Subscribe to the NetworkPride Lost It’s Punch
I taught on pride yesterday. This last week was extremely humbling as I thought and processed through the pride in my own life. Although, I’ve changed my mind about the word “pride” – I no longer want to use it.
In our culture there are certain things that are acceptable to be “proud” of: paying your own way through school, working hard and obtaining a degree, being disciplined with finances to afford what you want to buy, even having a successful ministry…we could go on and on.
In the Christian world pride is not looked at as a good thing, but it’s definitely lost it’s punch. We can say to another person, “I struggle with pride” and not even be embarrassed by it. It’s a sin that we have no problem admitting to because the typical response we’d get is, “Well, who doesn’t!?”
In other words, “everyone does so don’t sweat it.”
In Scripture God is very clear about how He feels about pride. He opposes them. Yep, I said “them,” as in the people. James 4:6 says, “…God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Interesting, is it not…?
In our culture, and especially Christian culture “pride” is thrown around like it’s no big deal. Everyone struggles with pride – it comes with the territory of being human.
Yes, but just because it’s normal doesn’t mean I can cast it off as no big deal. Actually, I think it’s a much bigger deal than we’d like to admit. And, I think, we’ve lost the severity of the sin of pride and how much i it opposes God.
I’m now choosing to use the word “arrogant” instead of pride. I think this word, at least in our culture at this given time, hits the biblical theme much more pointedly. You don’t hear people ever say, “You should be arrogant about paying your own way through school!”
Maybe a small little shift in our thinking would force us to be intentional about confessing the arrogance in our hearts. I know this last week this small shift in wording as drastically affected the way I look at the sin of arrogance in my own life.
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