Humility Is Not Lying

Scripture reminds us that we are to think of others in a way that is very difficult to do. “Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves” (Phil. 2:3).

Now the sense of this is not that we are to pretend that others are better than we are in things that we can do and they can’t. If you can play the piano and they cannot, if you know how to do differential equations and they can’t, if you know how to dunk a basketball and they can’t, considering someone else better than yourself does not mean telling yourself lies about it. Nor does it mean telling them lies about it.

Rather, the position of the other is more important to you than your own. You are not competing with them. You are not striving. Remember the first part of the verse. Do nothing from strife or vainglory. If you have a relationship with someone, and in your mind you have a running tally of points, and it is important to you that your number is always higher than theirs, then you have a problem.

So you play the piano better. Fine. Their playing is more important to you than yours is. You run a business better. Fine. Their business matters more to you than your own does. Sometimes competition is unavoidable, just in the nature of the case. They set up shop after you did, and their establishment is right across the street. That is the way it does sometimes. But competition in the ego is never unavoidable. That is what must be laid down. That is what we must consider as cross fodder.

When we strive, we are trying to pick things up with our right hand, instead of receiving them with our left. Are you in any kind of adversarial set up with anyone else in the body, at any level? Then there is a sense in which you must let it go.