Webster defines humility briefly: “the quality or state of being humble in spirit: freedom from pride or arrogance.”
Biblically, humility is urged by Paul, Peter, David, Solomon, and Humble 40 times.
Years ago, Mike Todd, a successful Hollywood Producer, pilot and once married to Elizabeth Taylor, suddenly lost it all. One day he bought a newspaper and during the exchange the newsboy asked:
“Mr., didn’t you used to be somebody?”
Some of us know the pain of such a question. To have been somebody and suddenly, from the worlds perspective, we are reduced to, nothing, because we as humans are somebody, a soul inside a body. But there is the inner desire to rise above the crowd and become “a somebody,” one that rises above the others, a hero of sorts.
To have, and suddenly to have not, is humiliating. Humiliation can bring such havoc to a personality that the person, feeling already annihilated, commits suicide, becomes addicted or ends up in psych ward. Others manage to continue, as did Mr. Todd, and overcome the sense of humiliation and become positively marked by a sense of humility, the attitude recommended by the Bible and defined by Webster.
Have you ever said or heard someone say, “I was never so humiliated in all my life!”
Here’s Webster’s note on humiliated:
“to reduce to a lower position in one's own eyes or the eyes of others: injure the self-respect.”
As humans, we are said to be God’s highest creature! Therefore, if we have a correct sense of our “self” we should be people of humility, for humility’s level is not measured by have or have not, but by what we are by creation. So, if in the course of life, we lose a house, a job, a fortune, we are still who we are by creation and this is doubly true when we are “Joint Heirs” with Jesus Christ, stripped of a false arrogance etc. If you lose pompousness, be thankful. I’m certain this was in Marcia Lynch’s mind when she wrote:
“Humility is evidence that you have successfully failed." Marica Lynch.
Copyright © 2017 Larry Lilly
Truly Superior IT Work. Oral Deckard
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