The Depth Of Humility

There is a widespread misunderstanding of both humility and arrogance on display in the church at large, partly due to evangelical stupidity.  This affects everything from the extent to which people understand themselves to how plenty of people are content to settle for the intellectual arrogance of thinking they can know things without logical proof.  When it comes to how a person regards himself or herself, the different kinds of confusion about the issue, rather than granting someone a depth they would otherwise not possess, bind them to stupidity and thus they must forfeit some depth and rationality.  Mistaking something else for humility is not intelligent, morally sound, or deep.

What many fail to realize is that humility is not failing to recognize one's own role in an achievement in favor of propping others up.  Humility is not thinking of oneself in an unfavorable or neutral way.  It is not "thinking about oneself less," as some evangelical authors might put it.  To be humble, all a person has to do is simply not think that they are greater than their metaphysical nature, epistemological limitations, or moral character makes them.  Humility has nothing to do with ignoring or distorting any part of oneself that does not indulge in true arrogance, which is itself nothing other than thinking of oneself more highly than one should in light of the aforementioned characteristics.

In avoiding negative or positive assumptions about themselves, people avoid the shallowness of blind beliefs and conceptual misunderstandings, which means intentional self-awareness and alignment with reason involve great depth.  Humility, because it is in its truest sense a refusal to think of oneself more highly than one should without any sort of negative assumptions to supposedly counteract arrogance, is thus is a trait of depth that does not conflict with something like confidence or a rightful sense of moral superiority.  It has everything to do with understanding oneself and refusing to make assumptions about one's nature in order to appease arbitrary desires.

Humility does not rob someone of an accurate sort of self-esteem or lead someone to somehow forget about their own presence as they focus almost exclusively on helping others.  These are shallow, false misconceptions of what it means for someone to sidestep arrogance.  Instead of bringing someone to self-awareness and an aversion to the errors of equating self-deprecation or gratuitously thinking about oneself less, what is often mistaken for humility is just a hollow, pathetic misconception that stands in opposition to the truth.  Avoiding something that is not arrogance while thinking it is arrogance is thoroughly irrational.

If one veers to the right or the left of humility, one has lapsed into superficiality to at least sone extent.  It is only through rationality and self-awareness that one can come to self-acceptance without believing something false about oneself.  Of course, this contradicts what so many Christians say humility is, with their insistence that it is just focusing on oneself less--as if focusing on one's own thoughts, nature, desires, and needs excludes a deep care for others!  False humility is not the liberation from arrogance some people seem think it is.  It is yet another self-imposed prison based on assumptions that keep one from understanding this aspect of reality as it is.