Christian Humility and the Fear of Man

Some virtues are becoming increasingly popular, at least in name, in both Christian and secular discussions today: kindness, respect, compassion, humility. Recently, I’ve been considering the contemporary call to humility and wondering how it might be a perversion of true Christian humility. What tipped me off to this was a conservative Evangelical podcast lamenting how Christians on the political left say that right-wing Christians need more humility on issues like abortion. She argued that they use the word “humility” to make us doubtful and confused on matters clearly revealed by God, summing it up well with the response, “We don’t need to be humble for God.” Listening to her critique, I couldn’t help thinking, “This is what Lutherans deal with all the time in theology.”

In our watered-down Evangelical context, Lutheranism comes across as arrogant. Lutheran confidence makes people uncomfortable and suspicious. Even among Christians, it seems that toleration is translated as celebrating and affirming other confessions. (I had a hard time finishing that last sentence because the words that were coming to mind only confirmed how hard it is for me to break free of this ideology. Positions? Viewpoints? Perspectives? It’s difficult to find a word that doesn’t communicate neutrality.) 

I have a deep desire to be perceived as nice. I add nuance and qualification and water down my statements so that those who disagree will still like me in the end. Of course, there is a place for nuance and acknowledging the complexity of issues that truly are complex. (There I go again, diluting my statement with qualifications.) But I’m becoming more convinced that my impulse isn’t Christian humility. It is the fear of man. And the Bible has some pretty strong things to say on that.

The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe. Proverbs 29:25

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Matthew 10:28

Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. John 12:42-43

Oh, how I see myself in those timid authorities whose love of glory from man stifled their confession of Christ! It feels so good to receive praise from Christians of other confessions. I want people to like my posts–and, more so, to like me. I like imagining them saying, “She really made me think. Though I disagree, I appreciate her thoughtful, articulate, humble posts.” But this is a desire that silences confession, a fear of man that lays a snare. Whatever else it is, it is not humility.

Christian humility means, first of all, being humble before God. Just as love for God manifests itself in love for the neighbor, so humility toward God requires humility toward one another. But the vertical dimension must take priority. When we reverse the order and only define humility horizontally, we find ourselves in a man-fearing mess. 

Humility toward God is submission to His Word. It is pride, not humility, to cloud and muddy His pure Word. It is arrogant folly to darken the light of Scripture. Is it any wonder that those “who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isa. 5:20) would invert the definitions of pride and humility? Christians must not fall for this tactic of the father of lies. God has spoken. We can be humble before Him, agreeing with Him and confessing His Word to a hostile world, or we can accept the world’s definition of humility and dress the truth in caveats until it is unrecognizable. We can stand by the clear Word of God, or we can add layer upon layer of nuance until it is buried in obscurity. Humility before God will never lead us to twist His Word into something cloudy and unintelligible.

Some examples may be helpful here. Take Romans 3:28: “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” We can say, “Amen” to this and confess the doctrine of sola fide, or we can make ambiguous statements about justification or the phrase “works of the law” until our statement is vague enough to be accepted by Roman Catholics. Similarly, a few chapters later in Romans 6:4, we read, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” Again, we can say, “Amen,” and confess baptismal regeneration, or we can muddy the text with ideas about different kinds of baptisms in the hope of saying something more palatable to Evangelicals.

I almost titled this post Christian Humility and the Fear of Being a Jerk. But I’m not actually afraid of being a jerk; I’m afraid of being perceived as a jerk. I’m afraid of how my Lutheran confession will be perceived by this nice, tolerant, watered-down world. Christ, however, tells me Whom to fear:

“But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him! Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows. And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God.” Luke 12:5-9

May the God who comforts us be our Fear and our Courage!

“I, I am he who comforts you; who are you that you are afraid of man who dies, of the son of man who is made like grass, and have forgotten the Lord, your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth . . . ?” Isaiah 51:12-13a

^{Like Daniel, may God grant us humility before Him that inspires courage before men}