Humility is so misunderstood in our day and probably because we live in a spiritually dark days. We live in a time that has more information and data than at any time before. But that is not the same as a deep understanding of divine things. Many movements have arisen to help in raising children. Quality information for that is good as well. However, how many of these things are built on solid theology? I listened to video series in the last two years by a “raising kid’s guru” and found the man to be a Pelagian in his theology. Even assuming that his techniques worked in terms of getting kids to obey, can we assume that the Pelagian theology behind those techniques are teaching us biblical methods to raise kids? External morality apart from Christ is idolatry. Raising kids to be externally moral is most likely nothing more than acts of idolatry. We might want the kids to be moral so that we can be seen as good parents and feel good about ourselves. If we get the kids to some form of external behavior based on wrong theology and wrong attitudes, we have helped create a Pharisee in ourselves and in them.
In a fairly recent book (2001), written as a Bible curriculum for children for church or school (it shall remain unnamed to protect the guilty), the first chapter has statements like these in the first page of the first lesson:
“In this study, you’ll be learning about the character trait of humility. You’ll learn what humility is, and that pride is the opposite of humility…You’ll learn that God rewards humility. You’ll study about an angel and some people who allowed pride to enter into their hearts, and you’ll see what happened to them because of it….You’ll also study about the punishment for pride…To humble yourself means to make yourself low. How do you make yourself low? You make yourself low by not thinking more highly of yourself than you think of others. You make yourself love by putting others first-above yourself…Humble people are selfless people….Humble people admit that they have faults and weaknesses. Humble Christian people admit that they are nothing without God. They admit that apart from God, they can do nothing.”
The statements as stated above can have some good in them, but if humility is taken as nothing more than a choice and as nothing more than a character trait that a human puts on, then the statements above demonstrate a system of thinking that has a proud heart deceiving itself into thinking that it is humble. Is humility a character trait? Again we have to ask ourselves what that means. If a person’s character is something that s/he adds to and develops by hard work, then humility will be seen as an attitude that the person works on to develop in self or perhaps as changes in the self that hard work can attain. It will probably not be denied that this can only happen by grace, but that is simply stating that it is by grace rather than having humility by grace alone. However, stating that humility is by grace is different than actually obtaining humility by grace. It is part of the blindness of the age that we live in that thinks that believing something is the same thing as obtaining what we believe.
Let me use one example to show how awful it is to assume something of character rather than actually being what we assume. Preachers are very different from one another and the preaching of those preachers can also be very different. However, every single preacher in the world is either humble or proud to some degree. We can imagine a very proud preacher that wants to appear humble. We can then think of that preacher saying things in the sermon to amuse and impress other fallible sinners. If we have any spiritual sense about us, we know that if a preacher preaches to amuse or impress human beings for self-centered purposes that the preaching is actually very wicked. A proud man will be opposed by God in his very preaching. A proud man will not receive grace for preaching. It is a wicked thing for a man to try to impress himself or others by his preaching. The goal of preaching must be so that God would be glorified and human beings would then love God and be used to glorify Him.
Now, surely it is obvious that if we raise our children and they become externally moral in an effort to please their parents, themselves, and other people that they are idolaters in their very external morality. Scripture teaches us that knowledge makes us proud (I Cor 8:1), but do we often think that knowledge of morality can also make us proud? Scripture teaches us that there is nothing we can do that does not have love that is of any benefit (I Cor 13). Do we think of this in terms of our own morality and the morality of our children? We must also realize that it is not love for God to be moral or the Pharisees would have been moral in all their externalized religion. But it is only when the love of God abides in us and we love God and what we do is a manifestation of His love in us is our morality then truly moral. If we teach external morality rather than internal love then this can be nothing more than the same attitude of the Pharisees. If we teach a humility attained by human effort, we are teaching pride instead.
God Loves... Himself 
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