“In humility consider others better than yourselves . . . look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” – Philippians 2:3-4
To overuse a much overused phrase (and forgive me for overusing it again), there seem to be two kinds of people in the world, those who are arrogant, and those who are humble. Except, in this case please allow me to impose a level of complexity in that overused and over-simplified statement, something I have observed over my long lifetime, and that is that many who may appear through their blusterous personalities to be arrogant are sometimes actually deep down quite humble, while others put up a façade of humility to mask that which is really arrogance. In other words, we can be easily fooled.
The late renowned theologian Frederick Buechner explained it like this. “Humility is often confused with gentlemanly self-deprecation of saying you’re not much of a bridge player when you know perfectly well you are. Conscious or otherwise, this kind of humility is a form of gamesmanship. If you really aren’t much of a bridge player, you’re apt to be rather proud of yourself for admitting it so humbly. This kind of humility is a form of low comedy. True humility doesn’t consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you’d be apt to think of anybody else. It is the capacity for being no more and no less pleased when you play your own hand well than when your opponents do.”
I know of no better example of that type of “true humility” than a good friend of ours, an entrepreneur and the founder and leader of a highly successful enterprise, who, when she speaks to groups, talks incessantly about herself. Except, no one seems to notice, for neither is she boastful, nor is she self-deprecating, only that it is impossible for her to share the mission of the enterprise she founded and the lives it has impacted without sharing about herself. As Buechner expressed it, “not thinking of your self much differently from the way you’d be apt to think of anybody else.”
In much the same way the Apostle Paul encouraged the Philippians to practice that type of true humility, the same humility of Christ himself. “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.”