When I was a
young boy, my dad often told me always to do things well --- in the classroom,
on the sports field, and among my friends.
Time passed,
and I realized that there were certain specific activities and classroom
subjects where I did excel, at least somewhat. Perhaps most of us have
had that experience.
At some
point, someone asked me if I was not proud of what I could do
well. I had not thought about that. But. YES, I was proud of
myself for exceeding my previous level of achievement, and for doing a few
things better than my peers. Now, the notion of PRIDE had been brought
into my awareness without any explanation of what it involved.
Being PROUD
of myself gave me a warm feeling of success, and the desire to work harder to
perfect whatever task I had undertaken. It did not seem to have any
limits ---- it appeared to depend only on what I could
achieve if I put my mind to it.
Years later,
I noticed that there were others around me who were PROUD ---- proud of what
they had accomplished, or were then accomplishing. But I also saw that
many of them seemed arrogant and conceited. I realized that this virtue
called "PRIDE" had a down-side if carried too far.
Why hadn't
Dad warned me about this?!!
I puzzled
over how to find the right balance for my PRIDE. Some degree of
PRIDE certainly gives us a motivation to excel. How much PRIDE is too
much pride? I finally decided that PRIDE-under-control might have some
net value.
Apparently,
people get into difficulty with their PRIDE if they let it excessively inflate
the sense of their own value. In other words, as St. Augustine put it:
"The love of one's own excellence." Thus, the opposite of PRIDE
would be either humility or guilt. If we have a healthy sense of PRIDE,
it seems to rest somewhere between humility and our unquestioned love of
our own excellence.
The Bible
says God has made us capable of achievement, but that there is an attitude that
arises naturally with achievement "that is not of the Father, but of the
world." To have victory over PRIDE when we excel, but not give a
place to the sinful worldly attitude of PRIDE, suggests the Bible, is
helped if we think of ourselves as being STEWARDs of gifts given to us by
God. In our search for "success," the Bible seems to
say, it is our mental attitude in the eyes of others that counts. Rather
than merely the attainment of "success" itself, it is the attitude of
our heart toward that acquisition that matters. Can we avoid the PRIDE of
the secular life and live in a more humble reliance on God, with more
thankfulness to God, for His many gifts to us, which we simply use
to achieve our "success".
But, if we were
to suppress some of our PRIDE as being too much of a good thing, would we lose
too much of the emotional drive that would have facilitated our attaining
"success"? Would we lose at least some of the pleasant,
exhilarating emotion that energizes us positively in meeting personal goals?
The awful
irony is that the very vigor with which we suppress PRIDE in ourselves will
induce a hidden PRIDE in that very effort. Will we not be proud of our
attempts to get rid of PRIDE? Is it ever possible to fully escape the
"PRIDES of life"?
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These
thoughts are brought to you by CPC's Adult Spiritual Development Team, hoping
to encourage some spiritual growth in you this Spring.
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