Humility and the Challenge of Personal Growth

Humility and the Challenge of Personal Growth
by
March 19, 2025

We are now in Lent, a forty-day season of soul-searching and spiritual growth preparing for Easter. It is a time to ask deep, meaningful questions about faith and the bigger picture of life. I hope you will take advantage of the great classes now being offered at Woodmont on Wednesday nights. I also encourage you to read and reflect on Paul’s letter to the Philippians, also known as “the Epistle of Joy.” All of us long to experience more joy in our lives.

David Brooks raises the following questions in his book The Road to Character: “Toward what should I orient my life? Who am I and what is my nature? How do I mold my nature to make it gradually better day by day? What virtues are the most important to cultivate and what weaknesses should I fear the most? How can I raise my children with a true sense of who they are and a practical set of ideas about how to travel the long road to character?”

To these important questions we could add a few more: “Where do I find a sense of meaning? How do I fill my time? How do I view and treat other people, starting with my family? Where do I find joy and inner peace? How is my past limiting my future?”

Asking the right questions is important. Many people keep asking the wrong questions, more shallow and superficial questions. The superficiality that permeates much of our culture leaves many unfulfilled and lonely. Some are unwilling or perhaps unable to get past superficial topics, surface-level stuff. Yet all of us are wired to go deeper, to connect on a deeper level. But this requires trust and vulnerability, and fear comes into play. This requires a deep sense of humility, an admission that we are all flawed and don’t have it all together. The biblical word for this is “sin.” We are all broken to some degree, an inevitable part of our human condition.

Brooks says this about humility: “In the struggle against your own weakness, humility is the greatest virtue. Humility is having an accurate assessment of your own nature and your own place in the cosmos. Humility is an awareness that you are an underdog in the struggle against your own weakness. Humility is an awareness that your individual talents alone are inadequate alone to the tasks that have been assigned to you. Humility reminds you that you are not the center of the universe, but you serve a larger order.”

Of course pride and ego constantly get in the way. We want to be important and significant. We want others to think highly of us. Pride is a very complicated topic. It can quickly lead to arrogance and a sense of superiority. Jesus echoed this sentiment when he said, “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” Maintaining humility keeps us grounded in life.

If you take time to study the Enneagram (an ancient personality typing system), it becomes clear that we all struggle with something. We all have a vice or core sin that is deeply intertwined with our personality. It might be anger, pride, deceit, envy, greed, fear, gluttony, lust, or sloth – these challenges are real, legitimate, and continuous. They greatly affect our relationships and interactions with others. But they do not need to define us. These are simply obstacles along the human journey that we must acknowledge and work to overcome. Thomas Keating once said, “We are kept from the experience of the Spirit because our inner world is cluttered with past traumas. As we begin to clear away this clutter, the energy of divine light and love begins to flow through our being.”

Life is an ongoing journey towards spiritual maturity. Some are serious about the journey and others are not. Some are willing to ask the deeper questions and others seem uninterested, perhaps because it’s too painful. We must work to let go of the past and embrace the present if we are to be free and fully alive.

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