Pride is something that I have had issues with in my own life. Many people think that there is nothing wrong with being proud of what you have accomplished. I’ve been learning that nothing could be further from the truth.
Recently, in a group of stitchers that I belong to, a question was asked, “What is the project that you are most proud of?” I struggled with the wording of the question and finally responded with the project that gave me the most satisfaction. Oddly enough, it was my first such project and, on the whole, was lacking in many ways. However, it introduced me to a hobby that I am still involved with more than four decades later.
Self pride is something that most of us feel pretty much on an on-going basis. Whenever we accomplish something, we are, generally pretty quick to pat ourselves on our own back and take all the glory from the fact that we did something special.
This type of pride, though, is more than just satisfaction. Pride is placing yourself above others. It is seeing that you are better than those who didn’t accomplish what you did.
It’s interesting to me that the world, usually defines pride as a well deserved feeling of enjoyment in the high quality of your work, effort, what have you. In the Bible, self pride is not something that is good in the eyes of God. It is one of the things that will quickly bring an individual down, no matter how highly placed they are.
When you are busy feeling proud of yourself, you forget that pride is something that we don’t usually admire in others. There’s something about it that just sticks in the throats of most other people. They may feel that if they had the same benefits and advantages in life that you had, that they might have done as well or better than you.
Think about it, when you are feeling so proud of yourself, you think your pride is well deserved. When others around you talk about how proud they are of themselves you probably, as most of us do, think they are self-centered and boastful. You are quick to see the faults in others that you are blind to in yourself. It reminds me of when Jesus told us that we had to remove the beam from our own eyes before we try to remove the speck from the eyes of others.
For whatever reason, pride is not an appealing part of an individual. If you think of a famous book, “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, the Pride part of the title has to do with a young, rich man who takes inordinate pride in his family and his station in life. The village people, in the town where he is visiting, feel that he is stuck up, thinks too much of himself and is not someone that they care to spend time with. He has to learn to be more humble before the individual he professes to love will learn to care for him as well.
The other problem with pride is that somehow, when we are in the midst of it (speaking for myself, at least), it feels as if whatever I am proud of is going to last forever. Around about the time I start getting those feelings, I find myself knocked back down.
If that doesn’t happen, I find that the accomplishment that I was so pleased to do has become something that I no longer care about. Either I have to strive harder or walk away. I’ve done both. To be honest, the best thing I’ve done is to walk away from things that make me feel proud of myself.
There is not a single thing that I have accomplished, in my life, that was done by my own power. God gave me life, he gave me my inspiration and skills, and everything that I have ever done was because of him.
There really isn’t much there for me to be proud of for myself.
If a work honors God, then it is inspired by him. If it doesn’t honor God, then it is inspired by the prince of this world, Satan. It is always one or the other.
Even if we do the work of God, when we start magnifying ourselves as something bigger and better than others, we have lost the blessings of God for that work. We can live godly lives and lose so much blessings because of pride.
It is something that I have struggled with and, will continue to do so. I say that because it is a sin that almost all of us have problems learning to overcome.
I am learning to turn to God when I feel full of myself, when I think I have it all under control, when it seems like life is becoming a tad easier than before. It’s oh, so easy to walk away from God at those times. When we have problems, we run to him. As soon as those problems get better, we start to walk away again.
If you have said you have self pride of something in your life, look closer at what you are really feeling. For Christians, feeling pride and taking all the credit for the thing you are proud of, is something that we need to stop. Give God the honor and glory for both the good and the bad and know that without him, we are nothing.
Luke 18: 9-14
Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others:
“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men — extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’
And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’
I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”