“When pride comes, then comes disgrace, But with humility comes wisdom.” –Proverbs 11:2. What we see in this quote is an intimate connection between wisdom and humility. But what is this connection precisely? The key is in humility’s ability to make us self-aware of our limits and capacities and this self-awareness is essential for wisdom. We saw in an earlier post wisdom is among the most valuable things we can have in life. In this post I will talk about humility’s role in growing in wisdom. The central reason why humility is needed for wisdom is that wisdom is seeing and responding to reality as it truly is. Humility guards us against distorting how we see one part of reality: ourselves.
Pride Unbounded
We can begin to see the distortive power of pride when we consider John McEnroe (active ~ ’75 – ’06). He was one of the most famous figures in tennis and brought an incredible intensity to the court. Yet, often deflected personal responsibility when he lost, blaming it even on comments from others before the match. He achieved many accolades in tennis but when he lost, acted foolish because of a lack of humility. Who knows where he could have gone if he had humility. When we have a proper view of our capabilities, especially our limits, we are then in the best position to grow and master those shortcomings. This is what humility does and why it is essential for wisdom.
Pride’s Subtle Evil
Is that all though? Is the only issue with pride is deflection and lack of optimal growth like n McEnroe’s case? No. Pride’s danger is much deeper more subtle. To see this, consider how Dante characterizes pride in his Divine Comedy which consists of three major parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Dante carefully constructs a hierarchy of afterlife realms that are relative to the merits of one’s activity on earth. In Inferno, the worst sins are the last he considers at the bottom of Hell. In Purgatorio, the order is reversed where the greatest sins are first and as one is purged and made more righteous in the ascent to heaven, lesser sins are considered. The message is this: pride is the greatest of man’s faults and it is subtlety behind most if not all spiritual failings.
Pride and Seeing Reality
Why? Because it is a distortion of the ways things truly are. We are not our own creators, we are flawed, and we have limits. In someway, pride obscures our position in the world and our capabilities in a fundamental way. This distortion shows us why pride’s antidote, humility, is essential for wisdom. Wisdom responding to how things are so anything like pride that distorts our perception of the world will detract from wisdom. Protecting against this distortion is humility’s role in growing in wisdom.
Wisdom requires us to neither overestimate nor underestimate our capabilities and part of this proper estimation comes from humility. Humility motivates us to not seek higher things than we ought to. It motivates us to say, “Here is my limit, I can’t do this.” This is hard to say at times, especially when we are ambitious. We might desire a promotion in our careers, well and good. But if we lack humility and have an overinflated view of our capabilities and giftings, then we will set ourselves for taking on responsibility that we are unfit for and cause more damage to ourselves or our company. Or, we will fail to do the necessary work to grow in the skill at all because it is “beneath us”. Long term, pride actually destroys the possibility of what it is after to begin with. Again, guarding against this overestimation that holds us back is humility’s role in growing in wisdom.
Humility Helps Us See Where We Really Are
We saw in a previous post the that wonder was necessary to grow in wisdom. And wonder, we saw, was the experience of something mysterious and beautiful. The experience of mystery means we do not fully grasp the object of wonder. Thus, there is a kind of interplay between wonder and humility in our growth in wisdom. In order to grow in wisdom, we cannot be under the illusion that we already possess it. Rather, in order to grow in wisdom, we have to admit that we lack something and desire to know more about it.
Humility’s role in growing in wisdom was made absolutely clear to me when I started my second masters. During both my BA and first MA, I outperformed many of my classmates. This performance delta changed when I switched to my second MA. It was a sobering experience and my classmates were extremely bright. Initially, I blamed my circumstances and this did not help me grow. Eventually, I accepted that my expertise needed tremendous growth. In a word, I finally developed some humility. Humility had to be present in order for me to have an honest assessment of my abilities and then develop a path forward for growth. The wise have a proper evaluation of their abilities but they also realized they always have room to grow, that their ideals always are pulling them into ever higher mastery within their respective domains.
James on Humility
James 3:13-15 intimately connects wisdom with humility and contrasts it with a wisdom that does not come from humility. The key here is that genuine wisdom is a wisdom that sees reality as it truly is. And seeing reality as it truly is does not make humility an add-on to wisdom—it makes it a requirement. For James, the pagan idea of wisdom is always going to be come up short because it does not have God has creator, nor God as Savior as the first steps toward wisdom, nor its end.
Both of these central tenets imply humility. God as creator shows us that we are not ultimate, we did not bring ourselves into being and owe our existence to something else outside of us. God as savior suggest that we need saving, that we are flawed in some way and cannot fix this flaw ourselves but need someone else to fix it for us. Only when we see both of these issues can we begin really to grow in wisdom and that means that we need Christ to grow in wisdom.
We Don’t Want to be a Wimp
In this post we discussed that humility is needed for wisdom and why. One reasonable objection this view is that since humility does not push us to achieve great things that it is often a liability. When we do get in over our heads, it forces us to develop the skill or mastery necessary in order to grow. When our boss throws us into a project that is above our head we innovate and grow.
I think this is a good concern. The answer to the concern is another virtue that accompanies humility that encourages and pushes us to strive for great things. It has an unwieldly name, “magnanimity” which is related but different from ambition. It pushes us to seek great honors and strive for noble and estimable things. This can be promotions at work but also more significant, meaningful, and eternal goals. Wisdom requires that we both have humility and magnanimity. I’ll discuss this important part of wisdom in a future post.