Humility - Virtue or Vice?

As a child, I was what kind older people would call "precocious" and what my dad called a "smart-a**". I liked being good at things and felt this almost uncontrollable urge to show how smart or right I was about things that I had even the slightest experience with. Needless to, I didn't have many friends as a kid (except for boys, who didn't mind arguing with me or going along with my ideas and schemes when they thought they might be fun). When I learned about "humility" being a virtue in Sunday school, I didn't get it. How could acknowledging the things you were good at be a bad thing? Didn't everyone want to do thier best and be recognized for it?

Years went by. I learned about "Hubris" in studying Greek mythology and learned about the pitfalls of bragging in the halls of my junior high school. I started to have more friends (even girls) and tried to keep my big stinking mouth shut when I felt that impulse to say something superior. Yet while I acknowledged that uncontrolled or misplaced pride was not a good thing, I still held little regard for the "virtue" of humility. I pictured the person who, having worked for hours to prepare a Thanksgiving feast for 20, smiles meekly and says "Oh, twas nothing." Yeah right. You worked hard, you succeeded, and you should be proud of your accomplishments.

What I am realizing more recently is that my concept of humility as a vice rather than a virtue is actually based on a false humility. Wikipedia differentiates these in this way: "True humility" is distinctly different from "false humility" which consists of deprecating one's own sanctity, gifts, talents, and accomplishments for the sake of receiving praise or adulation from other" (based on the writings of Uriah Heep). This is what i was taught in Sunday school it meant to be humble - to be self-depracating.

However, "true humility" isn't about thinking that you can do something better (or worse) than someone else. It is acknowledging that everyone has things they excel at and things they struggle with but that none of us is intrinsically better than someone else. We all struggle, we all shine, but our worth as people comes from something far greater than our accomplishments or failures.

This reminds me of the passage by Marianne Willamson:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."


By this measure, I am humbled every day by the strength/courage/warmth/humor/wit/talent of those around me. True humility is definitely a virtue.