Article June 22, 1992 Issue

The freeing power of humility

Our abilities and capacities are actually enlarged as we learn what it means to be the child of God.

Rodman A. Savoye

Years ago there was a cartoon character named Milquetoast. He was unqualifiedly the doormat variety—representing ultimate timidity and passivity. He would go to any extreme to avoid facing difficulties.

Milquetoast types of images come to mind too often, when we think of humility. But the fact is that this behavior cannot in any way be associated with the Christian standard of humility. Jesus' humility wasn't seen in a lack of individuality or any unwillingness to stand up for what he believed in. Rather, it shone through in his steady insistence that all power, all being, belong to God.

True humility actually enables us to bring out enlarged abilities as we discover something of what it means to be the children of God, created in His image and likeness, created to reflect God's infinite intelligence and power. In order to experience this power and intelligence in our present circumstances, we must be willing—in fact, wanting—to surrender the false sense of ourselves as mortal personalities, possessing varying degrees of strengths and weaknesses, and to adopt instead the correct understanding of our spiritual identity as the sons and daughters of God. This humble surrendering of a material sense of goodness, intelligence, and ability frees us to exercise spiritual dominion over our affairs.

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