DENNIS R. EDWARDS. Humility Illuminated: The Biblical Path Back to Christian Character. InterVarsity Press, 2023. pp. 192. $22.00 (U.S.)
“The Church in the United States—and perhaps in other places throughout the world—needs to recover, respect, and reenact biblical humility” (1). With this first sentence of the introduction, Edwards sets the background for this book. Humility, Edwards contends, can help heal the current Christian fractures and get followers of Jesus back into alignment with God’s mission in the world. Edwards goes on, “many professing Christians demean weak, marginalized, humiliated people,” mirroring the current American culture (1).
Edwards continues his critique of conservative American Christianity by saying the reason more and more people reject Christianity is because “many Christians make it hard for unbelievers to recognize Jesus” (3). In contrast, Edwards contends that biblical humility can be understood as radical, in that being submissive is not an easily chosen trait for Americans, including Christian Americans. Biblically-based humility would create Christians who take a posture of being “open, honest, vulnerable, approachable, and generally unafraid of listening rather than talking” (3). The definition of biblical-based humility, says Edwards, “is a way of life rooted in submission to God and is demonstrated in actions that foster mutuality rather than competition” (3).
A significant strength of the book is that Edwards, as an African American pastor and educator, looks at Scripture through the lens of a person who has experienced marginalization and injustice. The need for Christian humility is something that oft-excluded groups of people better understand and articulate. Edwards’s career has led him into neighborhoods of both poor people and the more privileged. He often cites real-life situations to illustrate his thesis of the need for Christian humility.
The bulk of Edwards’s book uses numerous biblical characters to demonstrate true humility in their life situations. Edwards breaks down humility into several aspects: yielding, embodying, communing, reconciling, shepherding, enduring, worshiping, stewarding, and empowering. He uses these aspects as his chapter titles. He also provides a biblical character or scripture passage for each chapter’s heading. To illustrate yielding as an aspect of humility, for example, Edwards cites Numbers 12:3: “Moses was humbler than anyone else on earth.” Edwards makes the point that it is Moses’s closeness to God, his repentance, his prayer life, and his yieldedness to God’s desires that define his character. In chapter four, on reconciliation, Edwards uses the conflicts found in various early church settings to exemplify the power of humility to foster solutions. From Galatians 3, Edwards notes that the societal boundaries of Jew/Greek, slave/free, male/female do exist, but “The energy required to enforce the boundaries is stripped away and replaced by the power of the Holy Spirit, who creates equity in relationships” (70).
The Bible, as Edwards’s sole source of understanding humility, may aid conservative church people to embrace his thinking more confidently. He does raise several “hot button” issues and strongly believes they could better be addressed by Christians using more biblical humility. Humility requires “truth-telling.” In Matthew, Jesus’s character is described as gentle and humble (11:29). Yet the humble Jesus does not hesitate to pronounce “woe” to the proud and self-righteous religious leaders (Matt 23:13-32). Humble submission to God leads one to God’s orientation of relating to the lowly, vulnerable, and poor.
Defining humility requires naming what it is not, Edwards explains. Humility is not simply a self-help tool. “Humility is not about personal fulfillment . . . but about fulfilling God’s desires through the formation of communal bonds” (7). Humility is not passive. Humility is required for justice. Edwards submits that Christians who practice biblical humility become “agitated” when others are suffering injustice, and they feel compelled to act.
As I read the book, I found myself wishing for current examples of humble Christian persons practicing biblical humility. I also found the book losing energy towards the end, relying on, perhaps, too many examples from his own ministry. Furthermore, not all chapter themes seemed to fit comfortably within the overall subject of humility. I did, however, appreciate the author’s gentle, pastoral style of writing.
Helpfully, there is an extensive bibliography on the topic of humility and an exhaustive list of Bible selections from which the author draws his inspiration. I wholeheartedly valued Edwards’s emphasis on a return to true humility that turns Christians toward matters of justice and peace.