{"id":5573,"date":"2012-01-16T21:12:15","date_gmt":"2012-01-17T04:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/?p=5573"},"modified":"2016-02-19T16:16:07","modified_gmt":"2016-02-19T16:16:07","slug":"a-humbling-homily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/soul-significance\/a-humbling-homily\/","title":{"rendered":"A Humbling Homily"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Humility is one of those things in life I have always struggled with.\u00a0 It is considered a pillar of Christianity, and an attribute we should demonstrate regularly as Jesus\u2019 coheirs, who supposedly bear his image to the world.\u00a0 Any sincere Christian who has read the gospels can see that, in light of the self-righteous Pharisees, being prideful is downright disastrous.\u00a0 Yet all my efforts have failed miserably.\u00a0 After countless sermons, books, admonitions, conversations, and teachings on humility (some of which were my own), I find myself entrenched in a pit of self-righteousness.\u00a0 It\u2019s not that I haven\u2019t tried; I\u2019ve welcomed brokenness with open arms at times.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not that I haven\u2019t had periods where I felt progress was being made.\u00a0 Yet I always find, sooner or later, Holy Spirit unmasking my humility as false and revealing that I hadn\u2019t left my self-righteousness at all.\u00a0 In spite of some massive effort to die to self, my pride always seems to elude the hammer, allowing the rest of me to absorb the masochistic blow.<\/p>\n

It has gotten to the point where I am wondering whether I have any understanding of what humility really is.\u00a0 I have heard numerous definitions over the years, some more helpful than others.\u00a0 But in the end I believe that either 1) my conception of humility is completely wrong, or 2) that I am the most resiliently prideful man ever to walk the face of the earth.\u00a0 I could tell you that number 2 is more probable, and it probably is, because (true to form) I don\u2019t for a second believe it.\u00a0 If I spent the rest of this article trying to convince myself of its truth, I would only succeed in breeding much false humility which would have to be exposed later for my own sake.\u00a0 And yet these days, while I can see the truth in the second option, I am also stirred greatly by the first.\u00a0 I wonder if both aren\u2019t true.\u00a0 What\u2019s more, I wonder if they aren\u2019t connected.\"\"<\/p>\n

Over the past few years I have increasingly found myself on a journey discovering what the Kingdom is.\u00a0 Part of that process has involved a rigorous contemplation on the origin of brokenness, sin.\u00a0 It sounds very simple, and yet I understood so little.\u00a0 Previously I considered the common assertion that sin is the evil things we think and do, as axiomatic.\u00a0 Yet I find myself reexamining that notion, and concluding that it is far from unquestionable.\u00a0 In fact, I find myself wondering if it is actually antithetical to living in the grace of Christ.<\/p>\n

My contemplations have pointed me toward another definition of sin.\u00a0 I am beginning to understand the knowledge of evil and<\/em> good as the source of brokenness.\u00a0 After all, it was the fruit of that second tree in the garden that fractured relationship between God and man.\u00a0 The result of its fruit was exactly that: knowledge of good and evil.\u00a0 This flies in the face of conventional piety.\u00a0 But it makes sense, for in judging what is good and evil for myself, I have taken God\u2019s place, effectively removing Him from the picture; thus, the fractured relationship.\u00a0 Not to mention, that in removing God, I remove the only true source of wisdom.<\/p>\n

This is where that elusive prey humility comes in.\u00a0 I have always defined humility in terms of my judgement of good and evil.\u00a0 I judge pride to be evil and humility to be good; therefore, humility is simply the opposite or even absence of pride.\u00a0 And this is where it all breaks down, for in standing in judgment over myself of what is prideful and what is humble, I am acting in pride.\u00a0 In fact, whenever I eat of that second tree and take the place of judge, I am living out of pride.\u00a0 For what else could it be, when I presume to take God\u2019s place as judge?\u00a0 Thus, because my position of judge is inherently prideful, whatever I judge humility to be, always ends up being false<\/em> humility.\u00a0 In other words, it is impossible for me to live in true humility while being the judge of good and evil.\u00a0 I have found this new thought to be so groundbreaking that it is redefining my understanding of humility.\u00a0 I no longer think humility is the absence of arrogance, instead I see it as the absence of being the judge.<\/p>\n

You see I realized that whatever standards I set as humble, the moment I begin to believe I am fulfilling them, pride grows up around my supposed success.\u00a0 I cannot fulfill my judgment of humility without revealing its falsity.\u00a0 I guess that is where the whole \u201cbeing separated from wisdom\u201d thing comes in, for apart from Him, I cannot accurately judge what humility is.\u00a0 This is why I could never attain my goal.\u00a0 It is why time after time I was deluded into feeling progress was being made, only to discover I hadn\u2019t left my pit of self-righteousness.\u00a0 It is why, though I spoke of abundant life in Jesus, I was always haunted with the notion that there must be more.<\/p>\n

Now, there is a fear that creeps in when considering this new revelation.\u00a0 If I stop judging good and evil, will I end up living in evil unintentionally?\u00a0 The assumption behind this fear presupposes several key things: 1) that God is very small and unable to lead us into truth; 2) that your judging of good and evil is somehow less evil than whatever unknown evil pitfall you may wind up in; 3) it neglects the reality that giving up our position of judge is a massive surrendering of the deepest parts of our soul, into Holy Spirit\u2019s loving hands.\u00a0 I have never heard anyone describe that process as a slippery slope into evil.\u00a0 Besides, it is not as though we won\u2019t r\"\"ecognize something that violates love, because we are living intimate relationship with God who is love.\u00a0 Stepping down from the place of judge does not mean that we can\u2019t identify loving and unloving things; it means that we no longer get to judge ourselves or each other.\u00a0 Ultimately, that is what I was doing in my previous quest of humility.\u00a0 I was judging myself and others based upon my\u00a0 limited understanding of humility, and that is precisely what always negated my efforts.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, men have before, and will again, use this kind of thinking as an excuse to sate their evil desires; but that is all it is: an excuse.\u00a0 It is not a true surrendering of one\u2019s heart, for when one is truly in the process of surrender, they begin to live in His grace, and manifest that unfathomable love He demonstrated on the cross.\u00a0 And that is true humility.<\/p>\n

__________________________________<\/p>\n

Written by M.C. Lang<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Humility is one of those things in life I have always struggled with.\u00a0 It is considered a pillar of Christianity, and an attribute we should demonstrate regularly as Jesus\u2019 coheirs, who supposedly bear his image to the world.\u00a0 Any sincere Christian who has read the gospels can see that, in light of the self-righteous Pharisees,…","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[77,202,221,273,275,315,363,473,553],"class_list":["post-5573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-soul-significance","tag-brokenness","tag-fruit","tag-grace","tag-humble","tag-humility","tag-knowledge-of-good-and-evil","tag-maturity","tag-sin","tag-wholeness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iamsignificant.ca\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}