Humility and Pride

May 22, 2026

I have been pondering humility and pride, and how much these two words explain the way a man stands before God.

Webster's 1828 Dictionary is really helpful here, because it gives the older spiritual meaning of these words. Humble is lowly, modest, meek, submissive, and opposed to proud, haughty, arrogant, or assuming. Humility is freedom from pride and arrogance, with submission to the divine will. Pride is excessive self-esteem, an unreasonable opinion of one's own superiority, and arrogance is taking too much upon oneself.

That is enough to open the matter.

Humility is not a man hating himself. It is a man coming down into truth. He is no longer lifted up in his own eyes. He is no longer trying to be above others. He is no longer carrying himself as though his wisdom, his gifts, his religion, his knowledge, or his station make him more than he really is before God.

That is a wonderful thing.

A humble man can be taught. He can be corrected. He can hear something from God without first defending the image he has built of himself. He does not have to win every point. He does not have to protect every opinion. He does not have to stand high in every room.

He can come down.

Most people think of a proud man as loud, arrogant, rich, powerful, or popular. They picture someone who walks into a room and wants everyone to know he is important. That kind of pride is real, and it is ugly, but I do not think it is the most common kind.

The more common proud man may be quiet. He may be polite. He may not put others down. He may not think of himself as above anyone. He may even believe he is humble.

But he is not teachable before God.

That is where pride becomes much more searching. Pride is not only thinking you are better than other people. Pride is also thinking you do not need God to correct you. It is holding so tightly to what you already believe that even God has to press hard before you will let it go. It is refusing His teaching while still thinking of yourself as a humble person.

I know this because I have been there.

There was a time when I told God I wanted the truth, and that I would accept whatever He told me the truth was, no matter what it was. I meant it. At least I thought I meant it.

Then the first thing He showed me was that I was prideful.

I was shocked.

That was not what I expected Him to say. I thought I was asking for truth, and I thought I was humble enough to receive it. But then my own words came back to me: I will believe whatever You tell me the truth is, no matter what it is.

So there was the test.

Would I receive the truth when the truth was about me?

Then God showed me something even more painful. He showed me that for decades He had been trying to teach me, and I had not been willing to receive much of what He was giving.

The strange thing is that during those years I thought I was humble. I thought God was leading me and I was following Him. And in one sense that was true. He was leading me, and I was following Him as far as I was willing to go.

But I was only receiving the teachings that fit what I already believed, or the teachings I liked, or the teachings that did not require me to let go of something I was holding too tightly. I could receive light when it confirmed me. I struggled to receive light when it corrected me.

At the time I did not see that as pride.

That is what makes this kind of pride so dangerous. It can live inside a religious man, a sincere man, even a man who prays and believes he is following God. It does not always say, I am better than others. Sometimes it simply says, I already understand this. God would not ask me to let that go. That cannot be true because it does not fit what I have always believed.

And all the while, God may be trying to give the man so much more.

That was the mercy in being corrected. Once I saw it, I could repent. Once I repented, I became more teachable. And once I became teachable, God could begin to give me truths I had not been able to receive before.

That may be one of the loveliest parts of humility. It lets a man come down without being destroyed. Pride makes coming down feel like death, because pride has built its life on being seen, being right, being superior, being important. But humility has already accepted the truth. God is high. Man is low. God gives. Man receives. God teaches. Man learns.

There is peace in that order.

Meekness belongs right beside humility. A meek man is not weak. He is not empty of strength. He is a man whose strength has come under rule. He may feel deeply. He may see wrong clearly. He may have power to answer back, defend himself, or press his will forward, but he is not ruled by reaction.

That is not weakness. That is government of the soul.

A meek man is gentle because he is not trying to prove himself. He is patient because pride is not demanding immediate victory. He can bear injury without becoming bitter, and he can pass through correction without becoming hard. He can bow before God even when life is not ordered the way he would have chosen.

That is a higher kind of strength.

Pride is different. Pride makes self too large. It takes the gifts of God, or the knowledge God has given, or the place a man has been allowed to stand, and turns those things into fuel for self-importance. A man can become proud of almost anything. He can be proud of his mind, his work, his family, his religion, his sacrifice, his experience, even the truths God has mercifully shown him.

That is a fearful thing.

Truth received from God should make a man more humble, not more lifted up. If light makes me look down on others, then something has gone wrong in me. If revelation makes me hard, cold, superior, or impossible to correct, then I have taken a holy thing and fed pride with it.

The Order of Adam was received by revelation. Adam had to be taught. The fathers had to be taught. Abraham had to hear God and obey. The Messiah Himself showed the perfect pattern when He did nothing of Himself, but did the will of the Father.

So the question is not only what a man knows. The question is whether he can still be taught.

This matters so much, because the purpose of the Order of Adam is not to make men great in their own eyes. It is to bring families into the presence of God. A proud man cannot bring his family into that presence while he is trying to occupy the center himself. The father is not the source. The institution is not the source. The teacher is not the source. God is the source, and the Messiah is the way back to the Father.

Humility keeps that order clean.

The humble man can receive from God and pass it on without pretending it began with him. He can teach his family without ruling them by vanity. He can administer sacred things without turning them into a display of his own importance. He can repent in front of those he loves. He can say, I was wrong. He can say, God has more to teach me. He can say, let us seek Him together.

What a different spirit that is.

That is why humility is so central to return. To return to God, a man must come down from the false height he has built in himself. He must become meek enough to receive instruction, honest enough to repent, and lowly enough to follow the Messiah back to the Father.

The Messiah is the great pattern of this. He had more right to glory than any man who ever lived, and yet He submitted Himself wholly to the Father. He spoke the Father's words. He did the Father's will. He gave the glory to the Father. He bowed, suffered, obeyed, and opened the way for the children of God to return.

So humility is not smallness in the ugly sense. It is order. It is truth. It is the soul no longer swollen beyond its measure. It is the man standing where he ought to stand, under God, beside his fellowmen, teachable, thankful, and ready to obey.

Pride puffs a man up.

Humility makes him real.

And only a real man, a humbled man, a meek man, can receive the instruction of God without turning it into his own throne.

Reference
Noah Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828, entries for humble, humility, meek, meekness, pride, proud, arrogance, arrogant, haughty, and assuming.