Posts Tagged: Proverbs 16:18

“WATCH OUT FOR PRIDE!”

On November 30, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

My wife is not a prideful person.  As evidence of her humility, she gave me permission to tell you this story about her.

And yet, even she has her struggles.  During our prayer time the other day, she was asking for me to pray for her.  She had felt left out recently in regard to a certain matter, and was feeling a bit resentful.  “I guess I’m struggling with pride,” she said.

After we had prayed, she turned to a devotional that we are working our way through (Bread for Each Day), and read it out loud.  It was titled “THE FIRST SIN”).  The Scripture reading at the beginning of the one-page meditation was Proverbs16:18.  My sweetheart read the first word of this verse, her eyes got very large, and she burst out laughing.  The first word was “Pride”!

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18, italics theirs).

We laughed together about the appropriateness of this reading.  I said to God, “Hey!  Lay off!  She already admitted her pride!”

It was a good reading.  The author pointed out that pride was involved in the sin of Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:5).  Perhaps there is an element of pride in every sin.

For example, I am frequently guilty of radical frustration.  “Why haven’t I read all the books ever written about the Old Testament?” I ask myself.  Sometimes, frustration boils over, and scalds me and everyone around me with resentment, envy, and self-loathing.

But why on earth do I think that I can or should have read everything written about the Old Testament?  The failure—or refusal—to recognize my own limitations is the essence of pride.

I’m not convinced that any of us can ever be entirely humble.  If we were, we would probably become proud of the fact that we were entirely humble.  We are like dogs chasing our own tails.  Seeking to be completely humble is the most subtle and most serious version of pride.

But, at least, we can be aware.  We can be aware of how many events in life (and mostly our feelings about those events) trigger our pride.  Perhaps such awareness is as close as we can ever come to humility on this side of Heaven.

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“DOING SO WELL, BUT THEN, . . . OOPS!”  

On June 20, 2017 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

 

“Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”  (Proverbs 16:18, King James Version.)

“Look, Mom, no hands!”  (Nine-year-old boy, doing tricks on his bicycle.)

“Look, son, a broken arm!”  (Mom of the nine-year-old boy, at the emergency room, after the doctor had read the x-ray.)

"I learned that it is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. 
I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood. 
In nothing was my ideal lowered, or dimmed, or grown less precious; I only saw it too plainly, to set myself for a moment beside it. 
Indeed, my ideal soon became my life; whereas, formerly, my life had consisted in a vain attempt to behold, if not my ideal in myself, at least myself in my ideal".
(George MacDonald, Phantastes, 166.)

I was doing well, I really was.  I was hustling to sit people in my station, which wasn’t the best in the restaurant.  However, if I look pitiful enough, I can often persuade (guilt?) people into sitting there.  I was getting the orders right.  After about an hour, I said to myself, “I’m doing pretty well tonight!  Maybe I’m getting the hang of this serving business.”

I immediately discovered that I was entirely premature in my self-congratulatory thoughts.

I seated a grandma and grandpa and their little grandson in one of my booths—and proceeded to make three mistakes: I forgot to give them their silverware until the food came out.  (They had to ask for silverware!)  I didn’t get a salad out in a timely fashion.  I forgot that the little guy got applesauce.

It seems that every time I think I’m doing well, I’m not.

So, what is the solution?  Not, I think, believing that I am not going to do well in a given situation.  Rather, I think that the solution is to simply focus on what I am doing, and striving to do it well.  Not beating myself up, and not evaluating.  Just being a doer of the work.

Pride precedes a fall.  Yes, it does!

So, I apologized profusely, and offered to give them a “d e s s e r t” at my own expense.  (I spelled it in case they didn’t want the little guy to have any dessert.  Hey, I used to be a dad of small children!)

I did give them a small dessert, paying for it out of my tip money, and they went away fairly content, I suppose.  In fact, they left me a six-dollar tip!

Self-congratulation is always a dodgy business.  Humility is a choice, but it isn’t really optional.  Sometimes, failure is a wonderful reminder of this fact.

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