What is true religion?

Last updated on: April 27, 2015 at 10:34 am by Jeremy Neill

What is true religion? 2015-04-27T10:34:27-06:00 Jeremy Neill

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What is it like to meet a humble, self-sacrificial person? I have met a few such people in my life and I have always come away from the encounter with the impression that the life which such persons are living is incredibly attractive. C.S. Lewis once said that meeting a humble person is not like meeting someone who is always going around talking about how weak and inadequate he is. “I am nothing in comparison to others,” “I don’t have the abilities to do a job like that,” and so on are the kinds of statements that Lewis did not associate with humble people. Instead, Lewis believed that when you meet a humble person you will come away from the encounter with the recognition that such a person does not really think very often of herself at all. For Lewis, humility is not really thinking less of yourself as much as it is thinking of yourself less. The insight that Lewis had was that if you desire to be humble then you should practice by focusing your attention upon the needs of others, and not upon your own interests. Do not go around trying to think of yourself as a worm or a nothing; rather, live your life focused on ways in which you can serve the interests of others.

Mother Theresa statue, Tony Bowden, Wikimedia Commons

Thus, in Lewis’s view, the genuinely humble person does not seek out the limelight for the sake of being in the middle of things. The Hollywood star who is donating to African orphans as the cameras roll is not an example of a humble or self-sacrificial person. Nor is the corporate executive whose charitable donations are done in front of everyone in the community at the celebrity gala. Instead, the genuinely humble person is someone who is comfortable allowing her good deeds to go unrecognized. To be sure, she makes service to others an important part of her life – pouring herself out for the needs of her neighbors and especially the needs of the poor. But she does not televise her good deeds or shout about them from the rooftops.

In the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6, Jesus was referring to precisely this sort of person when he said “when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” (Matthew 6: 2-4, NIV)

What is true religion? Genuinely pious persons do not aim for their good deeds to be seen by others. They seek rather to do their good deeds quietly, in a spirit of humility and self-sacrifice.

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