Building Trust Through Humility.

Webster defines Humility as – “a sense of one’s own unworthiness through imperfection.” “An act of submission” “Freedom from arrogance” Our culture thinks humility is being a door mat, perceived as weak and soft, so we are conditioned by culture to think we are better than someone else.

So, I came across a study by this guy named David Dunning, who is a psychologist, from Cornell.

He did a study and wrote Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, he came to this premise that Americans have a holier than thou complex. Listen to what he said; “ the average American thinks they are better than the average American.”

How many of us agree with that? Even in that we aren’t thinking about ourselves but about someone else, which is actually David Dunning’s point. So how can we have a healthier community if I think I am better than you.

Our culture grades you on the car you drive, zip code you live in, education background and often times on the color of your skin. We have also been conditioned to kind of do the same, but as followers of Christ called into community with one another, we have to disown these cultural scales.

 2 Cor 5:15-16,

15, And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.

16, So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer.

Outside Christ people will judge according to the flesh (I am sure you have those co-workers that look down on others because they are in management or senior leadership) but in Christ, we judge nobody according to the flesh. Because in Christ, your education, zip code, economic status, color of your skin, designer clothes, etc could not save you.

Phil 2:3-6

3 “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.

5 In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: 6, Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

Jesus didn’t leverage his advantage.

So Jesus didn’t only have one up on us, he had billions up on us. So what did he do with it?

He didn’t use it for his own advantage.

Our culture advocates us to use and leverage any advantage we have in the market place or in any social setting.

But Jesus does something that is totally out of our cultural norms, instead of using his advantage against us, he used his advantage for us by serving us. Showing us his followers how to use any advantage we have to serve others verses using it against others.

That is what humility is, figuring out what advantage you might have on others and using it for them verses using it against them.