Humility and Leadership By Gustavo A. Crocker

Humility and Leadership
By Gustavo A. Crocker

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?  To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8, NIV).

We are often reminded that our daily walk with the Lord requires that we allow God to create in us a humble heart, a humble attitude, and a humble character. The more we deal with the question of humility, however, the harder it is for us to reconcile this quality with contemporary expectations of leadership, even in our service to the Church. One of the problems is that the world commonly places these two traits as mutually exclusive parts of the paradoxical question, “Can leaders lead while humbly embracing humility?”

I was intrigued about the question, particularly when I came across Numbers 12:3: “Now, Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.” While this was written by Moses (interesting, isn’t it?), I appreciate the fact that it is presented almost as a parenthetical statement forced upon the writer to make a point. It is almost as though Moses was unwillingly required to speak of himself as a humble man, the most humble man on the planet. This, for me, presents an interesting paradox about humility and leadership: we must acknowledge that God is developing in us a humble character, even when it is hard for us to publicly admit to it under the disguise of modesty.

A quick read of this passage may give us the wrong impression that Moses was bragging about himself being the most humble man on earth. Is it possible? I understood this paradox on one occasion when I was speaking in India. I was preaching in English, and one of the most humble leaders I have met in the church was translating for me into the local language. To review this paradox, I said to the congregation, “I am blessed to have this brother, one of the best translators and the most humble man in India, translating for me.” He was embarrassed, and he said something else. I could tell that he had done this because some of his peers started laughing. I repeated the sentence, and he repeated what he had said before until I pushed him and asked him to translate literally what I had said. His peers told me that he had first translated my sentence as “Dr. Crocker says …” This is equivalent to the nearly parenthetical introduction that Moses made of himself. He humbly and carefully (not boastfully) embraced the fact that, in God, he was a humble man.

Now, how do we know that a leader has humbly and practically embraced humility? In the introductory part of Numbers 12, we see the way Moses was criticized, mocked, and challenged by his own people (his brother and his sister), and yet he chose to not defend himself, to not retaliate, to not make a case for himself. Instead, he left it in God’s hands to defend him. He acted as a servant leader who did not seek self-vindication. True humility was evident in his desire to not think about himself first (even in the privacy of his own heart). In other words, Moses’ attitude proved that “humility is not about thinking less of ourselves; it is about thinking about ourselves less” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity).