Cultivating humility: reflections after the death of Tim Keller

When Benjamin Franklin was a young man, he decided to make a checklist of virtues to practice in order to complete the “bold and arduous task of moral perfection.”

As an eighteenth-century deist, this seemed to be an imminently sensible thing to do, because the deists of the era tended to be optimists about the possibility of moral self-improvement. Franklin’s parents and grandparents were Boston Puritans who believed in original sin, but Franklin himself was a free-thinker with an optimistic view of human nature’s capacity for moral advancement.

So, as a young adult, he made a list of twelve virtues and then added a brief one-sentence notation of how to achieve the virtue – such as “Temperance: Eat not to dullness, drink not to elevation.” He would work on one virtue a week, he decided. After a week of mastering temperance, he would then move on to the virtue of silence (which, to him, meant avoiding “trifling conversation” and speech that would be harmful to others), and from there to “order,” “resolution,” “frugality,” and so forth.

He showed the list to a Quaker friend. The Quaker advised him that he had omitted one key virtue: humility.

Franklin then hastily added it as the thirteenth point on his checklist: “Humility: Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

As Franklin quickly found out, that was easier said than done. He adopted a few techniques that gave the “appearance” of humility, he said – such as being less forceful in arguing for his opinions and liberally using phrases such as “I conceive” or “I imagine,” so that others would feel welcome to express their opinions as well. But while that did improve his conversations, it didn’t really lead to genuine humility, he found.

“In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride,” Franklin concluded. “Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

Anyone who has struggled with pride has probably discovered the same thing Franklin did. Pride is not like the sins of intemperance or gossip – vices that can be overcome to some degree through self-discipline. Instead, pride lies at the root of all other sins. In my experience, efforts to fight pride by focusing on self-abnegation or the deliberate cultivation of humility are doomed to fail, no matter how well-intentioned.

And yet every so often we meet deeply humble people who are also professionally successful and perhaps in a position of power – that is, in a position to justifiably take pride in their accomplishments and attract attention from others if they so chose. When they don’t seek the glory that could be theirs – and when they instead conduct themselves with humility and grace even in the midst of professional success – I make it a point of observing the person to determine what the secret of their humility is.

Tim Keller was such a person. He was the pastor of a 5,000-member megachurch and a New York Times bestselling author. Collectively, his books sold several million copies – and his recorded sermons likely reached an audience of millions as well. Politicians of the highest order – including President George W. Bush – made a point of seeking him out.

But by all accounts, Keller somehow remained a deeply humble man who was more interested in listening to others than in sharing his own opinion. He was often more interested in spending time with obscure people than with those who were famous. He turned down opportunities for greater political influence. He had no trouble relinquishing power in his church. He was quick to admit his faults. When others criticized him, he responded with grace.

What was the secret to this humility? When Keller spoke on the subject, he was fond of quoting C.S. Lewis: “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.”

In the Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, Keller argued that we only begin to think of ourselves less when we find our identity in Christ and feel accepted by God. Once that happens, we will have the freedom to enjoy the accomplishments of others without feeling the need to bolster our own fragile egos by seeking affirmation from others.

But I would also add one other point that I think might also explain Keller’s humility: People are willing to think of themselves less and rejoice in the accomplishments of others when they love the goal for which they’re working more than the glory that they might get from being the one to achieve that goal.

Gerald Ford, for instance, was a remarkably humble president because, in my opinion, he valued the political institutions of the American republic a lot more than his own ego – which is why he gave his full effort to his presidential duties, but then graciously conceded to his opponent and built bridges with the next administration after he lost his election bid.

In the same way, I think that Keller valued the advance of the gospel and the work that God was doing in the world a lot more than he valued his own advancement. He took genuine delight in the successes of others, it seems, and he didn’t let criticism get under his skin. As a result, when he left this world, he had many friends. 

Unlike Benjamin Franklin, Tim Keller didn’t make a deliberate effort to achieve humility. But I think he discovered humility by focusing on Jesus and taking delight in Jesus’s glory and in Jesus’s acceptance of himself as a redeemed sinner. Because he loved Jesus more than he loved himself, he also loved other people more than he loved his own ego. And that resulted in a more genuine humility than self-abnegation ever could.