I love watching kids receive unexpected compliments—especially shy kids. Often, they smile and seem to hold the moment with their surprise, fully absorbing the compliment. It strikes me that many adults are just as shy, and you can often catch an adult off-guard with an unexpected compliment as well. Try it sometime.

I reflected on this topic while writing my book on humility, because receiving compliments is often viewed as a test of our humility. And in some ways, we often treat compliments as a threat to our humility.

An example of this is the common practice of responding to a compliment with a self-deprecating comment, which happens all the time. Here’s an example:

“That supper was fantastic!”

“Oh, I just threw something together.”

Here’s another:

“You did a great job with your speech!”

“Thanks, but I thought I stumbled around the whole time.”

Self-deprecation has the appearance of humility, but it’s actually a false humility that, ironically, draws more attention to ourselves (while simultaneously dismissing the other person and what they said!). It’s also dishonest, not just because the compliments are often true, but because a self-deprecating response subtly turns the other person into a liar.

Thankfully, humility runs much deeper than these things, so true humility isn’t threatened by receiving the praise of others. That’s the trick. A prideful person (who may be seeking to be humble) actually wants the praise, so he finds a way to quietly obtain it, whereas the humble person can do without the praise, so when he receives it, he can simply say, “Thank you.”

The reality is that whether we want it or not, praise sometimes comes, and if another person chooses to give you a compliment, that’s their choice, not yours. It’s their gift. That’s why simply saying, “Thank you,” is the proper thing to do. It doesn’t make you proud to do so. In fact, it makes you humble—because you have to accept the gift. This is the reversal we miss when we respond with self-deprecation.

Recently, I’ve been reading Augustine’s Confessions, and I was struck by a section in Book 10 that dealt with the nature of receiving praise. Augustine took this concept a step further by saying that when someone else compliments us, it gives us a chance to rejoice in seeing something they experienced. Directing his reflections to God, he says this:

“Truth, in you I now see that, if I am praised, I should be touched not on my own account, but for the benefit of my neighbour.”1

The essence of what he is saying is that when someone compliments something we have done, it gives us an opportunity to be touched for the other person’s sake, because we’ve gotten a glimpse of their heart.

In hearing responses to preaching, I love to hear the specifics on what stood out to a person, because it opens up this very experience. I get a glimpse of what’s going on in that person’s heart and what God is revealing to them. It deepens the gift of the moment. Because that’s what a compliment is at the heart—a gift. The proud person doesn’t receive gifts well, because they can’t boast about it. The humble person can receive a gift any time, because they have learned to see that all of life in God’s world is a gift.

And here’s the rub. If we can’t learn to receive gifts, we can’t receive God’s grace. And grace isn’t just for the beginning. Our need for it grows as our understanding of Christ’s glory and our sinfulness grows. This is why Paul Miller argues that strong Christians pray more.2 It’s not because they’re more holy—it’s because they’ve realized that their need for God’s grace is always growing.

That brings me back to children, because I think children have a unique ability to receive compliments well. I remember passing a kid in our homeschool co-op one morning and complimenting his shoes. Upon hearing this, he stopped in his tracks and said, “Wow. Thank you!”

Now that’s how you do it!

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Confessions, Book 10, Chapter 37

From A Praying Life, Chapter 6. Fantastic book!