It won't win you anything, but be humble anyway

Philippians 2:1-13

One of my favorite lines in the Philippians song, that we read today in Philippians 2, is verse 3, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” I also believe, after some experience in the world, that certain people will think that is an awfully wise sentiment, and others will think it utter foolishness, and I’m not sure we can do much to make people come across that divide.

I’m optimistic about many things, but I’m pretty sure some people will just always be selfish and others will always be humble. Is it really possible to make a selfish person anything but selfish? People are finicky by nature. What some people see as strength others see as weakness. So, what do we do when our worldview is opposed to others? Are we supposed to show the world that humility is preferable to a life of showboating, arrogance, and vanity? If so, how? It’s awfully hypocritical to be walking around bragging about how humble we are.

The honest answer is we can’t change people, and, more than that, there is no objective reason why humility is best. Far less can we say that we will receive any reward for viewing others in the most favorable light even when they don't deserve it. It's just foolishness. But just because it is foolish to a world that values seeking after power doesn’t mean we are wrong. It might be a lonely road to walk, this Christian humility, but know that you need not prove a thing to anybody. 

 All we know, really, is that we are to strive to have the same mind as Christ. When we don’t know how to be, we should strive for the things Jesus strove for—humility, self-sacrifice, obedience to something bigger than himself. We don’t do it because we are going to be rewarded; rather, we do it because there is something deeply true about these things, and if others don’t see it what is that to us?

Humility is tough, though. There is no humble award; often your humility will go unnoticed. Humble people get taken advantage of; they get passed over; they tend to be underappreciated. Nothing about humility screams “Your best life now!”

That’s alright, be humble anyway. That’s the shocking thing really—that it doesn't matter that others will take advantage of us, or that we will never amount to that much in their eyes. The criteria by which we judge ourselves is simply not the same as all that. We are judged by the standard of Christ himself. Be humble, therefore, because Christ was humble. Be obedient, therefore, because Christ was obedient. It's that simple—and it's that hard.

The thing about being like Jesus is that we won’t nail it; at best we’ll be shallow imitations, but hey, that’s better than nothing. When we step back, there is something about humility that is powerful, when you refrain from showing the world something of yourself, when you hold back, as if to say, “It’s not really about me.” There is something about that that is good, because the world has plenty of people vowing for the title of being the greatest at things; fewer people just let their work speak for themselves.

I’m going to close with an anecdote I read recently. It was from a New York Times piece about Gerald Murnane, an Australian author who Is under consideration for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Murnane’s writing, they say, is on par with many of the all-time greats in the English language, but almost nobody knows about him. Until recently, you couldn’t buy a book of his in America. Back home in Australia he tends the bar at a golf course. I’m not sure if that’s humility or just eccentricity, but I couldn’t help thinking about what Jesus would have us do if we really were the best at something: Flaunt it? Let everybody know? Ignore it? Hide it?

I don’t know, but part of me resonates with characters like Murnane, because he so obviously could be somewhere different doing something different with a lot more money in the bank, but he elected, for whatever reason, not to go down that path. Humility is like that. And I like to assume that people like that are being humble for all the right reasons, or at least that enough people understand that being a braggart is not a way to live.

We’re called to be humble—even to regard others as better than ourselves. I’m not sure we can change others; just know that if you are a person who lives this way you’re not alone, you have Jesus on your side, and you might not be as far away from the good life as some people will try to make you believe you are.