Don’t They Know Who I Am?

Bottom Line Upfront: Take this 4-minute Pride & Humility Check-Up here. I built it because I became increasingly aware of how easy it is to recognize pride in other people while remaining remarkably blind to my own.

One of my guests on the Spiritually Fit Today podcast recently reminded me that pride, not lust or greed, can become one of our most persistent spiritual struggles as we get older. That caught my attention because pride is one of those sins I have always been much better at recognizing in someone else.

I have never walked away from a sermon on humility thinking about my own pride. My mind goes to somebody who needed to hear the sermon more than I did. That reaction tells me that pride is often far more obvious from the outside than it is from the inside.

I have worked in Christian media for more than 20 years, and over that time I have watched some painful examples of what happens when recognition and ministry become tangled together. I have seen a Bible teacher berate a backstage sound technician and call him a loser. I have watched a well-known personality humiliate an enthusiastic fan who simply wanted to introduce himself. I have seen a high-profile leader spend a few years at a ministry, only to walk away with its major donor list to fund his own venture. And I once watched a prominent preacher dismiss the grieving widow of a colleague simply because he did not recognize her without her famous husband standing beside her.

Those incidents bothered me, and they should. But eventually I had to confront a more uncomfortable question: Why is pride so easy for me to identify when someone else is displaying it?

For years I have said that Christian media can be like opium. Recognition can become addictive, and over time it can quietly distort the way a person sees himself and the people around him. Different personalities express that pride differently, but it can be boiled down to the same question: Don’t they know who I am?

If I’m honest, my own pride often manifests in this way. Nobody knows who I am. Nobody notices what I have done. Nobody understands how much I have contributed, and they should.

Then there’s my friend Dan Whitney, whom most people know as Larry the Cable Guy. I have been with Dan at events where people continually ask for pictures or a moment of his time. What strikes me is not merely that he tolerates the interruptions, he shows gratitude.

Dan, a professional comedian, exemplifies Christian humility better than most of the media preachers I’ve watched. He never acts like the room owes him anything. Instead, he seems genuinely aware that people have given up their time, attention, or comfort just to listen to and possibly meet him — and he treats that as a gift.

Watching that has challenged me because humility becomes much easier to understand when you see it lived rather than merely defined.

What Pride Actually Looks Like

Scripture does not describe humility as pretending we have no abilities, accomplishments, or value. Instead, it warns us that pride creeps in when we forget where our gifts, opportunities, and successes ultimately come from.

In Deuteronomy we find a warning to Israel about the temptation that comes with success: “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes... Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth’” (Deuteronomy 8:11,17).

 Paul presses the same issue from another direction in 1 Corinthians 4:7 when he asks, “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?”

Pride begins vertically when we forget our dependence on God, but eventually it appears horizontally in our relationships. We compare ourselves with others. We become defensive when corrected. We want control. We notice when our contribution is overlooked. We struggle when someone else gets the credit we expected.

Jesus gives us a vivid picture of this in a parable found in Luke 18:9-14. The Pharisee prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men.” But the tax collector could barely lift his eyes and asked God for mercy. The Pharisee could see everyone else’s failures clearly. What he could not see was himself.

Humility is not the opposite extreme of believing we are worthless. Romans 12:3 tells us to think about ourselves with “sober judgment.” Jesus knew exactly who He was when He washed His disciples’ feet in John 13. Humility does not require denying the truth about yourself. It requires seeing yourself truthfully before God and then allowing that truth to shape the way you treat other people.

That’s important because simply asking ourselves, “Am I humble?” is not very useful. Most of us know the “right” answer. Pride becomes visible in our reflexive responses to the things we didn’t plan for:

• When someone corrects us.

• When another person receives the credit.

• When an embarrassing mistake becomes public.

• When our hard work goes unnoticed, or someone younger and less experienced tries to teach us something.

Eventually I became tired of observing those reflexes in everyone except myself.

So We Built a Mirror

Our team at the Center for Scripture Absorption built a simple 20-question Pride & Humility Check-Up. It takes about four minutes, and rather than asking whether you consider yourself humble, it asks about situations where pride tends to become visible.

What happened the last time someone younger corrected you? How did you respond when somebody else received the credit? What happens inside you when no one notices the work you did?

The check-up is not designed to diagnose your soul or attach a label to you. Its purpose is simpler: to help identify patterns you may not be noticing on your own. Pride is rarely equally strong in every part of our lives. Someone can be very teachable about theology but extremely controlling about money. Another person may gladly credit someone on their accomplishments but become defensive whenever someone questions a decision.

Seeing that pattern gives us something specific to work on.

That is why the assessment does not stop with a score. It identifies an area to pay attention to and connects it with one practical step for the next 30 days, drawn from Scripture. The goal is not another program to complete. It is a practice that helps us respond differently the next time that particular form of pride surfaces.

I took the assessment myself. I am not going to tell you my score, but I will tell you that one result confirmed something I already suspected about myself, while another pointed out an area I had not been watching nearly closely enough.

James 4:6 says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” If pride is difficult to see from the inside, one of the first acts of humility may simply be becoming willing to look.

Take the 4-minute Pride & Humility Check-Up here.

Then, if you are willing to make the exercise considerably more uncomfortable and probably more useful, send it to two people who know you well and ask them to answer the questions with you in mind (the survey form will help you with this). When they tell you what they see, resist the urge to explain why they misunderstood you. Listen, thank them, and spend some time considering whether there is something there God wants you to see.

That response may tell you as much about pride and humility as the assessment itself.

Still in the fight with you,

P.S. Speaking of Dan Whitney, this week on Spiritually Fit Today, I welcome my good friend into the studio to talk about overcoming anxiety, breaking the habit of complaining, and finding renewed purpose in your faith.