Today’s Reflection
Real and False Humility

Humility is a healthy self-effacement and non-assertion. But then it becomes complicated. Self-effacement is not self-deprecation and indeed there’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. Why not?

Because our gifts and talents are meant to help others, just as their gifts are meant to help us. To hide our light under a bushel basket serves no one – others, God, ourselves. That’s precisely what Jesus warns us about in the parable of the talents. When God gives us a gift, God expects a certain return. To hide our talents, as the parable makes clear, is perilous to self and not very pleasing to the one who gave those gifts.

We already know this through experience, painful experience. When we self-deprecate in the name of humility, or for any other reason, we might fool people around us into thinking this is virtue, but we never fool ourselves. Whenever we hide our light, we generate a lot of rage, bitterness, and envy inside of ourselves. When we play small, however moral, and noble the intent, another part of us begins to enrage. Why? Because what we are doing fundamentally belies who we are.
 
We are in the image of God, special, unique, fabulous, gorgeous, talented. When that part of us, that deep part, is bullied by a good moral idea gone awry (humility gone false) it does not acquiesce in calm and serenity. It enrages, becomes bitter, jealous, and frustrated at being forced to live a lie – even if it still says all the right things.
 
We are humble when we live in the face of the fact that we are both dependent and interdependent. We are not ipsum esse subsistens, self-sufficient Being, God, nor the centre of earth, nor intended to be that centre. But each of us is a child of God, fabulous, unique, talented, asked to set forth our gifts on the table of life, as a gracious host might put food on the dinner table.  
 
Moreover, as Jesus’ parable of the talents suggests, hiding one’s talents doesn’t exactly produce happiness either.
 
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