Christianity Today: Christian Humility Isn’t Just ‘Thinking of Yourself Less’, by Stefani McDade:
A popular misquote of C.S. Lewis flattens this fundamental virtue—and retracts an invitation to the self-scrutiny we need.
Scripture honors and commands humility, but what does it look like in practice? A line widely misattributed to C. S. Lewis offers a memorable answer: “Humility is not thinking less of ourselves; it is thinking of ourselves less.”
That definition has been popular among American Christians for years, copied all over the internet and paraphrased in influential books. But I’ve come to think the trouble with it goes beyond misattribution. This understanding of humility neglects riches from Scripture and centuries of Christian tradition, and it retracts an invitation to the honest self-reflection we desperately need.
Rightly understood, Christian humility is not essentially a quieting of self-attention, though that may be one of many natural byproducts. (A humble man “will not be thinking about humility,” Lewis actually wrote. “He will not be thinking about himself at all.”) But a more robust theological view considers humility in relation to its opposing vice of pride as well as our call to actively imitate the love of Jesus.
Like Augustine and Martin Luther, Lewis saw pride as a “spiritual cancer” and the root of humanity’s original sin. Acknowledging pride’s presence in our hearts, he argued, is the necessary first step in cultivating humility—“and a biggish step, too.”
Pride leads us to hide whatever brings us shame, just as Adam and Eve hid themselves with fig leaves in the garden. Humility requires us to be honest: It stares unflinchingly into the mirror and accepts the scrutiny of God’s penetrating gaze. It invites a healthy introspection, a holy way of thinking about ourselves: “Search me, God, and know my heart. … See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Ps. 139:23–24).
It’s only through this kind of self-examination that we can see ourselves as God sees us and grow into the fullness of who he created us to be. Pride makes such clarity of vision impossible, and tearing out its deep roots in our hearts requires cultivating its virtuous counterpart. The only way to kill our pride, wherever and whenever it crops up, is to obey the command of Scripture and Jesus himself: “Humble yourselves” (James 4:10; 1 Pet. 5:5; Matt. 23:12).
Laying down our lives in love (John 15:13) requires us not to think of ourselves less but to think of ourselves with the “mind of Christ” (1 Cor. 2:16)—who “did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matt. 20:28). It calls us to submit to the Spirit’s humbling work of increasing our self-awareness, attentiveness to others, and dependence on God. It involves examining the gap between our hearts and Christ’s and, through conscious surrender, seeking to narrow it.
Christlike humility, then, begins not with hiding our faces but unveiling them. It requires us to draw close enough to see Jesus and ourselves more clearly so we can reflect his image more faithfully.
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