When comparing humility to pride/ego, most of the comparisons are common sense, but I wanted to study the unseen factors of these three very opposite emotions. I found that they are not as opposite as I thought, and all three can be very helpful if they are in balance with each other, and from experience being unbalanced with your emotions will cause a lot of life problems.
So the term I would like to use is, “even keel,” defined as maintaining an emotional balance, working or progressing smoothly, without any sudden change, calm or steady, especially during or after a period of troubles or difficulty. The definition of humble is not proud and does not believe they are better than other people, keeping quiet about their accomplishments and good things they do. The Latin word for humility is humilitas, which means groundedness.
Researchers show that true humility is an honest, grounded confidence and an ability to view oneself accurately, talents and flaws, viewed as weakness, but it is actually strength. An article by Rasey LaVine states that people who are humble by their circumstances may face hard realities by an unforeseen disaster, financial crisis, public humiliation or embarrassment. Some people will recognize these hard truths and seek help others might not. Words that describe a person who is not humble: proud, arrogant, self-centered, egocentric, egotistical, narcissistic or boastful.
Moving on to pride, first, positive pride is having a strong sense of self-worth. The definition of self-worth is a sense of one’s own value as a human being. What about an overly unbalanced pride? A person characterized by lack of self-awareness, often blind to their personal flaws and resistant to acknowledge areas for improvement. How about a positive ego? A healthy ego is a good thing, because it boosts our self-confidence, pushing us to confront or overcome our fears. Finally, an out of control ego is a feeling of intense jealousy when others succeed, having a persistent need to be right during arguments, and winning at all cost.
In my opinion, I see these emotions every day, good and bad. It’s amazing how people, including myself, react, feel or think about emotion, or not. In America, we do have free will, which means we can watch what we want to, we have freedom of speech, we can even carry a gun while we are exercising these freedoms. For myself, studying these emotions was therapy. Now, let me go to the word of God and see what he said about emotion. First of all, the Bible said in so many words the heart is the seat of emotion. For some Biblical ancestors, the heart was hardened. Some showed affection. The heart is mentioned over 300 times. I read that even physiologists say that the heart is capable of sending fear inducing signals to the brain. Matthew 22:37-39 says, “Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the greatest commandment, and the second is like unto it. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Proverbs 12:25 says, “Heaviness in the heart of a man maketh it stoop, but a good word maketh glad.” (Stoop means bend over.)
The main Biblical ancestor I think of when it comes to a hard heart is what Joseph brothers did to him. Genesis 37:4 says, “When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brethren, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably unto him.” Amazing. And this happens today. When a person finds out they are not as good as someone else, especially if that person has a big out of control ego or I’m the king or queen of whatever, it’s going to be hatred, and what they did to young Joseph was terrible, but God had his hands on him and other people saw what Israel saw in his son.
And what about Jonah, whose heart was so hardened he refused God’s commandments and sailed away from Nineveh. He reminds me of me, always headed in the wrong direction. He knew God would save the people of Nineveh, but he himself didn’t want to see that happen. Talk about big ego and pride. Romans 12:3 says, “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” In conclusion, writing these words have been very helpful to me, and my hopes are that someone else may look at the things we do every day and maybe we might need to check or be aware of how we think, feel or display our emotion.