Why Humility is the Secret to Real Happiness

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth,
who have observed his law;
seek justice, seek humility.

In 2015, two great spiritual masters met for a week in India
to try to uncover what led to true happiness of life,
true joy of life.
The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu
met and wrote a book called The Book of Joy,
and you have heard me make reference
to it many times over the years.
They spent this time trying to determine
what are the key components about this deep happiness
that can come in our life.

What they found surprised people.
It was not resilience.
It was not persistence or accomplishments.
It was not even faith itself,
at least not the first step of it.
What became very clear to them
was that the foundational component,
what they called a pillar of humility.

To be humble before God
and know that they are a child of God.
Happiness comes from that.
We are no better than anybody else.
No one else is any better than us.
And because of that foundational principle,
everything else is built and flows from there.

When we do not have humility,
we go in a different way.
We get caught up in what they call the prison of “me,”
instead of the liberation of “we.”
A prisoner of me is when we are so trying
to impress the world with our accomplishments
and we gather what we have.
When we spend all our time there it steals our freedom.
That is what they call a prison.
It steals our freedom.
But then when we focus on others,
when we look outwards, then we are set free.
That is why it is called the freedom of we.
You know, it is not a naive thought.

The temptation is to say
that is great for two spiritual leaders like that
but we are different.
But you know, they were not naive.
They had great suffering in their own life
so this came out of experience.
This was not just theological thoughts
in the middle of a holy place in India.
They instead were reflecting on their own life.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu
had been subject to great suffering
with his experience of apartheid.
His life was constantly under threat from people on all sides.
People who disagreed with this freedom that he professed,
and others with his forgiveness.

The Dalai Lama himself had to run for his life.
Tens of thousands of his followers
were slaughtered in the search for him.
And he lived with that guilt.
In exile, he came to discover this truth.
So this was not a naive sense of happiness,
a naive sense of joy.
It came to be foundational for them.

This does not sit well with us in Silicon Valley.
We are a culture of innovation and disruption.
We count our successes by our investments,
our portfolio, our titles, our accomplishments.
You know, move fast and break things.
Iterate. Keep going.
Do not worry about the damage done.
Just keep iterating.
Accomplish more. Build big and fast.

In that culture,
it is very hard to hear the language of humility
because we are not surrounded by it.
It is counterintuitive that this would give us happiness,
this would give us true joy.
But that is the message of the Scriptures today.
It is a consistent message of Christ.
Humility. Humility.

Jim Collins wrote a book,
it is an old book now called “Good to Great”.
It was for business leaders.
He spent five years researching
what made a great company
and a great CEO of a great company.
Again, it was counterintuitive.
It actually was not powerful and loudness and authoritarianism.
It actually came down to a powerful culture, community.
It was people who had
a clear sense of humility and a fierce resolve.

They often would take the blame themselves, so to speak,
for things that went wrong,
even when they themselves might not have been at fault.

It is funny that both spiritual research
and business research points to the same thing.
Humility is the pillar.

Now look, inside our own tradition, we have the same thing.
The greatest of saints said the same thing.
Saint Benedict said the three most important virtues
are humility, humility, humility.
Saint Augustine, who Pope Leo loves to quote
because of course he is an Augustinian,
said the foundational virtue of all virtues is humility.
If one does not have the virtue of humility,
none of the others are authentic or real.

And Mother Teresa would say
the mother of all virtues is humility.
To serve others,
recognize that you are no better than them,
that you are equal,
you are a human being
just like the other person we are called to serve.
And I could go on
because every saint, every one of them has said this.

But today’s three readings all go at the same thing.
The prophet Zephaniah calls the humble people,
the remnant, the leftover,
the ones that would just hold on,
and they were to be humble and to seek justice.
That is the call, to be humble and to seek justice.

Saint Paul to the Corinthians reminds the people,
he says, you are nobody.
None of us were of noble birth here.
None of us are great and we are not worthy leaders.
Rather it was God who chose us foolish to make shame the wise.
He chose the little ones to humble the big ones.
It reminds him that Christ himself was the humblest of all.
Because he is the Son of God
and he allows himself to be hung on a cross.
I mean, there is the profound humility.

When Jesus goes at this today,
we hear Jesus at the beginning
of his sermon on the mountain.
That is what this is, Matthew’s gospel.
He goes up on the mountain
and he starts out with this,
what we consider as his Magna Carta, the Beatitudes.
He does not dismiss the law,
but he says, here is what the law brings out.

These Beatitudes,
blessed are those who are poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who are mourning.
Blessed are those who are meek.
Blessed are those who are peacemakers, who seek justice.
And all of them speak of being rooted
in this virtue or this ethic of humility.

So, what are we to do?
It is very hard for us who live in one world
and to hear this when we come on Sunday.
We have got to reconcile this.
And yet, that is what our call is, is to be humble.

Now, not meekness as intimidation.
That is not what the saints say.
That is not a strength.
That is a false sense of humility.
Humility is I am recognizing
that I am no better than you
and you are no better than me.
That we are equal in God’s eyes.

Out of that is born
that I am called to treat you with humanity.
Every part, everyone,
even the people I disagree with,
I am called to,
maybe especially the ones who I disagree with,
I am called to treat with humility.

What are we to do?
I am going to suggest a couple of things.
And you choose one or all of them.
I do not know. It is up to you.

Inside our own circle of family and friends,
can we be humble enough to not have the last word?
Or maybe humble enough not to have the first word?
Can we be humble enough to listen and to say,
you know, maybe this person
sees a little bit different than I do.
Maybe it is because of their youthfulness,
they have a different perspective.
Or maybe their seniority
is an elder in our house
that we need to listen to them with humility.
Can we learn to listen inside the family, the first circle?

The second circle is the next group of people
who we interact with outside the family.
Can we be humble enough to think
that maybe the words that we have,
the people that we listen to,
the news channels that we listen to, the sources,
may not be the whole truth.
In fact, maybe incredibly biased,
but we do not know that.

Can we be humble enough to say,
I do not have it all,
and that I want to ask a question
and not tell you what I have heard?
Can we find a way to have an honest dialogue,
especially in our country today?
We desperately need that,
to be able to listen to another in these different areas.

Because I can tell you, my friends,
there are different sources of information,
and they are not all the truth.
They have an agenda to engage us,
because our eyeballs are worth money on television.
Our eyeballs are worth money on social media.
That is all they are interested in.
They are only interested in engagement.
They are not interested in the truth itself.

So, we have to be careful.
Can we be humble enough to know
that we may be being played?
Somebody may be playing us out there,
because there is a lot of different information.
It is very hard.

When we go to the people who we love
and who are part of this community and other people,
that we are humble enough to think,
maybe I do not have all the facts,
and we stand in humility.

And then the other part is,
this one is a little longer,
because when the Lord says we are blessed,
that means He moves closer to us.
If we are mourning, He comes closer to us.
If we are suffering, He comes close to us.
And that is what makes us blessed,
is because God moves closer to us.

Now, if God moves closer to us when we are suffering,
can we now be those who move closer to others
when they are suffering?
So that is last challenge,
are we willing to step outside of our comfort zone,
outside of our family and our friends and our community,
and to stand with those who are suffering,
those who are being persecuted,
those who are on the fringes?
Why? Because we have been blessed
and we want to bless them.

Does not mean we agree with them.
Does not mean we have to love all their antics,
but it means that we move close to them,
because we are called to be one people of all the earth.
We are called to be humble,
and to recognize that God created all of us,
every one of us in His image.

And that comes with an inherited dignity
that nobody has the right to change or take away.
So, if we stand with those who are hurting,
who are wounded and broken,
and may be sorrowful and mourning.

Now, I understand all three of those
are three different challenges,
and three tough ones today.
But that is our call.
The gospel is never easy.
It is simple, be humble, but it is not easy.

If it was easy, the church would be full, and it is not.
And there are lots of people who do not come to church.
Why? Because they do not want to hear the message,
because they like their silo,
because that reverberates what they have always thought.
We come to break out of that each Sunday,
to hear the gospel.

And so, let us hear that call today,
because it is a tough one. It is a tough one.
We are called to be humble.

Let us listen to Christ
and every wise teacher who has ever spoken.
They have said the same thing.
The foundation of all happiness and joy in our life,
the secret to all happiness and all joy
is first, humility.

Seek the Lord, all you humble of the earth,
who have observed his law;
seek justice, seek humility.