The definition of humiliate is:
To make someone feel ashamed, embarrassed, or foolish using the primordial weapons of insinuation and gossip.
Can Christians be on the receiving end of humiliation? Of course, and the humiliation usually originates with other Christians.
In general, non-Christians have difficulty humiliating us because we attach negligible credibility to their comments about religion. Christians, holding different core beliefs than ours, are also unable to humiliate us for the same reason. But Christians close to us – church friends, Sunday School teachers, pastors and church administrators -- can humiliate us because we have allowed ourselves to become emotionally vulnerable to them. They sometimes do such things instinctively, but not maliciously, if they perceive us to be a threat to their control of the church.
Most churches are a mile wide and a foot deep. If the people who control the church suspect that you or I might want to go another foot deeper, an alarm goes off warning them that their carefully nurtured church stability might be affected. The best response is to push back just a tiny bit and, if that seems to be making things worse, drop the whole issue and focus in some other direction. This conflict has been going on since the earliest days of the church and will not be curtailed this side of Heaven. Just remember if you feel humiliated, by a pastor or committee chairman for example, who cares? It is not important.
Oswald Chambers had a few thoughts on this subject:
“It is in the sphere of humiliation that we find our true worth to God, that is where our faithfulness is revealed…It takes the valley of humiliation to root the skepticism out of us. Look back at your own experience, and you will find that until you learned Who Jesus was, you were a cunning skeptic about His power. When you were on the mount, you could believe anything, but what about the time when you were up against facts in the valley? You may be able to give a testimony to sanctification, but what about the thing that is a humiliation to you just now? The last time you were on the mount with God, you saw that all power in heaven and in earth belonged to Jesus – will you be skeptical now in the valley of humiliation?” (Chambers, October 2nd)
