The Cathedral Builder

In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis gives us one of the most surprising definitions of humility ever written. The senior demon Screwtape is coaching his nephew Wormwood on how to corrupt a young Christian, and he warns him that God's idea of humility is far more dangerous than they expected.

Screwtape explains that God wants to bring each person to a state of mind where they could design the finest cathedral in the world, know it to be the finest, and rejoice in that fact — without being any more or less glad than if someone else had built it. God wants a person so free from self-bias that they can delight in their own gifts as honestly and gratefully as they delight in a neighbor's.

This stunned me the first time I read it. We often think humility means downplaying our abilities, shuffling our feet, and mumbling, "Oh, it was nothing." But Lewis, through the mouth of a demon, reveals something deeper. True humility isn't pretending you can't sing when you can. It's singing your heart out and being just as thrilled when the person next to you sings even better.

The Apostle Paul understood this. "By the grace of God I am what I am," he wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:10. No false modesty. No self-promotion. Just honest gratitude before the Almighty.

Humility isn't blindness to your gifts. It's clarity about where they came from.