… we should be too.

One of the most common wrestling matches that takes place in my mind is the one between vanity and humility. I am tempted at this very moment to write, “I really have nothing to offer on this subject” and follow that with a declarative statement on the same same subject. The reason for the first statement would be to project humility while the second would be at its essence an attempt to get a reader to agree with me and think I’m an authority on the subject.

What is a person to do who desires to walk in humility while at the same time exercise the gifts given to him by God? When we do something really well we get praise… are we not supposed to enjoy that? If we enjoy that praise are we guilty of vanity? And if we give it an “awe shucks” are we guilty of false humility? I see both vanity and false humility as the outworking of the same sin… Pride.

CS Lewis helped shine some light on this for me. The following is from The Weight of Glory:

Apparently what I had mistaken for humility had, all these years, prevented me from understanding what is in fact the humblest, the most childlike, the most creaturely of pleasures—nay, the specific pleasure of the inferior: the pleasure of a beast before men, a child before its father, a pupil before his teacher, a creature before its Creator. I am not forgetting how horribly this most innocent desire is parodied in our human ambitions, or how very quickly, in my own experience, the lawful pleasure of praise from those whom it was my duty to please turns into the deadly poison of self-admiration. But I thought I could detect a moment—a very, very short moment—before this happened, during which the satisfaction of having pleased those whom I rightly loved and rightly feared was pure. And that is enough to raise our thoughts to what may happen when the redeemed soul, beyond all hope and nearly beyond belief, learns at last that she has pleased Him whom she was created to please. There will be no room for vanity then. She will be free from the miserable illusion that it is her doing. With no taint of what we should now call self-approval she will most innocently rejoice in the thing that God has made her to be, and the moment which heals her old inferiority complex for ever will also drown her pride… Perfect humility dispenses with modesty. If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself…”

God has given each of his children a gift. Not only has He given the gift but He is the gift. The same power that created the universe exists also in a form that chooses to reside in us. If God is satisfied by executing His power through the holder of the gift then vanity has no place. Likewise, if God is satisfied by executing His power through the holder of the gift false humility has no place.

We don’t have to be quiet about what God is doing in and through us because if it is Him the light that emanates from us will be too bright to contain anyway (Matthew 5:14-16). To try and hide that light is sin. On the other hand, if we become proud about something clever we did via our own ingenuity or skill then even if we stay quiet about it God’s satisfaction will be lacking (Romans 14:23).

It still amazes me that God would choose to do anything for me, much less through me. In my gut I know I don’t deserve either gift. But, what I’m starting to see is that if I linger too long in the “I don’t deserve” state of mind, I run the risk of blaspheming the giver of the gift. Ultimately, He is not seeking to satisfy me with the use of the gift He is seeking His own satisfaction (Ephesians 2: 1-10). So the words of Lewis ring true for the holder of the gift, “If God is satisfied with the work, the work may be satisfied with itself.”