Humility: The Way Up Is Down

I used to think humility was a personality trait. Some people are naturally humble - soft-spoken, deferential, comfortable in the background. Others are bold, assertive, front-and-centre. I assumed humility belonged to the first group and leadership belonged to the second.

I was wrong on both counts.

Humility Is Not an Emotion

Humility isn't a feeling, and it isn't meekness in the watered-down way we usually use that word. It's a decision of the will: the deliberate choice to take the low place, to not promote myself, to let the work speak and to be at peace if it doesn't speak loudly enough.

This is harder than it sounds, especially when you lead, when you've built something, when you know you're good at what you do.

The first sin ever committed in the universe - if we follow the biblical narrative - wasn't lust or murder or theft. It was pride. And it wasn't committed by a human. It was committed by an angel, a being of extraordinary beauty and power who decided he deserved a higher place than the one he'd been given.

That tells me something important: pride is not a weakness of the ignorant. It's a temptation of the capable.

Dust and Breath

There's a picture in Genesis that I keep coming back to. God creates humanity from dust - the lowest material imaginable - and then breathes His own life into it. Low origin. High endowment. That's the design.

We were made to carry something extraordinary in something ordinary. To represent the Creator visibly. To exercise real authority - but always on behalf of someone else, never for ourselves. To walk in fellowship with God, which by definition means dependence, not independence.

The moment we flip that design - when we want the authority without the dependence, the high without the low - everything breaks.

What This Looks Like in Practice

I pastor a church, run an IT business, and lead a palliative care organization. In each of those contexts, humility looks different but costs the same.

In business, humility means admitting when I've underestimated a project. It means telling a client "I got that wrong" instead of spinning the narrative. It means hiring people smarter than me and not feeling threatened by them.

In church leadership, humility means not needing to be the smartest voice in the room. It means receiving correction from people I lead without getting defensive. It means doing the unglamorous work - setting up chairs, cleaning up after events - without an internal monologue about how I'm "above" this.

In palliative care, humility is built into the work itself. You sit with people who are dying. There is no room for ego at a deathbed. The patient doesn't care about your title or your achievements. They need you to be present, gentle, and honest. That strips away pretence faster than anything I've experienced.

The Decision

Every morning, I face the same choice. Will I take the low place today? Not because I lack confidence; I don't. Not because I lack ability - God has been generous. But because I've seen what happens when capable people choose self-promotion over service. I've watched it destroy teams, families, churches, and businesses.

The way up is down. That isn't only a spiritual principle; I've watched it hold as plain leadership reality. The leaders people trust and follow over the long term are the ones who don't need the spotlight, who give credit away freely, who take responsibility instead of deflecting it, who serve the mission rather than their own reputation.

So humility is a decision I make before a meeting, before I answer criticism, before I teach or lead - the decision to hold loosely what I've been given, because none of it was earned in the first place.

Take the low place. Don't promote yourself. Let Someone else do the lifting. It's a discipline, and it never really gets easier. It just gets clearer.