Jumping into Pride. Watch for Lions.

Something I find interesting about our human condition are the things in which we take pride. There are things in which we should legitimately be proud and things in which we should take no pride at all. It’s great to be proud of a child scoring a goal in his or her first soccer game, or getting an A on a term paper, but it’s not great to be proud of causing a rift between yourself and a friend, or being stubborn about some issue you should probably bend on.

It’s refreshing, almost inspiring, to see pride expressed in a correct situation. I was sitting in on my sister’s graduation ceremony and there were a few ROTC graduates that were being honored. The graduate would march up on stage in full uniform to be recognized. Accompanying them were the graduate’s parents. What was interesting was that it was the parents’ responsibility to apply the badges for lieutenant on the ROTC graduates uniform. The graduate would stand completely at attention while his or her parents would apply the badges. Then, the graduate would be allowed to be at ease and huge and thank his or her parents. What was touching to see and think about was how proud the graduate’s parents were. You could see it in their faces. When they gave their child a hug, they were all smiles. When they pinned on the lieutenant stripes, they were all smiles. It was a really beautiful thing.

However, on the opposite side, seeing pride expressed in situations in which it is completely inappropriate is rather difficult to sit through. When you experience someone who is arrogant or who is constantly bragging about accomplishments, you just want to punch them in the neck.

Something God is changing in my life right now is my appreciation for being around people. I used to find the company of others rather unnecessary. I was fine on my own. In fact, some people’s presence just flat out annoyed me. It was not too long ago I was sharing a room with someone I had just met for a meeting we were both attending. He was a nice guy, but he just got on my nerves in not too much time. I really just wanted to be myself and he was always around. But now, I find I can tolerate, wait, actually appreciate more and more the presence of others. This may seem like a non issue for some of you, but for me this is huge. God is really doing a work here.

What’s interesting about the whole situation is that I have this sort of pride about my independence. I’m rather proud of my Marlboro Man mentality. It seems macho, it seems American, it seems it’s my personality, but the more I search into what God wants for human life, the more I find people are involved. God cares about people; therefore, I have to care about people since I care about God. So, the more I care about God, the more I’m starting to care about people.

Now what’s difficult about this whole thing is the pride thing. I’m very proud of my independence remember. So, if I start caring more about people, it’s going to start showing. And if it starts showing, people are going to ask me, “What’s going on?” Then comes the hard part; the breaking of the pride to say, “I care.”

This all may seem a bit trivial to some of you, but you have to understand, all our lives we’re told our personalities are from God. This is true to a point, but they also are under the influence of sin, so there are going to be aspects of them that are not so hot. This little fact is often neglected. Thus, a development of an attachment to our personalities; a pride of sort in who you are. Now you can see how difficult it can be to weed out these nasty aspects of your personality. They’ve been apart of me for so long; I’ve grown some what attached.

It’s interesting isn’t it, how we can take pride in the silliest things?