Do not depreciate your gifts

First, we must recognize that the true end of humility is not self-contempt (which still leaves people concerned with themselves). To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, humility does not consist in handsome people trying to believe they are ugly and clever people trying to believe they are fools. When Muhammad Ali announced that he was the greatest, there was a sense in which his pronouncement did not violate the spirit of humility. False modesty can actually lead to an ironic pride in one’s better-than-average humility. True humility is more like self-forgetfulness than false modesty. As my colleague Dennis Voskuil writes in his forthcoming book, Mountains into Goldmines: Robert Schuller and the Gospel of Success (Eerdmans), the refreshing gospel promise is “not that we have been freed by Christ to love ourselves, but that we are free from self-obsession. Not that the cross frees us for the ego trip but that the cross frees us from the ego trip.” This stripping-away leaves people free to esteem their special talents and, with the same honesty, to esteem their neighbor’s. Both the neighbor’s talents and one’s own are recognized as gifts and, like one’s height, are not fit subjects for either inordinate pride or se1f-deprecation. ~ Dr. Myers is professor of psychology at Hope College in Holland, Michigan ~ "'false humility' consists of deprecating one's own sanctity, gifts, talents, and accomplishments for the sake of receiving praise or adulation from others." ~