Why it's Important to Know What You're Good at
The true nature of humility & embracing our gifts
What are you good at?
We’re about to celebrate Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit poured out gifts on the apostles, and through them to the rest of us in the church, so it’s a good time to think about the gifts God has given us: the “big” ones like faith, and the smaller ones, like remembering people’s birthdays or playing the piano.
Everyone is Gifted
I find that talking about gifts – by which I mean, generally speaking, things that we tend to be good at and enjoy doing – can make people uncomfortable. No one likes a braggart, after all. Plus, isn’t the Christian thing to do to celebrate other people’s gifts? And maybe we don’t think we really have any, anyway. Let’s just change the topic…
But the thing about gifts is that they are given to the whole Body of Christ. And as St. Paul tells us, in that body some of us are going to end up being big bones and some of us are going to end up being tiny pinky toes and it really doesn’t matter which we are, because we’re all one under the Head, and the most important gift is the charity that unites us. So it’s not about us. It’s about the Body. It’s about Christ.
But… we are the Body. Which means it’s just as problematic to ignore or deny our own gifts as it is to ignore or deny the gifts of others. We’ve all got them. We’re all supposed to share them.
False Humility is False Vision
Sometimes we’re afraid to own what we’re good at. We think it might make us insufferable braggarts or lead us into the sin of pride. And I suppose if all we ever focus on is how we’re so good at x or y, it can.
But that fear sometimes pushes us to another extreme, where we bury our talents or fail to acknowledge the gifts that God has given us, or even the privileges that others have offered us through their own gifts.
If we had, for example, wonderful, hard-working teachers who invested in giving us a good education, and parents who sacrificed to make it possible, it would be silly and even ungrateful to declaim it.1 If we’re good at Latin or Algebra or Geography, there’s no way it’s entirely through our own merits. Some combination of God-given intellect, other’s instructions, and our own hard work have landed us in a place where we’re good declensions or equations or cartography. And if we really enjoy and get life from those things? Well, that’s a gift!
So, however we got here, now we have something that we’re good at, and that something is a gift. Spending time parsing out just what percentage of that talent has come from where is usually a poor use of time. How much we can claim for ourselves just isn’t that important.
In his Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis writes about the virtue of humility:
“By this virtue, as by all others, [God] wants to turn [our] attention away from self, to him and [to our] neighbors….[God] wants to bring [us] to a state of mind in which [we] could design the best cathedral in the world and know it to be the best and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than [we] would be if it had been done by another. [God] wants [us], in the end, to be so free from any bias in [our] own favor that we can rejoice in our own talents as frankly and gratefully as in our neighbor’s talents—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. [God] wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognize all creatures (even ourselves) as glorious and excellent things… He would rather [us] think ourselves a great architect or a great poet and then forget about it, than that [we] should spend much time and pains trying to think [ourselves] a bad one.”
When we can rejoice in our own gifts “as frankly and gratefully as in our neighbour’s”, we’ve reached a healthy place in life.
And we’ve also reached a place where we can serve others better too.
3 Reasons to Know What You’re Good At
When we know what we’re good at, we can love our neighbours with our gifts.
Maybe you know you’re really good at baking cakes. You love it, they’re delicious — and photogenic, to boot. Maybe your sister-in-law is exhausted with a new baby and stressed out about her preschooler’s upcoming birthday. Rather than hiding your talent, you can offer it clearly: “I love baking cakes! Could I help you out this year by doing one for Susie’s birthday?”
When we know what we’re good at, we can say no more easily and confidently.
Maybe you’ve tried being on the hospitality team at church, and it makes you want to curl up in a ball just thinking of greeting so many strangers. But you actually really like clearing up after coffee hour. You like serving quietly and are happy to wash dishes and listen to the chatter. For a while, friends kept telling you to “stop hiding in the kitchen!” and so you tried — until you realized that it wasn’t hiding. It was serving, and you love it. Now you can say no to being a greeter without guilt.
When we know what we’re good at, we can make room for others to use their (different) gifts.
Maybe your volunteer organization needs a treasurer. You don’t love accounting and aren’t amazing at math, but no one else raised their hand at the meeting so you stepped up. Only, now there’s actually a new member who’s a whiz at spreadsheets, but is suffering from the aforementioned tendency to bury her talents. She doesn’t want to look proud by announcing that she’d be a great treasurer. If you know what you are good at (cakes, cleaning, etc.) you can say no to what you’re not (math), and thereby leave space for someone else with different gifts to step up.
Taking ownership of our gifts is one way of living that great commandment to love God and neighbour.
Now I’d love to hear: what are you good at? :) Please leave a comment or reply on email.
And if you’d like to explore your own gifts and/or discern how to use them, maybe 1:1 consulting would be a good fit for you? We can always schedule a free 30 min chat.
In general, the classic British approach to being good at anything is to declaim it: “I don’t know why they made me vice president. I haven’t got a clue!” But so far as I can tell, this is kind of a social code — a secret language, if you will, in which everyone who speaks ‘British’ will understand that “I don’t have a clue!” means, “I’m very good at this thing.”
It can be terribly confusing for people from other cultures who just mean what they say, but if you understand the code, then it isn’t false humility.
Ian, who wrote this, recently told me I'm one of the best examples of this he's seen. And I thought YES this captures how I feel.... not always excited about or compelled by the idea of cranking out essays like others are able to (and enjoy) doing *so* well. But rather doing something different. Perhaps there will be a time and place for more writing, but it's nice to hear there is value in the curator's work. :') https://www.endeavorwithus.com/the-ministry-of-curation
That's a very online example, but a real one nevertheless.