Humility in the Right Place

Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy, and for thy truth’s sake. PSALM 115:1

Chesterton was one of the most famous men in England, and one of the least vain. Those who knew him remarked again and again on his lack of self-importance. He laughed at himself more readily than at anyone else, and he called Orthodoxy a joke at his own expense. It is fitting that one of his most enduring contributions to Christian thought should be about humility.

The fool of the story

He began Orthodoxy by laughing at himself. He had set out, he said, as a young man determined to be original, to think his way to a new philosophy that no one had ever discovered. And he found, to his great embarrassment, that he had arrived at Christianity: the oldest and most commonplace creed in England. He compared himself to an English yachtsman who sets out to discover a new island in the South Seas and lands, with great ceremony, at Brighton. “I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before,” he wrote, in the chapter called Introduction in Defence of Everything Else.

That is a picture of humility, and a very Christian one. The truth was not his invention. He had not added to it. He had simply been brought, by a long and comic road, to the place where countless ordinary believers had been standing all along.

What hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it? 1 CORINTHIANS 4:7

The wrong kind and the right kind

As we have seen, Chesterton believed that his age had put humility in the wrong place. It was humble about truth, which it hardly dared claim to know, and proud about the self, which it trusted without question. He wanted it the other way round. True humility, as the Christian tradition understood it, means a low view of one’s own importance joined to a high confidence in the truth of God. The humble man is not the one who says that nobody can know anything. He is the one who knows that he himself is small, and that God is great, and says so.

God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble. JAMES 4:6

Humility and wonder

Chesterton saw a close link between humility and the wonder he prized so much. The proud man, he thought, cannot enjoy anything, because he thinks he deserves everything. Nothing surprises him, because he takes it all as his due. The humble man, by contrast, receives everything as a gift, and so everything delights him. In this sense humility is the secret of joy. It is the small person who finds the world large, and the person who expects nothing who is astonished by everything.

He loved to say, in many places and many ways, that the man who thinks of himself as a creature, small before an immense God, finds the world full of giants and wonders; while the man who makes himself the centre finds the world dwindling to the size of his own mind. This is why the saints have so often been the happiest of people.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. MATTHEW 5:3

Humility in argument

Chesterton’s humility showed itself most clearly in the way he argued. He fought hard, and he was formidable in debate, but he never seemed to want to humiliate his opponents. He believed they were wrong; he never believed they were worthless. He kept friendships with men who disagreed with him about everything that mattered, and he was quick to praise what was good in their work even as he attacked what was false. That combination — certainty about the truth and charity towards persons — is exactly what he meant by humility in the right place.

And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves. 2 TIMOTHY 2:24–25

Weighing it

Chesterton’s teaching on humility is wise and biblical, and his own example gives it weight. Few teachers have shown so clearly that a man can be both certain and gentle.

Two things may be added. The first is that the root of Christian humility is not finally the smallness of man before the size of the universe, true as that is, but the sinfulness of man before the holiness of God, and the mercy shown to him at the cross. Chesterton knew this, and said it often enough. But a reader who takes from him only a cheerful sense of his own littleness has missed the deepest humbling of all, which is to be forgiven.

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. GALATIANS 6:14

The second is that Chesterton’s charity in argument did not always reach as far as it should. As we noted at the start of this book, there were people about whom he wrote without charity, and the Jewish people were among them. His own principle condemns those pages: a man who is certain of the truth and humble about himself has no room for contempt of his neighbour.

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Where are you proud about yourself and timid about the truth? Where are you humble in the wrong place?

2. Think of something you are tempted to take credit for. Read 1 Corinthians 4:7 and give the credit back to God.

3. List three things that have surprised and delighted you this week. Notice the link between gratitude and humility.

4. Think of someone with whom you strongly disagree. Pray for them by name, and look for something good in them to thank God for.

5. Read the opening chapter of Orthodoxy, Introduction in Defence of Everything Else, in the Ochorus library.

A PRAYER

Lord, not unto us, but unto Your name be the glory.

Forgive me for being proud of what I have received, and for being afraid to confess what You have revealed.

Make me small in my own eyes and bold in Your truth, gentle with those who oppose me and grateful for every gift.

Humble me at the cross, where my pride was answered and my sin forgiven, and let me glory in nothing else. Amen.