Article March 22, 1952 Issue

HUMILITY

OLIVER WENDELL WOODARD

Much that is beautiful and helpful has been written on the subject of humility. Yet it is a greatly misunderstood quality. It is frequently associated with such negative attributes as timidity, weakness, and submissive, inert yielding to evil. Actually no quality requires so much spiritual strength of character and downright courage as true humility. Far from being colorless or dull, it is evidence of richness and maturity, of depth of understanding, and of spirituality. It is not inept, inactive; it evidences self-control, self-mastery, God-given dominion.

To be unshaken in one's conviction that God is still the loving, omnipotent, omnipresent Father when one is confronted by injustice, cruelty, corruption, and misunderstanding of the whole purpose of one's consecrated life, as Christ Jesus was—surely this is humility. John the Baptist could scarcely be considered a drab figure. yet consider the humility expressed in his attitude toward Jesus. Far from resenting Jesus' rising ascendancy he described the Master as he "whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose" (John 1:27). And what of the Master? Did the humble acknowledgment of his position as the Messiah rob him of any measure of his own humility? Hardly, for he said (John 18:37), "To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth." Not that he should bear witness of his own achievements, but "bear witness unto the truth.."

It takes real understanding of God and of man's position as His beloved son to maintain the uncompromising standard of the Way-shower. It requires alertness, watchfulness, and prayer steadfastly to repudiate the suggestions that would fill thought with bitterness and frustration, a wrong concept of one's brother man, or a false self-consciousness.

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