorbachev needed to look like a hero and a leader to his own people, or he would be undermined in his own country. So Dad was willing to give Gorbachev the credit if it would enable Gorbachev to relax the restrictions on the people of East Germany. Throughout his eight years as president, my father kept a brass plaque on the Resolute desk in the Oval Office that read: “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” That was not a mere platitude. That was literally how he lived his life.
In President Reagan’s farewell address to the nation he said, I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: it was the content. I wasn’t a great communicator, but I communicated great things, and they didn’t spring full bloom from my brow, they came from the heart of a great nation—from our experience, our wisdom, and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries. My friends: We did it. We weren’t just marking time. We made a difference. We made the city stronger, we made the city freer, and we left her in good hands.
C.S. Lewis wrote a wonderful essay entitled, “The Necessity of Chivalry.” He points out how in medieval times, the ideal hero was both humble and kind, yet bold and strong. He points to Sir Thomas Mallory’s book of the legendary King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. In describing Lancelot, Sir Ector says, Thou were the meekest man that ever ate in the hall among ladies; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.
Lewis saw that the medieval ideal required this “double demand” from a knight. In the essay he says: The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maiden-like, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man.
Lewis says the chivalrous knight has a duality of character in that he is fierce to the nth degree but is meek and humble as well. He believed that the medieval ideal brought these two qualities together even though they “have no natural tendency to gravitate towards one another.”
Many people consider Katharine Graham to be one of the most influential women in the 20th century. Born Katharine Meyer in 1917, she was the daughter of Eugene Meyer who bought The Washington Post out of bankruptcy in 1933.
St. Paul tells us, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.”
Mrs. Graham’s parties and banquets were renowned for their stellar guest lists because she knew so many presidents, kings, and leaders from around the world. At this particular luncheon, Dr. Bethel was seated next to Mrs. Graham. Bethel asked her, Mrs. Graham, you have hosted all the greatest leaders from around the world. What is the single most important trait of all great leaders? Without hesitation, she said, “The absence of arrogance.”
She had stated it so simply, yet it was such a profound insight. As I watched Mrs. Graham conversing with others around the table, it struck me: This woman is the perfect illustration of the trait she named—“absence of arrogance.” Katharine Graham was one of the most powerful women in the world—yet it was her humility that defined her.
In the February 22, 2014 edition of The New York Times, there was a fascinating article by Thomas Friedman entitled, “How to Get a Job at Google.” It was written from an interview with Laszlo Bock, the senior vice president in charge of hiring at Google, one of the world’s most successful companies. In the hiring process Bock says, “GPA’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring and test scores are worthless; we found they don’t predict anything.” He then proceeds to share what they are looking for in the prospective new hires that come to interview with Google. One of the primary attributes they desire is humility. They are looking for courageous leaders who, at the appropriate time, will step up and lead but also, at appropriate times, be willing to relinquish power. In other words, they need to be humble enough to step back and embrace the better ideas of others. Bock also stressed the importance of having intellectual humility for if you do not have this, you will be unable to learn even from failure. Too many proud people believe they are a genius when something good happens; but when something bad happens, it is someone else’s fault.
Do you know how you can tell if someone is truly humble? I believe there’s one simple test: because they consistently observe and listen, the humble improve. They don’t assume, ‘I know the way.’ Holiday says that humble people are students for life and that they seek to learn from everyone and everything. It might be from people you beat or from those who have beaten you. Wherever you are in your life journey, there is the opportunity to learn. This is the perspective humility brings into your life.
If I were to boil down all the characteristics of greatness to a single word, it would be humility. –Charles R. Swindoll
As we have seen, to be truly humble you have to be kind and gentle but also brave and fearless. You cannot have one without the other. This polarity of characteristics in humility is most clearly seen in the life of Jesus. In Revelations 5:5-6, Jesus is referred to as both a lion and a lamb. In Matthew 11, He refers to Himself as gentle and meek. He is, after all, the God of the universe who has restrained His power to become one of us.
The following words are those of Napoleon at the end of his life, describing the differences between Jesus and himself: I die before my time and my body shall be given back to the earth and devoured by worms. What an abysmal gulf between my deep miseries and the eternal Kingdom of Christ. I marvel that whereas the ambitious dreams of myself and of Alexander and of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant—Jesus—should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries and control the destinies of men and nations. Here are three famous men—Alexander the Great, Caesar, and Napoleon—seeking to control the world through their own power. When we see their lives contrasted with one man, Jesus, and His humble life as a carpenter, we marvel at how truly extraordinary He must have been that the world was so powerfully changed through His life of humility.
James Stewart, a Scottish philosopher and minister had this to say about the humility of Christ, When I speak of the mystery of personality in Christ, I am thinking of the startling coalescence of contrariety that you find in Jesus. He was the meekest and lowliest of all the sons of men, yet He said that he would come on the clouds of heaven in the glory of God. He was so austere that evil spirits and demons cried out in terror at His coming, yet He was so genial, winsome, and approachable that children loved to play with Him, and the little ones nestled in His arms. No one was ever half so kind or compassionate towards sinners, yet no one ever spoke such red hot scorching words about sin. He would not break the bruised reed and His whole life was love, yet on one occasion He demanded of the Pharisees how they expected to escape the damnation of hell. He was a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions yet for sheer stark naked realism. He has all of our self-styled realists beaten. He was a servant of all, washing the disciples’ feet, yet masterfully He strode into the Temple, and the hucksters and traders fell over one another in their mad rush to get away from the fire they saw blazing in His eyes. There is nothing in history to compare with the life of Christ.
Author Henry G. Bosch has made this observation: Socrates taught for forty years, Plato for fifty, Aristotle for forty, and Jesus for only three. Yet the influence of Christ’s three-year ministry infinitely transcends the impact left by the combined 130 years of teaching from these men who are among the greatest philosophers of all antiquity. Jesus painted no pictures, yet some of the finest paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci received their inspiration from him. Jesus wrote no poetry, but Dante, Milton, and scores of the world’s greatest poets were inspired by him. Jesus composed no music, still Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Bach, and Mendelssohn reached their highest perfection of melody in the hymns, symphonies, and oratories they composed in his praise. Every sphere of human greatness has been enriched by this humble carpenter of Nazareth.
God could have given Jesus every advantage you could want in life, but instead He was born and lived in the most desolate part of the Roman Empire called Palestine. He lived a very quiet life with His parents for thirty years as a carpenter. He left almost no traces of Himself on earth, and He never owned any belongings or possessions that could be enshrined in a museum. He never wrote anything. He allowed Himself to be taken into custody. He was mocked, beaten, spat upon, and stripped naked in front of a massive crowd. He was taken to the cross and crucified between two criminals for all the world to see.
“And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:8).
Although they spent over thirty-five years on this massive work entitled, The Story of Civilization, the Durants were not friends of the Christian faith. In this series, one of the volumes covers the history of the Roman Empire; from it we learn that after Jesus’ death, the Christian religion was considered to be an enemy of Rome, and this hostility lasted for over 280 years. In 312 A.D., the edict of Milan went into law legalizing Christianity, specifically Christian worship. In 381 A.D., under Constantine, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. Durant’s observation of what happened in Rome during this period of time is quite astonishing. There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned and oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena and Christ had won.
Jesus chose poverty and disgrace. He spent his infancy as a refugee. He lived in a minority race under a harsh regime and died as a prisoner. From the very beginning, Jesus took the side of the underdog, the poor, the oppressed, the sick, and the marginalized.
Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call “humble” nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud.
John Dickson says that humble people don’t dazzle you with their humility. Even though it is such a powerful force in our lives, it is rather a low-key virtue. I think you may not initially spot a humble person because they are not at all concerned about appearing humble in the eyes of others.
We must therefore realize that humility is a choice that we must first make, and then pursue. So what are we to do? How does true humility become a reality in our lives? Clearly you cannot flip a switch and become humble or generate humility as an act of your will. It has to be cultivated daily.
If My people, who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sins and will heal their land (2 Chronicles 7:14). Moses and Aaron went before the Pharaoh and said, “Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me?’” (Exodus 10:3). Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Mathew 18:4). Three times it is recorded in the Gospels: “Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted” (Mathew 23:12; Luke 14:11; Luke 18:14). Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord, and He will exalt you (James 4:10). Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you at the proper time (1 Peter 5:6).
When God speaks of us humbling ourselves, He is placing this responsibility on us. He says, “We can and we must humble ourselves by a decision of our wills.
The Bible seems to indicate there are a number of ways a person humbles himself before God. In the balance of this chapter, I am going to lay out what I believe is the most important way in which we humble ourselves. However, please know, this is my opinion,
He tells them if they do not remember Him and thank and praise Him, “You will say in your heart, my power and the strength of my hands have made me this wealth.”
God provides a key perspective on the humble life in verse 18 when He says, “But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you the power to make wealth …” Humility begins with understanding who deserves the credit for all that we are and all that we have.
At the very end of his life, King David gathered the Jewish assembly together. It was at a time when the nation of Israel was at its very strongest economically, militarily, and spiritually. It would be natural for him to gloat and take at least some of the credit. Instead, you see this prayer of acknowledgment, which are some of the last recorded words of David: So, David blessed the Lord in the sight of all the assembly; and David said, “Blessed art Thou, O Lord God of Israel our Father, forever and ever. Thine, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth; Thine is the dominion, O Lord, and Thou dost exalt Thyself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from Thee and Thou dost rule over all, and in Thy hand is power and might; and it lies in Thy hand to make great, and to strengthen everyone. Now therefore, our God, we thank Thee, and praise Thy glorious name” (1 Chronicles 29:10).
Pride causes us to forget God while thanksgiving causes us to remember Him. Being thankful is a critical issue in our lives because the Bible is replete with the command to “Remember the Lord your God.”
Author and theologian Warren Wiersbe says, “An ungrateful heart is fertile soil for all types of evil.” I have done a study of the Bible on ingratitude and those who were not thankful and have concluded that ungratefulness is linked to godlessness and evil. The Apostle Paul spells this out clearly in Romans 1:21 when he speaks of people who once knew God but have forgotten Him: “For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.”
Every morning I spend the first ten to fifteen minutes of the day giving thanks to God. I start by acknowledging all that I am and all that I have is a gift from Him and that I am grateful.
Consider the research of Dr. Hans Selye, an Austrian-Canadian endocrinologist who died in 1982. Selye was among the first scientists to discover the impact that emotions play on a person’s health. Over his life he wrote thirty books on the subject of stress and human emotion. At the end of his life, he summarized his research and concluded that a heart of gratitude is the single most nourishing response that leads to good health. Selye believed that thanksgiving and gratitude are therapy for the soul, and that a healthy soul is beneficial to physical health.
Gratitude is the foundation of satisfying relationships. There is nothing more deadly than when people in a love relationship feel taken for granted.
The self-righteous are convinced their good moral behavior puts them in good standing with God. They come to believe that only good people get into God’s kingdom; the bad people, thankfully, are kept out. But this is clearly not the teaching of Christianity. In reality, it is the humble who are let in, and it is the proud and self-righteous who are turned away.
Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: “God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get.” But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, the sinner!” I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 18:9-14).
The parable’s meaning is clear—to confess our sins before God is a way we humble ourselves. This is why God tells us in Isaiah 66:2 that the person to whom He looks and has high regard for is the one who is humble, and contrite of spirit, and reveres His Word. There seems to be a clear link between humility and contrition.
When a person becomes a Christian, they are adopted into God’s family, and He becomes their heavenly Father and is no longer their judge. As a child of God, they now have a new relationship with Him. So when Christians sin, it affects our relationship with our heavenly Father. Therefore we confess our sins to Him for the good of the relationship. Sin causes separation between us and God, and it keeps us from being close to Him. His forgiveness brings us together and re-connects us. This is what is called “fatherly forgiveness.” We must confess our sin daily in order to have a close, growing relationship with our heavenly Father.
We feel compelled not to show any weakness because as leaders we are not supposed to struggle; we are supposed to be competent and always have our act together.
Theologian Ole Hallesby said, “The word ‘helplessness’ is the single best word to describe the heart attitude we bring before God.” This principle is very difficult for modern people who have been taught all their lives to be self-reliant and self-sufficient. If we are not careful, we can seal off the heart attitude that is most desirable to God. Philip Yancey says that the heart of prayer is a declaration of our dependence upon God. John Calvin believed a major component of the humble life was seeing our weaknesses and inadequacy, which then generates a strong sense of our need to depend on God. He believed we needed to be ruthlessly honest about our flaws, our weaknesses, and our struggles before God, recognizing our hope for inner strength and power comes from God alone.
In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul speaks of a thorn in his flesh that was given to him. We do not know what this thorn actually was, but it was quite troubling to him. He tells us the purpose of this thorn was to keep him from exalting himself. Like all of us, Paul clearly struggled with pride. He then goes on to say, “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:8-10).
When we perform a good deed or some worthy achievement we want the world to know about it. We seek to advertise it and receive all the credit for it. On the other hand, when our lives are not going well and we are floundering, we carefully hide our problems or look for ways to deny them if we can. Randolph says that people, therefore, spend their lives pretending, always insecure and afraid of being found out. Randolph tells Dr. Hudson that to remedy this situation and find power in his life, the simple secret is to reverse the strategy. In other words, he needed to keep his great deeds and accomplishments a secret and find people with whom he was willing to be vulnerable and share with them his struggles, fears, and secrets.
I regularly pray and ask God to show me the logs in my life, particularly the pride in my heart. However, let me warn you that God is faithful, and He will begin to show you your pride, and sometimes it can be really ugly when you see your heart. However, it will strip you of your self-righteousness and humble you when you clearly see the depravity of your own heart. I would encourage you to pray this daily as you seek to cultivate a humble heart.
One of the great miracles in the Bible is in the book of John, when Jesus raises His friend Lazarus who had been dead for four days. If you read John chapters 11 and 12, you will recognize what an eruption it caused among the Jews and religious leaders. In John 12:42, it says even some of the Jewish leaders believed but did not profess their belief openly for fear of being put out of the synagogue. However, in verse 43 you see the real reason. The text says “… for they loved the approval of man more than they loved the approval of God.” What we do not realize is how our pride causes us to arrange our lives to meet the expectations and approval of others.
When it gets right down to it, whose opinion of our lives counts the most? When you get to the end of your life, whose opinion will matter most? The answer to this question will ultimately determine whether pride or humility will rule in your heart.
The “looking glass self” is a human development theory that is timeless in its application to our lives. In its simplest form, the theory states: A person gets his identity in life based on how the most important person in his life sees him. For a young child, of course, it is the parent. We all know how important it is for parents to encourage and build up their children because we have such an impact on their sense of worth as they develop. However, as the child grows and becomes a teenager, the parents inevitably discover they are no longer their child’s number one audience. Most parents, for better or for worse, have been almost completely replaced by their child’s peer group. Most teenagers value their peers’ opinions more than anything else, and most parents realize that peer pressure is a very powerful force in the lives of their teenage children. For an adult, particularly an adult out in the workplace, the opinion valued the most will typically come from a colleague or peer. We greatly value what other men and women in the workplace and in the community think of us. They are our audience, and we perform for them. We yearn to hear their praise. And, sadly, whether as a teenager or as an adult, we often unconsciously allow our audience to make the final verdict on the value of our lives.
No matter how much applause we received yesterday, we can’t be certain we will receive it again tomorrow.
What do you think would happen to people if Jesus Christ became the most important person in their lives? What if Christ was the audience they sought to please most? How would it change them?
“For the Lord takes pleasure in His people; He adorns the humble with salvation.” –Psalm 149:4
In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.
“Pride is a spiritual cancer; it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment.”