Where Pride Properly Resides

Spirituality Column #241
June 21, 2011
Current in Carmel - Westfield - Noblesville – Fishers
(Indianapolis north suburban home newspapers)

Where Pride Properly Resides
By Bob Walters

Years ago I had a colleague who would compliment my work by saying, “I’m proud of you.”

It annoyed me. I took pride in my own work and it was both unsatisfying and a little creepy, frankly, to have my work evaluated from the standpoint of someone else’s overreaching pride. I, um, had plenty of pride of my own.

A decade later I began attending church, discovered my life in Christ, was well-mentored by some amazingly intelligent Christians, read the Bible, and over time began to look really, really hard at the pride in my own life vs. the humility of Jesus Christ. No way have I “cured” my own pride, but I now understand pride from a biblical perspective.

And that perspective is this: Pride is the Lord’s alone. The Lord is humble, yet only in Him may pride properly reside. Simple, huh?

I know … it’s a seeming three-way collision of intellect, logic and faith, the kind that keeps “smart” people out of church. But once we understand pride as a “God” thing, humility as a “Jesus” thing, and faith as a human thing, it starts to make sense.

The Bible talks about pride a lot. In the Old Testament, where we learn so much about God, God is constantly telling people that their human, worldly pride will be their undoing, that it is willful, arrogant, foolish, sinful and in several ways destructive to them and offensive to God. The problem boils down to this, God tells man in Ezekial 28:2,

“In the pride of your heart, you say ‘I am a god; I sit on the throne of a god’ … but you are a mere mortal and not a god, though you think you are as wise as a god.”

The modern dictionary isn’t much help here, because it defines “pride,” generally, as “justifiable satisfaction.” What God says throughout the Bible is that the “pride” He detests is mankind’s misplaced, unjustified, self-satisfying and self-directed glory, which I interpret to be the biblical opposite of “justifiable satisfaction.”

Glory is God’s, not ours. Pride belongs to God’s wisdom, not man’s.

Jesus sets our standard and example: He was humble before God and Man. Therefore rather than harboring pride in our human selves and worldly situations, our pride must reside in our faith that Christ is our sovereign Lord.

God knows, it’s no sin to be proud of that.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) is thankful for God’s blessings rather than proud of the shiny spots in his life.