Transformation in Christ_ On the Christian Attitude - Dietrich Von Hildebrand [81]
Humility contains an element of holy audacity
For to the core of humility belongs a gesture of holy audacity. As faith, hope, and charity cannot be without an element of boldness, so also does true humility demand it. Our jubilant assent to our own insignificance, our heroic abandonment of all self-glorification, the relinquishment of self in following Christ—all this is incompatible with tepid mediocrity and cautious smugness. Humility is the opposite, not only of all malicious pride but of all forms of self-centered mediocrity, such as emphasis on petty pleasures or honors, any kind of slavery to conventions, any attachment of importance to unimportant concerns, any cowardice, any bourgeois complacency.
Humility, which springs from our confrontation with God, necessarily bursts the bonds of all mundane immanence, of the peripheral, terrestrial, everyday aspect of all things, based on a vision of the world which would forever bar our access to God. Whereas the virtue of modesty, operating on the level of earthly relationships, is linked to an attitude of quiet reserve or even resignation in which there is no place for boldness, humility implies a heavenward aspiration that carries with it a breath of greatness and holy audacity. The total relinquishment of self, the blissful dying away of the ego—this means an ultimate jubilant freedom; an unthwarted subsistence in truth.
Humility is the antithesis to all forms of pride—above all, to the two types described above which, for all their distinctness, are both characterized by an act of rebellion against God. But there are other kinds of pride: self-complacency and what we may call haughtiness or social pride. To these, too, humility stands opposed.
Prideful self-complacency uses values to enhance its own position
A person who is merely self-complacent is not blighted with resentment against value as such; nor does he reach out to dethrone the values of God, the exemplar of all values. Rather, in order to nourish his consciousness of counting for much and his cult of self, he would possess all values. He does not feel insulted by their existence and splendor; he may not even find it difficult to recognize God as the supreme Lord. Rather he would insinuate himself with God and bask in the sunshine of his dignity before God.
At heart, he too is afflicted with value-blindness. For it is not the intrinsic importance of the good and the beautiful that moves him; he is interested in values merely as an ornament for his own self. He accepts them as one accepts a convention, out of his desire to stand confirmed and glorious in the face of his fellow men, of himself, and even of God. His pretensions are not so great as those implied in satanic pride. He does not consider challenging values or defying God; his presumption is to use the metaphysical power of values, and the respect they compel, to gratify his pride.
The complacent man does not expressly deny that he has received his grandeur from God; but like the Pharisee of the parable in the Gospel, he boasts of whatever excellence he may possess as though he had it of himself. In his heart of hearts, he fails to take account of the fact that he has received everything from God. The Pharisee, in particular, though not expressly bent on dethroning God, is anxious lest God, as it were, should dethrone him; hence, he only tolerates God at a remote distance, a majestic looking and not very troublesome God whom he may use for the confirmation of his own glory. Against the incarnate God-Man, however, who spells a threat of direct confrontation with God, who is Himself humble and demands humility of others, the Pharisee conceives a mortal hatred.
The quality of self-complacency varies according to the values it abuses
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