Humble Pie: A Title-Less Church — Wednesday
James 4:6b,10
“God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble”… Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up in honor. (NLT)
Do you know anyone—or maybe it’s you—who will dig in and defend their position, even after it’s been exposed as wrong, short-sighted, incomplete, or worse? It is ludicrous to try to defend an indefensible position. One way to grow in humility is to recognize that we don’t know everything and set about developing an inquisitive approach to life—and decide, in advance, that we are not right about everything and we don’t need to be.
When you stop to think about it, humility, learning, and spiritual growth are inseparably linked. Albert Einstein is a perfect example of this connection. Would you believe he actually pondered whether his equation E=mc² was of any worth at all, asking, “I wonder if God is going to laugh because He was jokingly misleading me”? The result of his work was a radical illumination of our understanding of time and space. This renowned, brilliant physicist approached problems humbly, asking questions in order to discover truth rather than to merely prove himself correct.
John Naisbitt wrote in his book MindSet, “Harvard intelligence specialist Howard Gardner believed Einstein discovered so many secrets of nature because he never lost his childlike naïveté and called him an ‘eternal child.’ Certainly Einstein’s big concern was not whether his attempts would be disproved, but to miss a fork in the road.”
Insisting on being right keeps us from asking questions that lead to unexplored avenues, which just might lead to the answers we seek. Romans 12:16 (NLT) reminds us to “live in harmony with each other. Don’t be too proud to enjoy the company of ordinary people. And don’t think you know it all!” There’s no need to defend indefensible positions. No need to be right all the time. But there’s a life of blessing ahead for us as we humbly seek to understand, learn, stretch, and grow.
Wednesday’s Reflection
How can you demonstrate active humility through asking questions, listening, learning, and leaving behind your assumptions or the desire to defend your position above all else?
