谦逊

Posted in , By Nick Smith 1 comments

Many of you know that I am now working as a flight instructor as I build flight hours in order to get hired by an airline.  What you may not know is that my students are Chinese.  China has explosive growth in the airline industry, but their general aviation infrastructure (i.e. smaller airports and smaller airplanes) is virtually non-existent.  Since student pilots need to learn to fly in small planes before they move onto the larger planes, America is a better training environment for them.
 
Anywho, something happened a few days ago that gives an interesting insight into the differences between Chinese and American culture (as well as a lesson for us as Christians).  I had just finished a flight lesson and I was giving my student some critiques.  I always make it a point when I do critiques to mention things the student is doing well in addition to areas he needs to improve.  During this particular flight, the student felt that he had performed poorly.  Still, I made sure to mention the good as well as the bad in my critique.  When I finished, he said, “Sir, you always encourage me.  You are too kind.”
 
This reaction surprised me.  Before I became a pilot, I was a high school teacher for five years.  As a teacher, I generally used the same process for critiques – mentioning both the good and the bad.  The American students, though, usually reacted quite differently from my Chinese student.  Instead of being pleasantly surprised that I mentioned things they did well, they lapped up the praise as if it were well-deserved while they were indignant (or indifferent) that I would dare mention any of their possible shortcomings.
 
The difference between the students extends to respect in general.  The Chinese students always call every flight instructor “sir” and they politely open doors for us.  They’ve even brought me bottles of water or Gatorade before some flights.  If an American student did these things, he would likely be shunned as a suck-up.
 
What I’ve learned from observing this behavior in my Chinese students is that humility is powerful.  When my Chinese students treat me with this respect, I feel valued as a teacher and as a person.  There were only a few American students who made me feel valued in that way.
 
What if we, as American Christians, dropped our proud indignation and replaced it with humility?  What if we stopped shouting about our religious freedom and instead demonstrated Christ’s love for our neighbors by helping the poor, the widows, and the orphans?  The people around us would be pleasantly surprised as we showed them how much they are valued.  Instead of seeing us as self-righteous hypocrites, they might start to see us as the keepers of a great truth that they want to know more about.  Think of the impact this would have.
 
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.  Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” – Philippians 2:3-4