I Am Strong

One of the things that helps us Live in Truth is to recognize our strengths and dwell on them instead of thinking about our weaknesses. Often in a religious culture the meaning of humility is misunderstood. We think that to be humble we need to put ourselves down, but Jesus Christ is our best example of all principles of the gospel and He never once put himself down. He declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the light” (John 14:6). That wasn’t a boast; it was a fact. (My favorite definition of humility is “Power under control.”)

By the same token, we should recognize our strengths and instead of debasing ourselves we should think about our strengths and encourage ourselves to use them whenever we can—never boasting, but always aware of and using our strengths. By doing this we crowd out thoughts of our weaknesses and generate feelings of happiness and joy that then feed and contribute to the growth of our strengths.

God has given each of us multiple talents and strengths. He’s told us so (D&C 46), and He cannot lie. For us to claim we have no strengths is to deny God.

So make a list of your strengths and then think about them daily. Drive away negative thoughts with thoughts of your strengths. Spend time enhancing and using your strengths, and then enjoy the happiness that flows into your life.

Power Under Control

Marianne Williamson in her book Return to Love, says, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.” I love this quote and what it teaches me.

For one thing, it is about humility. Too often we have a false notion that humility is putting ourselves down—being small. Jesus Christ is the perfection of all good traits and he never put himself down. Instead He proclaimed, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). What this teaches us is that an essential ingredient in humility is honesty.

One of my favorite definitions of humility is “Power under control.” What that means to me is that we acknowledge the power we have but we don’t misuse or abuse that power. If we have the power to play beautiful music we acknowledge that gift and use it whenever appropriate to bless the lives of others and to make ourselves happy, but we never flaunt it or put others down because they can’t make the same music we can make. Especially we don’t go around saying we don’t make beautiful music just because we think that is being humble.

If we are going to become heavenly beings, we need to recognize the powers that are ours and use them, share them, and thank God for them, but never diminish or deny them.

Humbly Being

I was in a meeting a few weeks ago when one woman began to say some very nice things about another woman in the room. As the second woman realized she was the one being talked about she yelled out, “Don’t go there. Don’t say that.”

I know both the women, and I know that what the first was saying was true. But the second woman’s reaction is very normal. So the question is, why is it that we can’t take a compliment when it is offered in all sincerity without saying something to negate the compliment? There are several reasons I’ve thought of and they all lead us back to Living in Truth.

One reason is that for some reason we think all our faults cancel out all our good qualities. We hear the compliment offered but we think about all the ways we fell short in the last week and decide we couldn’t possibly be the wonderful person that is being complimented. That reminds me of something my grandson, Aaron, said yesterday. D2 texted me his comment, “Mom, I’m really bad at being really good.” Instead of recognizing that there are areas of our lives in which we are really good and there are areas of our lives in which we need improvement, we lump it all together and like some mathematical equation where the negative sign always carries over into the answer, we total ourselves up to be negative. That just isn’t true. The Truth is that we all have faults and we all have strengths. Those strengths are gifts of God and denying them is denying God.

Another reason we negate compliments is that we have a false sense of what it means to be humble. Jesus Christ was the example of all goodness and values. He was meek. He was humble. When asked who He was He answered, “I am” meaning He is life itself. He is existence. That “I am” was often followed with things like, “I am the way, the truth, and the light.” Now you might excuse yourself by saying that He is a God and so He isn’t in the same category as we are. But that doesn’t work. The lesson here is that Jesus Christ knew who He was and what God had made Him. He knew the Truth. We, too, should know who we are and what God has made us—not just the negative, but also all the positive. I once heard humility defined as “power under control.” I like that definition a lot and it perfectly describes humility as the Savior exemplified it.

Learning what it really means to be humble has been a difficult lesson for me. I grew up around people who negated every compliment and so I thought it was how I should react. But I’ve come to realize that when people compliment me what they are seeing is what God has given me, and my denying it is denying Him. Think about this: You give your daughter a beautiful new dress. It makes you happy to give it and give it with the intent to make her happy. But when you are out with the child someone compliments her on the dress and she responds, “What, this old dress. It’s not that great.” How would you feel?

Living in Truth means that we recognize the Truth. And the Truth is that all that is good in us comes from God. So when someone compliments what we do or what we are instead of negating it, we simply realize that what they are complimenting is the grace God has given us and we say thank you to them but then pass that thanks on to God. That is humility.

The Empty Cup

I love the old Japanese story that illustrates what it means to be humble: Early one morning a wise old monk answered a persistent pounding at his door to find a young monk on his doorstep. Without any words of greeting the young monk began, “I have studied with the best and wisest masters. I know Zen philosophy well, but I have been told that you are the wisest of all the masters and so I have come to be sure there is nothing I am missing.”

The old monk bowed politely and said, “Certainly. But before we begin come have tea with me.”

The two seated themselves and the old monk began to pour tea into the young monk’s cup, but when the cup was full he didn’t stop. He continued to pour hot tea until it flowed over the side of the cup, onto the table, and into the young monks lap.

The young monk jumped and began to shout. “You fool! You are no wise man. You can’t even pour tea.”

The old monk bowed again and replied, “You are as full as this cup. You have no room for more thoughts. When you have an empty mind come back and then you can learn something.”

Light to See By

One of the reasons I love Isaiah so much is that he speaks in pictures. By that I mean that what he teaches I often can see in my head in a picture. For example in Isaiah 50:11 Isaiah says, “Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks: walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.”

I’ve never done it myself, but I once watched my brother make a fire using flint and steel. It took awhile but as he struck the flint and steel together tiny sparks would fly from his hands and eventually they ignited the kindling he had gathered. But the sparks themselves were ever so small. In a dark room they might have looked bigger, but they still wouldn’t have been enough to generate light to see anything in the room let alone guide you along a dark path.

The picture I see when I read this verse is God on one side offering us the Light of Christ which shines like sun at noon day. This light brightly illuminates the dark path of life that all of us have to navigate in order to return to God. On the other side of the picture I see people (sometimes my stubborn self) turning their backs on the proffered sunlight and proudly working to strike flint and steel and make their own sparks to try to illuminate their way through the path of life. It is a lot of work to keep striking that flint and steel and yet they keep at it, smirks on their faces as they walk by way of the sparks they are creating. They are doing it their way and are so proud. Needless to say they get lost very fast!

When I catch myself leaving the realm of humility, I think of this picture and remember the words, “This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow.” That brings me back to the Light!

Humbly Brilliant

In conjunction with what I wrote yesterday, the question always comes up about humility. Aren’t we taught that we should be humble? As King Benjamin said, “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19).

So how does thinking of yourself as brilliant, talented, and fabulous fit in with humility? To answer that question let’s first define humble. My dictionary says humble is “not proud or haughty: not arrogant or assertive.” The Savior knew he was brilliant, talented, and fabulous. But He was humble because he was not proud, haughty, or arrogant about it. He was the Son of God. He knew that, but didn’t need to boast or flaunt that fact in order to make Himself feel good. Instead it was like a foundation to His character that everything else built upon but doesn’t need to be constantly referred to or pointed out.

My favorite saying about humility sums this up. People who are humble don’t think they are less than other people. Instead they think less of themselves than they do of other people. In other words, when we know we are children of God, our brilliance and talent is so much a foundation to our character that we don’t need to be constantly proving it to others (pride and haughtiness). Instead we forget about ourselves and use our inherited brilliance and talent to serve others. The key to humility is not demeaning yourself or thinking you are less than others; the key is in understanding where your brilliance and talent come from. As Williamson put it, “Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.”

Part of Living in Truth means understanding the truth of who and what you are--a talented and brilliant child of royal birth.


Picture: http://internetpaul.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/child-of-god.gif