By: Katherine Ma | Outreach Worker in Willowtree
The start of the school year was an uncertain one. Willowtree hit some speed bumps in getting space secured for programs, and it was unclear when it would happen. It’s tempting for me in these times to wonder why God would allow things to be ‘in the way’ of the work that I think is good for the Kingdom - does God not want us to have programs? And in other times when circumstances continue to press against me, I start taking it personally. I ask God what He wants from me. Sometimes, I listen to sermons or ask other people for advice, and sometimes I get this answer: God wants to humble me.
Humble me? Am I not humble enough from all these things that are against me? I feel like such a failure sometimes that I can’t do these things. I already have no self-confidence, so what more do I have to be humbled? But I learned that this isn’t really what God means by humility.
Basically: Self-loathing is not humility. Thinking you are less than others is not humility. Denying yourself of grace is not humility. I used to get that mixed up - okay, I still do. I mean I knew that beating myself up mentally all the time wasn’t exactly what God wanted for me in humility, but maybe it was close. If humility was the gold standard, then maybe self-loathing was the Amazon knock-off. However, now I believe that instead of a pale imitation, humility and self-loathing are two entirely different things.
The reason for the mix-up is mostly due to a sense of unhealthy guilt. Healthy guilt leads to repentance; unhealthy guilt just leads to inward and cyclical self-focused self-pity. Focusing solely on your faults is not particularly better than focusing solely on your abilities (pride) - both look away from God and inwards to yourself. Unhealthy guilt leading to unhealthy self-loathing is an attempt to say to God, ‘I am not good enough for your grace.’ This is a layered statement. First, it says that you either know yourself better than God or you are a worthier judge than God, and second, it says that you don’t understand grace. Funnily enough, it is a true statement. We can’t be good enough for grace - it’s grace, and grace is undeserved. No one can be good enough for grace, or else it would cease to be grace. So perhaps the first step to moving from unhealthy guilt to seeing ourselves rightly through the lens of grace is to change the meaning of that statement. ‘God, I am not good enough for your grace, but you give it to me nonetheless.’
Humility then could be defined as this: The ability to see ourselves rightly. Not more than we are, and not less than we are. Yes, this is a big ask - how are we to find out who we are? But the first step cannot be to ask ourselves, but rather to ask our Maker.
“Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.”
Romans 5:1-2 NLT