Building Humility & gentleness

The following video transcript has been lightly edited

So I have this dog named Walter, wonderful black lab, very food motivated dog who’s been great to train. Now if I’m cooking at home and a piece of something squirts off the cutting board, my dog goes after that food as though he has never eaten in his entire life. And at first when we used to give him treats, he would come after that treat as though your hand was actually a part of the treat. So we had to teach him to be gentle.

So we would say gentle, gentle, and he would just ever so slightly sort of grab and take. We’d say good boy, and then get another treat.

Eventually I got to the place where I thought it would be funny if I used my mouth. So I put a piece of chicken in my mouth, told him to be gentle, and then he would just gently grab it and take it away. Kind of ridiculous, but I tell you that story because as we’re thinking about building character, one of the things that you see in the New Testament a lot, it’s used to describe Jesus and it’s something that Paul calls us to, is to be people of humility and gentleness.

Humility and gentleness are two traits that are both about being kind and caring, but sensitive to others. That’s the main idea—that it’s a consideration of others.

And so today what I want to talk about are three things that I think we can take up that Paul offers us as he talks about us imitating Christ’s mindset, that we would have a similar mindset as Christ, who, as Paul says, though was equal to God, chose not to exploit that, but rather chose to serve and give up his life even to the point of death on the cross. And so we are to be people who are humble and gentle in the same way.

Now obviously desiring to be humble and gentle and figuring out how to actually develop those characteristics are two different things.

So one of the things Paul says in Philippians is to be humble and to consider others better than yourselves. And I think that the reason he tells us that is that we have a tendency towards thinking about ourselves first. It’s not that we actually are of less value than others. In fact, the Scriptures would teach us that all are created in the image of God and all are valuable.

But when we take the posture, when we sort of purposefully choose to think about others first, it actually helps us with our natural bend towards being self-centered. We have this tendency to look around the world and view everything as though we are the main character and everyone else are supporting characters in our story.

There’s a word out right now called sonder, and to sonder is to be aware that everyone else’s life and story is as equally deep and complicated as your own. And so that’s a way of thinking and operating in the world. What we want to be is people who see ourselves as one part of a giant, beautiful symphony rather than an individual soloist.

Because if you and I are considering the needs of others, and in fact serving the needs of others, and they are also doing the same thing for us, then all of us can have our needs met. If we’re each only looking out for ourselves, then there’s always winners and losers.

Think about it with a donut. If there’s a delicious donut, and there’s only two people and one donut, and each goes for it, one of them will win and one of them will lose. If one person says, “Hey, there’s only one donut left, how about you have it,” and the other person says, “Hey, that’s nice, but it’s also something I know you want. How about we split it?” That’s the idea that Paul is always encouraging us toward.

And I think when we are willing to be humble and gentle, we are opening up a pathway, as we think about others and consider others, in which there’s potential flourishing for all of us resident within that.

So how might you consider others this week?

Secondly, what Paul tells us is that we should not take our position and exploit it. So Jesus is fully God and fully human all at the same time. And being fully God allows Jesus to have certain power and privilege, and he does not lose that in the midst of his humanity. That’s the wonder and beauty of the incarnation. Jesus is fully who God is. There’s no other God. If you want to know who God is, understand who Jesus is and you will see who God is.

But Jesus doesn’t use that power and privilege to his own advantage. Rather, he uses that position, as it says, to empty himself and even die death on the cross on behalf of everyone.

And so the lesson here is if we want to build humility and gentleness, we want to take the positions that we have and use them to serve others as opposed to exploit others.

Now my guess is most of you out there are not in positions in which you are pursuing exploitation. But I do think that each of us have these different positions that we’re in—whether it’s our situation, our family, or our workplace, or in social settings, whatever it might be—in which we can use our position to protect ourselves, to get more, or we can use it to build up others and encourage the good of the whole.

This plays out in all kinds of different ways. If you’re an executive at work, it’s making sure that your employees are paid well, that they’re cared for, that there’s vacation time and rest time, and that you yourself aren’t taking more than perhaps what is allotted to others—that you’re asking of them what you ask of yourself.

As a teacher, you’re setting your classroom in such a way in which you’re caring for each and every student. As a landlord, you have a vision to house others. In your social circles or in your family, if you’re the older sibling, you’re caring for your younger siblings, you’re inviting them along. If you are a person with relationships, you’re inviting others who might seem lonely into relationship.

Whatever it is, you have some role, some position, in which you can use that to protect yourself and get more for yourself, or you can use it to serve others.

So how might you use your position this week to serve others? Because as you do that, you will grow in your own humility and gentleness, and you will experience joy.

Lastly, we want to let life refine us. We want to let life shape us. So it says that Jesus was willing to even go to death on the cross. In John, we see that Jesus is in the garden praying, asking God the Father to take that journey away from him.

And so what we learn there is that Jesus very much did not want to travel that road, but was also committed to traveling that road if that’s what life had for him.

Now you and I will never face something of that same magnitude, but each of us will travel roads that are really hard to travel. We will travel health issues and relational loss. We will travel down roads in which we have made mistakes and hurt others. We will travel down roads in which others have made mistakes and hurt us. All of that sort of gets lumped in together.

And I think in those moments we have two choices. One, we can blame others, we can try to empower ourselves as victims, or we can become bitter and hardened. Or we can allow those things—those challenges, those mistakes, those moments of confession and forgiveness and growth—as a chance to help us build gentleness, to build humility, because we too know what it is like to experience challenge and loss.

And as we allow ourselves to be shaped that way, we’re going to return it with a sense of gentleness and humility to others. And as we do that, we will also experience the gentleness and humility of God, bringing us a sense of wholeness and joy.

To grow in gentleness and humility, I think it’s always helpful to take time to reflect on how life has shaped you. What are the hard things that you’ve traveled through? And how have they grown you in patience? How have they grown you in wisdom? How have they grown you in compassion for others?

Because each of those things helps us to create that spirit of gentleness and humility, the very one that Christ invites us to experience—his yoke, which is easy, his burden is light, because he is gentle and humble of heart.

I hope you have a great week, and I hope you have a chance to build humility and gentleness this week, so that as your character is shaped, you get to experience the joy of God. We thank you and hope you have a great week. Talk to you soon.