Writing sloppy disjointed metaphors, (see above) should be a great way to dismantle any man's pride, but I needed to really beat my pride back sufficiently, so I did what I do to everything I want to defeat, I study it.
Several theologians, preachers, and christian writers (including CS Lewis) have used the word "cancer" when talking about pride, and I like that.
Have you heard that saying, "If you can smell your own body odor it means you've been smelly for three days?" Pride is like that, by the time you smell it on yourself it's probably been there for a while, and you're in dire need of a shower.
Body odor
Pride
Cancer
By the time you notice them they're so advanced, so deadly, and so overpowering, you'll need drastic measures to deal with them.
Pride eats at your contentment, and it does it in such a way that you don't even realize what's happening.
Now, before we move on, we need to make a distinction in the way of definition.
Pride is NOT, "I have much and you have little." Pride is "I have much, you have little, and that is good, right, and means the world is just."
Ouch, you probably wouldn't want to have coffee with that person right? But here we find the weakness in the armor. There is a "comparison" element that feeds and grows pride.
It happens every day, in tiny little "pride" transactions as you go about your life and notice others. Maybe they're not as "put together" as you are, maybe their taste in music, culture, fashion, anime, sandals, sports teams, chocolate, TV shows, politicians, isn't as refined as yours. When you regard another person, or something about them, and feel a rush of satisfaction when you realize you are somehow superior, you've just fed your pride. And feeding it doesn't just keep it around, feeding pride makes it grow. Pride is never just existing because that's not it's nature. Pride is either growing or dying, it does not ever live on a flatline.
It's always going up,
or down.
It eats at your contentment slowly, methodically, very like cancer, until you've got no contentment left. Then it attacks more vital systems, namely love, or your capacity to love. Finally in the later and most acute stages, pride eats away your common sense entirely.
When this happens, pride becomes a machine within you, helping you justify other sins. Pride tells you the anger you had at that barista was totally ok. Pride tells you writing that patronizing e-mail was perfectly fine.
Pride tells you that playing the victim card is always a great idea.
Eventually pride becomes the j
Forcing yourself to stop the constant wheel of all day mini-comparisons is the first and most vital step to starving pride. It's the chemo your system needs.
After that, I've found intentional solitude to be the dagger in pride's heart.
Pride, being comparison fed, hates a solitary person. Solitude leaves nothing and no one to compare with, and weakens pride. A prideful person is always "looking out" solitude forces us to "look in." While we're "looking in" we often notice the less than flattering parts of our personality and take steps to deal with them. It's simply amazing what some solid alone time will do for someone fighting pride.
In Stephen King's "The Stand" one of the main characters, Mother Abigail, believes her self guilty of pride. Her method of dealing with it is simply to get up and walk away, leave town and wander into the wilderness alone. She does just that, (she's 108 years old) and the people in town who know and love her begin to scramble. Upon her return she assures all of them that her sudden walkabout was not only good, it was essential. I remember reading that and thinking, "wow, Stephen King gets it." After all, when Jesus was being tempted in the desert, pride was one of the central subjects of that event. And since "he was tempted in every way", we know he was tempted with pride. He took it out to the wilderness and dealt with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment