Jim, a talented artist, did not take a promotion at work that would have allowed his wife to stay home with their children, a dream of hers, because he didn’t think he was good enough for the job, even when multiple supervisors assured him he was.  “I was told as a kid in my Christian home that I shouldn’t go around thinking I was better than other kids.  But I was better at art than other kids.  My teachers told me.  But I pretended I wasn’t.”

Jim denied his gift instead of embracing it.  Like so many Christian Nice Guys, Jim lives with one foot on the gas, the other on the brakes.  He wastes tremendous amounts of energy trying to resolve inner dialogues that haunt him.  He wants to be the best artist he can be, yet he thinks God doesn’t want him to be successful.  He has the tools necessary to provide well for his family, but he’s waiting for God’s permission to thrive.  He’s waiting for the green light, but his spiritual training says it’s going to stay red.

Such struggles were told that believing you’re good at something makes you “worldly.”  I remember one preacher’s family that lived out this principle.  When their son once told his ten-year-old sister, “I’m good at baseball,” she scolded, “You’re not supposed to say that—it’s bragging.”

Being a coach, that was especially sad for me to witness.  As kids grow up and play at higher levels, they become pretty well physically matched and similarly skilled.  What often makes the difference in an athlete is his belief in himself, which helps him approach his sport with confidence.  This can spill into arrogance (as anyone who watches professional sports has seen), and arrogance isn’t good.  But false humility isn’t good, either.  Like arrogance, self-denigration is dishonesty about who we are, and it easily spills over into unfulfilled potential, leading to anguish and, if unchecked, bitterness.

This concern isn’t limited to athletics.  For instance, I am continually grateful that Clive Staples Lewis did not grow up in the kind of “nice” Christian home that teaches children to pretend their gifts are merely average.  The world may well have been deprived of the blessings wrought through his phenomenal talents had fake humility and false piety been foisted upon him; these fallacies sink so many believers from being agents of true redemption.  C.S. Lewis did notice these distortions within Christian circles, and he opposed them:

We may be content to remain what we call “ordinary people”: but He is determined to carry out a quite different plan.  To shrink back from that plan is not humility: it is laziness and cowardice.  To submit to it is not conceit or megalomania; it is obedience.

More than a hundred biblical passages warn against pride, the sin of self-sufficiency.  Yet we must take care to understand what we’re actually being warned against: haughtiness, contempt, arrogance, self-aggrandizement, the idea that we need nothing and no one.  This is false belief about ourselves—belief that we’re something we’re not.  And that’s pride.

Conversely, believing, affirming, and embracing who we truly are, who God made us to be, and how He has gifted us, is not pride.  That is honesty, that is wisdom, and, as Lewis said, that is obedience.

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Paul Coughlin is the author of numerous books, including No More Christian Nice Guy and No More Jellyfish, Chickens or Wimps. He also co-authored a book for married couples with his wife Sandy, titled Married But Not Engaged. His articles appear in Focus on the Family magazine, and he as been interviewed by Dr. James Dobson, FamilyLife Radio, HomeWord, Newsweek, C-SPAN, The New York Times, and the 700 Club among others. Paul is founder of The Protectors, the faith-based answer to adolescent bullying, which provides curriculum for Sunday Schools, private schools, retreats, and individuals that trains people of faith to be sources of light in the theater of bullying. 

Visit Paul's websites at: http://www.theprotectors.org, and http://www.paulcoughlin.net

Visit Sandy's website for reluctant entertainers at: http://www.reluctantentertainer.com