pride, false humility

[Christ_empowered]

Here's the thing...as a dude who was once described by a shrink (at age 20) as "hopelessly narcissistic," I'm now trying to be a lil more cognizant of my pride. Its still there...I just don't spot it very well, lol.

But there's a flip side to that. I was praying one day and God put on my heart that false humility isn't all that great, either. Just like the difference between Christianity, the religion, as a form of behavioral modification, and Jesus, the Savior, as the source of true inner-change...I have to work on developing genuine humility and first spotting, then doing something about my pride, not just altering my behavior or saying the right words when I pray, etc. etc.

Anyway...how do you spot your pride, self-love, all that? When I went to Teen Challenge, whenever somebody started whining, they'd say "You have an I problem." Kind of self-serving, but sometimes they had a valid point.

 

[Jethro Bodine]

Anyway...how do you spot your pride, self-love, all that?

Pride is a little more complicated than that.

I don't think pride is primarily a love of self as in 'I'm awesome, therefore, I love and adore myself'. Pride is a love of self as in 'I care most about myself above everyone else. I'm more important.' Can you see the difference?

Pride is a defensive mechanism which rises up inside of us when we don't want to be perceived as being less than what we want to be perceived as being. We usually don't control how we want people to perceive us because we think we're great. We do it because we love ourselves in regard to our well being, because being thought of by others as little, insignificant, ugly, ignorant, unwanted, undesirable, etc. is dangerous to our well being. We risk not getting the kind of favorable treatment we want to get from other people that makes life good for us.

The answer to that pride--that desire to appear to be great and powerful and desirable to others--is to recognize it as a sinful defensive mechanism--a way of manipulating people's attitudes and behavior to get what we want and think we need. Pride almost always thrives at the expense of someone else's welfare. When you care about your own welfare more than someone else's your sinful pride, and what it causes you do to to protect yourself, will mean neglecting the welfare of someone else.

The answer? Start trusting God to get what you feel so compelled to get using the sinful defensive mechanism of pride to manipulate people's perceptions of you. Care enough about other people to do it.