Many religious figures have expressed the belief that any good they do comes from God rather than themselves. For example, the 19th-century preacher Charles Spurgeon repeatedly emphasized that even preaching or acts of charity are only possible through God’s strength. Early Christian monks like Or of Nitria and Euprepius of Egypt taught that believers should see themselves as “unprofitable servants,” attributing any virtue entirely to divine action. Similarly, the Orthodox mystic Tikhon of Zadonsk counseled that all goodness should be ascribed to God alone. In each case, the individual’s own effort or moral agency is downplayed in favor of highlighting God’s role, reflecting a common theme of humility that can, as your text argues, obscure human responsibility and self-recognition.
When Jesus calls his followers to humility, self-examination, and seeing themselves as “unworthy” or “servants” (for example, in Luke 17:10: “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty’”), he is emphasizing dependence on God, not boasting, and recognizing that all grace and goodness ultimately come from God. The text could not be clearer. Do not soften the literalness by saying he means ultimately all comes from God- he is thinking day to day - not about the ultimate. He didn't refer to ultimately. Humility might mean you agree you did good but that God helped but this goes further than that. Such humility would not mean you are useless. Also, Jesus is being hypothetical. He said that "when you have done all that you were commanded." That is hypothetical for he taught nobody really does all they are told to. But even then you are worthless for all good comes from God.
Suppose you personally recognize that your actions involve both your effort and God’s help, saying “God did it or I could not do it without prayer and without God”. In practice, that signals to others that the goodness belongs entirely to God or for the sake of simplicity attributed to him fully even if it is not. People generally respond to what you claim, not to the nuanced inner reasoning behind it. As a result, your own effort and moral responsibility can be overlooked or undervalued. Over time, this can reinforce a perception that you are passive or merely an instrument, and it can discourage both self-recognition and acknowledgment from others.
Many endorse belief in God and try to increase their faith, for deep down they want to pretend that the good they have done was actually down to Him. Perhaps the good is imperfect—or they think it is. That would make them feel bad, so they impute it to divine agency. That makes them feel happier and less responsible when they mess up. They are trying to stop seeing that their imperfection is in them by attributing it to divine agency rather than themselves. They think God is really doing the good they do, not them. Religion celebrates that attitude and categorizes it as humility—a virtue opposed to the sin of pride. Surely, knowing your goodness is imperfect and trying to hide that by attributing your goodness to God is anything but humble!
Do we impoverish ourselves by projecting the best in us or the best we can be unto God? Yes. We do not want to see the best in ourselves if we project the best onto God. What about projecting the best we can be unto God? We make God into an ideal. But we know what the ideal is. So why do we project it onto God? Why not just have the ideal? We want to push the ideal away and tack it onto God, for we think we will never be good enough—or perhaps we don't want to be ideal people. Neither of those is healthy or decent.
Projecting your goodness onto God leaves us, instead of having esteem for ourselves, with artificial self-esteem. We would be uncomfortable if a medical student said, “I never passed any exams or learned anything. It’s just God doing it all. He puts the information in my head. He is making me learn, not me.” So why would we accept that kind of thinking when a Christian says all their good works are God’s works, not their own? To take such an attitude towards your own works means you oppose anybody else taking the credit for what they do. It is misanthropic.
It’s dangerous to encourage the human dislike of taking credit for our own goodness.
It has led to John, who does great good, saying, "John must go now and take around the soup in the soup kitchen. John must feed the homeless." John talks about his good self as if it were somebody else. Is this humility or false humility? It is false humility, for anybody being embarrassed about their good side is an insult to their good side. They only make it harder for themselves to be better and to appreciate goodness in themselves and in others. It looks artificial as well. It looks like one is trying too hard to be an advert for humility. Because John's way of communicating is odd, most believers would prefer to give the impression that God is the one getting them to the soup kitchen to help.
Believers say that loving the sinner and hating their sins is impossible without God's help. He performs a miracle so that you can love the sinner and hate the sin. Without that miracle, to hate the sin is to hate the sinner. There is no thought for the godless. If loving the evil person and hating the evil requires a miracle, then it follows that atheists and pagans either love the evildoer and the evil he does, or they hate the evildoer and the evil he does. The miracle doctrine incites hatred, by implication.
Christianity says love is voluntary. God giving you the power to love means this love is not your work. You do not really love, after all, no matter what He does. If God miraculously makes you love sinners and hate their sins, then it follows that you do not love them at all. He has to intervene to distort you so that you think you love them. He is really pulling strings. So the love is not voluntary. It is like what witches say: "You want x to love you. Do spells to make you more lovable to him. Do not do spells to make him love you. That will mean you think he is not being himself and it is down to the magic and not him." Same principle!
It’s a short step from saying "God did my good deeds, not me" to doing wrong and saying, “The Devil made me do it!” Believers sacrifice any right to object if a person blames the Devil! Joseph Conrad wrote that “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” The time faith spends studying magical evil, fearing it, and praying against it is time that could be expended on human cruelty. And who thinks it cares? Nobody should think it. Even if a believer in God says you can't blame the Devil entirely, the fact remains that they say they could be wrong about this. That is what they say when they say they believe—for belief is not the same as knowing or being certain. They have to admit to being open to suggesting it is all Satan. But even suggesting such a thing is extreme. It is like thinking that maybe a sick baby should just be shot and put out of her misery. You come across as fake if there are evil people about and you are pretending that it is Satan who is evil, not them. There is a thin line between saying the Devil made you do it or that God did. You may as well give up declaring anybody responsible. You may as well give up blaming people for feeling not responsible.
It is interesting, by the way, that some like to say that bad people are not bad but unwell mentally. They insult the mentally ill by saying that. They use the plight of victims of mental illness to pretend that they are too good to see the evil in anybody. If Satan or a demon is getting the sane or the mentally ill to do harm, then why are we not saying that Satan or the demon is mentally ill and that it is a pity for them? Jesus or the other exorcists in the Church did not take that view, but were then abusers of demons. They talk to them in a judgmental, repulsed kind of way that recognizes no good in them. If you say John is unwell for stealing and blame Satan, then that is thin when you won't be as generous to Satan!
If there is no God to help you become better and you must do it on your own, then thinking God does the good, not you, is full of risk. Saying the good is from God and not the bad, and the bad is from you, makes no sense. It is degrading if both come from you and you won't see it. You cannot degrade yourself by taking credit for the bad, not the good. And if God does the good and you are often doing bad, it cuts both ways. He cannot take the praise for the good and not the bad. If you take credit for good, you must take credit for bad—and vice versa.
If you want to be sane—or stay sane—then you must accept Occam’s Razor. The Razor is about avoiding needless explanations. If you do good works, don’t then attribute them to somebody else. They are your own.