Humility isn’t about doing crazy acts of self-deprecation, self-abuse, having low self-esteem, or believing you are fundamentally bad/terrible/worthless. We often see this hyperbole in movies and TV that features an often unstable person consumed by ‘religion’. Sometimes read that kind of language from the saints, but they did not believe their soul was actually worthless or they were valueless and unloved. Quite the contrary – they took refuge in knowing that God loved them infinitely. Instead, they meant that when we see ourselves clearly, we recognize just how broken we are. It’s like an athlete that realizes just how often they don’t train with their full effort, or a person on a diet that cheats all too often, or a spouse that realizes they’ve neglected their partner. Except for them and us, it’s the painful realization we so often do not love as we ought. Because of that lack of love, we are robbed of happiness and feel the pain they caused the God they loved so ardently. Some go further and recognized that besides the wrongs we know about, even our best efforts are often tainted with laziness/vanity of how we want others to see us/errors in judgment. In that way, they really just state the basic brokenness that we so often do things we know we shouldn’t. It’s original sin – the state of this broken world that each of us is born into. But none of this is humility.
Humility is about stopping thinking it’s all about us. It’s really about truly being free. In our modern world, we believe freedom is the ability to do whatever thing we want. This idea isn’t true freedom. Instead, when we become free of thinking everything is related/about us and our desires, we become free to have other motives for our actions. This is why many saints lived very ascetic lives. These practices helped them strip away the desires for comfort and ease that make us weak to our desires. This is absolutely no different that Olympic athletes that deny themselves all kinds of things and train 7 days a week/8+ hours a day for years. Many ambitious professionals forgo bar nights, sleeping in, friendships, fun activities, travel, marriage, or many other pleasurable things to reach their professional goals. But just like athletes, we need to look at our ascetic practices carefully. It’s easy to put on great shackles of self-denial – but if they are not producing good fruits – then they are worthless or perhaps even just injure us. As the exercises of a marathoner are tracked to see if they produce better times, our ascetic practices should be tracked/reflected on to see if they are producing greater compassion, forgiveness, love, and the ability to deny our unhelpful desires.
So humility is really a path to freedom. As we grow in the ability to look beyond our desires, it means we can abandon ourselves more and more to do the things that are good. For Christians, it allows us to quietly reflect on and do the will of God – putting ourselves at the service of him and others. Our faith teaches us that by doing this, we learn what true love is. This is what is meant when one says we live the cross. By the painful nails of turning away from our desires, our selfishness and lack of humility are stripped away until we become free of ourselves. We are able to embrace childlike, self-giving love that empties itself for others and make us Christ for the world. Or as St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) notes when reflecting about the centurion that regarded himself as unworthy to receive the Lord into his house: “Humility was the door through which the Lord entered to take full possession of one whom he already possessed.”