Christmas Candle Scripture 2 – Humility

Matthew 18:4 Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

When the Savior is referencing the little child, He does not mean He wishes us to be uneducated or immature. What He’s saying is that He wants us to have the qualities children possess. If you look past a child’s lack of knowledge, understanding and obvious immaturity, you can see some pretty amazing examples. One of the great things about children is their insatiable curiosity and their capacity to learn. Also their complete trust and faith in those who care for them along with great capacities for love and compassion. This is what the Savior wants for us to emulate. He wants for us to be teachable, have a desire to learn, trust in Him and compassion towards others.

Part of being teachable is looking for our own answers. Too many people try to live off the faith of their family and friends, yet have no desire to know for themselves or to even have that personal relationship with Christ. They just go through their lives doing what their parents think is right because their parents are good people. While this is not entirely bad, it’s not exactly good. We need to learn for ourselves that the things Christ teaches are true and learn to develop our own, personal, relationship with Him. We need to read and study the things Christ teaches and then pray to Him for assurance that the things we’ve learned are true. We can also do that after church meetings or conferences. This will help strengthen our understanding and build a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. Once we develop that relationship and learn that these things are true, we become more humble and teachable and willing to submit to the things He puts in our lives.

The other side is that people can be so consumed with pride that they won’t believe things that are true, for whatever reason. I suppose some people think that the knowledge they’ve gained through their study of science and the world proves that God does not exist. I have a friend who is a computer and physics genius tell me that he’s an Atheist because the world and space are too perfectly put together for ‘just a man’ to make. Well, it wasn’t ‘just’ a man who made the world. It was God. He’s more than a man. And then there are those who have just been through too many difficulties and have lost their faith that God’s hand is in all things. These positions can be difficult to move away from, but if we just take the first step and either pray for help or start reading scriptures, we can come to know the truth of all things.

Now, this does not God wants us to be ignorant of the ways of science and understanding. God wants us to gain as much knowledge as we can. If you think about it, the perfect way in which the world is formed and the way molecules and elements interact shows that these things could not have happened without divine intervention. So, God does want us to learn and understand because that learning and understanding does testify of His work. What He also wants us to do, along with our understanding of the world around us, is to make sure some of the knowledge we are gaining pertains to Him. He wants us to learn of Him and humility allows us to learn and be touched by the Spirit, which is a tool God uses to help us learn.

Another part of humility has to do with how we treat and interact with other people. Children are naturally happy, kind, loving and forgiving. As children grow and become teenagers and then adults, that is when they develop an edge and learn to be bitter and selfish and unkind. What Christ wants us to do is to maintain the kindness and love children have throughout our entire lives. He knows that it will bring us much happiness as we treat others the way we want to be treated, or even better.

I suppose another part of humility is restraint. When I think about Christ and His perfect example, I think of how He was treated and how He reacted. Think of the power He had. He had the power to move mountains, turn water to wine, stop storms instantly, multiply food to feed thousands and command the devil. And now look at how people treated Him. They spit on Him, mocked Him, did their best to trap Him, lied about Him and in the end, beat and crucified Him. He fully had the power to put them all in their place and show them that He was, in fact, the Son of God and wielded the Power of God. But He didn’t. He used restraint and compassion. He treated everyone, even those who would betray Him and kill Him, with love. Perhaps the next time we are faced with a difficult person or a situation in which we have power over another and that person has done something against us, maybe we should think of how the Savior would act and handle that situation accordingly. It can be hard, but when we show humility and check our pride, we can heal relationships and create new ones that we otherwise wouldn’t have.

I’m sure there are many more aspects to this scripture that my brain is not picking up on at the moment. I guess the most important things to me about this scripture are a) that we need to not lean unto our own understanding and to ask our Father in Heaven to teach us and b) that we need to remember to treat others with kindness and love. Being humble does not mean that we are doormats nor that we are inconsequential. It just means that we love our Savior and our fellow being more than we love ourselves and that we treat others the way the Lord would have us treat them.