Easter seems to be a time when the confusion, incoherence, and errors of mainstream Christianity become most evident; as mainstream Christianity finds ever more way of being wrong, of misdirecting attention, and sowing confusion!
Perhaps one root of this is the un-Christ-like, fake-virtue of humility.
This leads to the preaching of two kinds of error:
1. Unselfish ego-annihilating obedience to God's will
2. Unselfish altruism
Mainstream Christians are always saying things on the lines that all good which they enact is "not from me, but from God-in-me.". They claim that the highest Christian aim is for us to become nothing-but a channel for God to work-through. As a commenter put it: "I did nothing on my own God did everything".
Christians repeat this without considering its implication that such an attitude depicts humans as unthinking and utterly-obedient slaves of deity; and what is worse, slaves to the kind of God who wants humans to desire nothing higher than to cease being themselves - and instead become mere tools.
Such an attitude ultimately renders the creation of free and creative Men utterly futile - a divine mistake.
Mainstream Christians are always preaching that we cease to be selfish and instead live to serve; that we ought to set aside considerations of self-interest, and instead help other people.
But this is merely utilitarian atheistic materialism under a Christian disguise!
Of course, it can easily be seen what the preachers are getting-at: they are trying to combat sins such Pride and Lust.
But the problem is that humility Just Isn't a virtue; and indeed is something close to the worst possible attitude to inculcate in a pervasively evil world of totalitarian domination of all social institutions - including the mainstream religions and churches.
The opposite of Pride is not anti-pride; the opposite of selfishness is not doing what other people want (or "need").
The opposite of psychopathic gratification is not to become a non-person, one-with-God: a hollowed husk in human shape, an instrument rather than a divine Son of God, and a participant in divine creation.
To recommend humility and living for the "benefit" of other people; is therefore to preach something other-than what Jesus did and taught - it is to preach another religion.
There are Religions that are rooted in the oneness of God and the delusional unreality of The Self. There is a religion based on negation of the self, and absolute submission to God will.
But these are not Christianity.
From a Christian point-of-view; to recommend humility and altruism is, in the context of The West in 2026 - pretty much to guarantee a chosen damnation via assimilation to evil societal norms.
Instead; the proper virtues by which to resist sins such as pride, selfish-short-termism and so forth; are the Christian virtues:
Love of Jesus in thanks for his divine creation of Heaven, and his continuing guidance and comfort; Faith in his offer of the possibility of resurrected eternal life beyond death; and confident Hope that this shall be our personal "destination".
9 comments:
If you define humility as not believing in yourself then Jesus was the least humble person who ever lived. Similarly, if you define pride as believing in yourself then he was the proudest person. But I think there is good pride and bad pride and also good humility and bad humility. Bad humility is the "I'm nobody and nothing" type of attitude which is always performative anyway. Good humility is simply lack of arrogance and an understanding that God is in all people not just me. We know what bad pride is but good pride is necessary if we are to accept that we really are sons of God and actually live as though we are.
Look at the sun. He's full of pride and if he weren't he would go dark.
@William - Yes indeed. There is certainly a pleasing and decent kind of humility in some Men; although, as you say, Jesus was hardly an exemplar of that particular trait.
But humility is taught and recommended by self-styled Christians as if it were a primary virtue, even The primary virtue of Christianity...
Whereas; although humility (or something much like it) is indeed a central feature of some *other* religions, this is Not the case for Christianity.
It is interesting to speculate how this error has arisen and been sustained for so long and so pervasively; given the counter-example of Jesus himself?
My best guess is the failure of Christianity to understand the unique, necessary, and unprecedented nature of Jesus's transformative creative achievement...
And therefore the Very common tendency to revert into thinking of Christianity as primarily a monotheism - thus conflated with other monotheisms; or even as a "oneness" pantheism.
Humility as accurate self-assessment seems essential to me and appropriate to call “humility” because one thing such an examination will always reveal is that you have evil tendencies you won’t be able to get rid of. My young children are sometimes hilariously prideful. “I don’t need to practice, I already know it, I only make like four or five mistakes when I do it. No, I don’t need to make fewer mistakes because everyone else makes more than me, so I’m already the best.” It’s hard to teach genuine desire for excellence, which is the aim of all virtue.
Humility also as “willingness to do what needs to be done if you’re the only one who can do it.” So for instance a king should get his hands dirty helping a peasant pull a mule out of a ditch if he comes across him alone, but there’s no violation of humility if he has his servant with him and orders the servant to help instead. Jesus ordered others to do the physical work of some of his miracles but the cross he had to do alone. This type of humility is necessary to support love, the highest virtue.
Humility before others can easily deteriorate into self-deprecation. It is neutral at best, and can become unctuous and evil in its worse forms. Uriah Heep comes to mind.
Humility before God is something else. It is referred to in the Gospels, many times, in phrases such as "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls" and "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." (both from Matthew). Jesus is talking about self-impediments towards acceptance of his gift; and humility-in-that-sense is a very important trait that should be sought after by all.
One way to distinguish the two is to point out that if I end this comment with "I thank you, God, for helping me see things in the right way", I'll be exercising the first, performative kind of humility; and if I end it with "I know what I'm talking about, having experienced it many times, and being the kind of person who devoted years and decades meditating about the subject", I will be exhibiting pride (whether correctly or not is besides the point), hence will again be missing the mark alluded to by Jesus in those sayings. The first way is not wrong, itself, but it is orthogonal to the right way, whereas the second way is antagonistic to it.
The "right way to end the comment" cannot be said. But it can be felt and lived.
@Mia and Mariner - Worthwhile additional nuance, thanks.
You both emphasize that it is not enough, and indeed wide-open to misinterpretation, to recommend humility as a generic antidote to pride. What I remain very uncertain about is whether it is impossible to become *genuinely* more humble by purposive effort. Real humility seems to be much more of a character trait than a virtue.
Humility is a virtue inasmuch as it means that you recognize that there is a God, and that He can (and does) help you at all times, and that in order to reach (anywhere like) your full Glory, it is necessary to nourish, maintain and strengthen a loving and trusting relationship with Him. And pride, as a sin, is simply the opposite of that, with all that entails.
Any other meaning of humility is not a virtue (neither necessarily a vice, as you said, it can sometimes be merely a character trait).
To me, it's quite simple really. The above is not a perfect encapsulation and could be refined, but it's close enough, in my opinion.
The fact that this whole matter of Humility vs Pride has been subject of so much debate, confusion and abuse is, well, strange and telling. Its probably a Symptom of the fact that there is not much desire to think a bit about the matter - just obey.
I have been reading the Chronicles of Narnia to my daughter, and got into the Problem of Susan again when deciding whether to read the Last Battle to her, or to end the series with The Silver Chair. My problems with The Last Battle are with its literary merit, not with its theology. I think it would have been better written as an essay, not a story.
What is relevant to this discussion is that Aslan manages to fix the selfishness and pride of both Edmund and Eustace, though with a good deal of pain and difficulty. He can do nothing at all about Susan's "gentleness".
Much of the current preaching/teaching in Christianity makes God into a Divine Narcissistic Parent.
Interestingly people who exhibit these "divine" characteristics are at the lauded and celebrated and the top of US society .
Perhaps that was the reason the wall street tycoons perverted (maybe inverted) Christianity into that particular ideology back in the 30s?
Erika
Traditionally, the church urged against false humility and explicitly told people not to attempt to emulate saints like Theresa and Aquinas who were extremely humble. They wouldn’t have called it a personality trait maybe but it was seen as a rare and special gift from God and not a virtue that one cultivates, at least not at such extremes. I think “accurate self-assessment” can obviously be learned and adopted as a “you are what you repeatedly do” type virtue.
I hesitate to abandon the term humility and have taught it to my children, partly because *every* Christian and virtue-related word has been twisted and inverted at this point. I just covered Temperance in our virtues study and had to note that if she hears other people say Temperance they may mean “abstinence from alcohol.” And ofc if she hears “abstinence” they probably mean abstaining from sex before marriage. Justice, charity, love come to mind as especially perverted. We can’t replace every word in the canon, so being deliberate and conscious about our terminology seems like the best path.
I would also add that in many places where people talk about “humility” I find the virtue of “teachability” more relevant, so in practice I do find I refer to humility infrequently.
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