False humility and how to avoid it

I used to think I didn’t have a pride problem. I know, I know. The first sign that someone probably has issues with pridefulness is her belief that she doesn’t. But truth is, self-flagellation, more than self-promotion, always came more easily to me.

Once during spiritual direction, I expressed similar sentiments.

“You suffer from a bad case of false humility,” my wise spiritual director informed me. “Pride and vanity are tightly braided together, and you are grappling with both.”

Huh? Little, lowly me? Vain, maybe, but prideful?

Throughout my life, I’ve tirelessly tried to put my best (read: perfect) self forward. As a teenager and young woman, I was so preoccupied with my outward beauty and using the scale as a barometer of my self-worth that I fell prey to anorexia and the bulimia. Even as I became rifle-thin, my cheeks would burn with humiliation when I remembered vicious, middle school boys oinking at my chubbier self.

As a writer, I’ve sometimes longed for bigger bylines, or I obsessed over an editing error in a final copy.

As a runner, it often wasn’t about the sheer fact that I showed up for the race, but how fast my pace was, especially compared to others.

As a young mother, I so desperately wanted to be the perfect parent that I subscribed to magnanimous parenting principles and couldn’t let go of them even when it was clear they weren’t working for my children or my family.

Then, whenever I couldn’t live up to any perfect ideal – and I never could – it was dangerously easy to fall into the trap of false humility. Oh, I am such a miserable sinner. I’m unworthy – a weak, good-for- nothing nobody.

So then what did I do? I tried harder, often to the point of burnout, anxiety, and abject misery.

But why? Because I was afraid. Of failure. Of unpopularity and rejection. Of losing control. Of people seeing the skeletons, dust bunnies, a slower race finish, and mismatched shoes hiding in the closet.

Some of us may wrestle with more traditional pride, but we’re equally fearful. Maybe we see others as not being worth our time and attention. That makes us no better than the playground bully who targets anyone on the social margins, putting others down to make us feel better about ourselves.

That’s where the devil is hiding – in your belief that you or perhaps others are unworthy – even of God’s mercy and love. The devil doesn’t want you to move forward and serve others. He wants you stuck in your haughtiness or self-loathing.

But Our Heavenly Father desires something different for you. He wants you to step forward in faith and introduce the world to your brave, authentic self and to do everything out of love, not out of conceit.

Lent is a beautiful time to take stock of all the things God has done for you in your life and own it. That’s not prideful. That’s an act of gratitude.

None of us is really worthy of God’s unending love and mercy. None of us deserved the gift of God sacrificing His only Son and His suffering a brutal death just to redeem this broken, messy lot of us. We are all the weak, lowly, and fainthearted. The cross is the great equalizer. Jesus died for all of us – the haughty, the lowly, the very ones we judge, covet, compete with, or try to impress with our shiny, perfect veneers.

Jesus showed us how to be truly humble to the point of death.

Don’t undermine His sacrifice. He’s telling all of us as He hangs from the cross, arms outstretched, that we are worth it. With every last drop of blood, He lovingly whispers: You are worth it.

***A version of this reflection originally appeared in Above All, a Lenten scripture study.