An easy to read article that targets some of the important things in life. If I may …
The Foundation
Here is an interesting expansion on humility:
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of…en.wiktionary.org
Humility, really, is simply being humble. To be humble, really, is to be lowly, bowed down on the ground, and mean (which is to say, average, not more and not less than ground level). It is to be normal and without arrogance. It is not to put yourself above your station — and it is to not put yourself below your station. When we have arrogance, we add to what we truly are, but if you are humble, you are simply no more than you are. And no less than you are. You simply are.
Humility has little to do with the things you spoke of in your foundational work. Certainly, being a person of virtue or character or good moral ‘stuff’ has a lot to do with those things — and humility is one of the things that makes up great moral character — but I suspect it is not accurately defined as strength and love with restraint. I would love your thoughtful opinion on this, because I think you’ll have some quality thoughts.
My Suspicious Thinkings …
I suspect you wanted to talk about how a man can fulfil the roles that make him feel socially and culturally and theologically masculine without encouraging abuse or extreme interpretations of these things. I wish more people would do that. What a different world we would live in!
In the process, though, I think you missed an important hole in your Foundation. If there’s a hole in the Foundation, then perhaps there are some uncertainties in The Three Roles that followed. I’ll unpack them a little … Please keep in mind, this is the first time I’ve engaged with you and with your thinking, and I, like you, am nutting this out as I go. I would value your honest, thoughtful and prayerful feedback.
The Foundational Shadow
As you say,
I know that is hard for some of you guys to read. Humility seems so, well, weak!
And here’s where I think your Foundation is a little bit wobbly. It seems you are arguing to men who fear that they will become weak if they are humble. The problem, you see, is that that is exactly what humility brings. Weakness! Christ, though strong, as we are taught in Philippians 2,
“Being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself … He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross”
He was weak. He was naked. He was spat on. He chose to submit. It’s not about him being an ultimate leader and then being crucified even though he could have called ten thousand angels. That’s not the point of it all. The point of it all is that he became human. The God-man and the great God-emptying. All God. All man. And in that moment, as He walked to that cross, He was weak.
Perhaps you’ll have a look at the link above. Have a look at the ancient Greek word and how it means “on the ground, low, trifling”. Humility is presenting yourself as nothing more than what you are, a trivial thing. In comparison to the King of Kings, we are that. And that is what makes our good news so darn good! We are a trifle, a speck of dust, and yet in His eye we are worth every effort of love! Every moment, every starry eyed look and maddening tear, every soot stained heart and anguished cry, every laugh, every love is His to hold and cherish. This is good news. Though we might otherwise be a trifle, yet we are not, because He loves us. And so we can value most highly every person we meet, because He has valued them such.
The Manly Fear
We can still be strong, masculine men who are humble. Humility is not weakness. Humility is strength with restraint. Humility is leadership plus love.
We men gain great value from being ‘masculine’. Whatever that is.
I don’t play Aussie rules football. I did once. When I was 10. It bores me. I don’t like beer. Or motor sports. But there’s one thing I do that precious few other believers do and it is undeniably cool — I have a whole martial arts school dedicated to sword fighting. You think you’re manly? You’re a wimp. Jesus didn’t tell the disciples to take a V8, or a few beers, or to watch last year’s Superbowl before he was betrayed. He told them to take a sword. But I jest!!
And yet, maybe I don’t. Carrying a sword, fighting, being a leader, providing or protecting are not inherently masculine roles. They are human roles.
Thus we find ourselves in a place of terrifying darkness. All the men in the room are quaking at the thought of losing their masculinity because they have defined it as being strong. As you say … we can still be strong, masculine men …
… but we are not called to be strong. We are called to be disciples, people who follow in the Master’s disciplines, and His discipline here is to give up His strength and not hold on to it. He was human, so he only lived as if he were human — he added no arrogance to it by showing His deity and He took nothing from it by saying He was less — He was simply human. Humble. Lowly. Weak.
Until we, as humans in obedience to the Lord-Over-Those-Who-Rule-As-Lords, submit to Him in weakness and confess our humble state, we will not be able to embrace fully the strength and glory of our manhood. Jesus was only glorified after He was humbly dead.
To be a man in our relationships means we are humble ourselves and die a thousand deaths, a millions times, in a billion different ways. Our pride, our arrogance, our belief that we are the one to be in charge, all those things are to be submitted to Him, even if they go against our greatest desires and our cultural norms.
The fear in all men is that we cease to be and feel masculine if we do this. My word to you is, does it matter? If you define yourself by your masculinity, you risk losing yourself when you’re older and less … able. But if you define yourself as someone legitimately worthy because the King and Creator has deemed you such, because Christ has died for you to be holy, because your Father has love and mercy for you and not condemnation; then you become someone who knows himself. Someone who loves himself. And someone who immensely capable of loving his wife and kids in ways that were previously insurmountable.
My question to you and your readers is this: You are strong as men. Like Jesus was strong like God. But are you willing, are you truly and honestly willing to be completely like Christ?
If you are, then like Him, will you submit completely to the poor decisions of those you think are under your leadership — Jesus Christ, the Son of God, submitted to Herod, to Pilate, to the whim and will of the Jewish leaders and the people who followed in their wake, and allowed them, the ones He was king over, to taunt, and spit on him and slander him and ridicule him and finally to kill him.
If you are truly humble, are you willing to give up all your rights to power and masculinity as you define it and submit yourself to the whim and will of the ones you claim you are to lead? I don’t mean consulting with them about big decisions. I mean abandoning yourself to the possibility that they are thinking, leading people who can guide you, lead you, teach you, just because they, too, are trifles loved by God. We are all trifles loved by God. And we are all immensely worthy because of it.
A Note Of Importance
I do not think and do not say we should let someone else abuse or control us. I simply ask, are you willing to give up your strength in order to obey God? Are you? Because if you are not, then you are not living as if Jesus Christ is Lord.
Until we are willing to give up everything, including our conceptions of masculinity, whatever that is, we will not be living in submission the King. I don’t know God’s journey for your life; the Father is good but so often it’s hard to see that goodness. Humility is weak. But it is a quality, much like strength. Humility is only weak in comparison to something above it, like God. And strength is is only strong in comparison to something weaker than it. I can beat my 6 year old son in a wrestle but I can’t beat my best mate who deadlifts 1.5 times my body weight. You can be humble and strong. But it is all relative. Are you willing to be humble before your wife? To be weak before her? If not, then pray you are never in a car accident, or never get multiple sclerosis, or die a long drawn out death from cancer or get depression [yes, strength is many-faceted — mental strength, moral strength, emotional strength, physical strength, financial strength — and all of these misfortunes can attack each and every one of those areas of strength and diminish them].
To be humble in a marriage is to be equal (I’m not preaching about egalitarianism or patriarchy. I’m talking about the cross and the reality of humility. But if that challenges our theology on spousal roles … we can certainly wonder what possibilities there are, can’t we?). To stand next to your wife with both of you being nothing but a trifle that’s greatly loved, nothing more and nothing less. Both of you. She is weak before the King. You are weak before the King. She is worthy because of the Lamb. You are worthy because of the Lamb.
The Final Great Act of Man
The Foundation of our faith is not for the faint hearted. It’s not for the proud man unwilling to give up his authority. You cannot submit to Christ and hold your authority in the other hand. Rather, you submit to Christ and He teaches you what it is to be a man. First, before all else, you submit and allow the weakness to exist in you, because it does. We cannot ignore it; our pride; our arrogance; our desire to control others; to hurt others. These are not things we should ignore, because if we do, they’ll bubble over, become something we can no longer control and harm someone. And so we admit they are there, agree with God about them, every day, a thousand times a minute, if need be, and 10 thousand minutes a week. We are weak, like that. But all weakness is relative.
To be truly humble is to be the most courageous man on earth.
When finally we submit, we allow ourselves to be humble, truly humble, to be weak and at the mercy of another, and that’s when we discover our true strength. That’s when we become men. Men who are willing to risk the things that destroy life for the sake of others; willing to give up on the beloved habits; willing to rise to the occasion of being less than we think we are and become more than we could ever hope to be. True masculinity comes when we begin to tell the truth about ourselves, because true strength comes when we are humble and embrace the weakness it brings.