humility

Categories Following Christ

Pride: My heart’s dark core

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It’s a comfortable sin, one I barely recognize until I’m called on it, until something bumps it and causes it to bristle.

Pride.

The root that says I deserve, I have a right, you ought to treat me well.

I tell my Bible study how I don’t want a Mephibosheth. I had one once–a student who was completely dependent on me. I had great motives when I started discipling her–I saw her need and I wanted to share the love of Christ with her. But she and her family abused my care. They were careless with my time, with my money, with what I was giving. I don’t want another Mephibosheth. I don’t want to be used like that again.

My Bible study leaders ask me what I learned through that experience. I struggle to come up with an answer. All I can think of is the injustice done to me–and when I was trying to be altruistic.

“It’s Pride.” Kathy says.

I realize she’s right. It’s pride that insists on its own rights, insists on being treated well.

Cathy shares her story of discovering her own pride in thinking that a woman she’s sharing with couldn’t teach her anything.

I discover my pride when I read an article from Practical Shepherding on how a newly married man can disciple his wife.

I bristled at the thought of a husband trying to disciple me. Who would he be to teach me anything? Encourage me, sure. Rebuke me, yes. But teach me? I don’t need to be taught.

“That’s pride,” the voice of the Lord said.

And once again, I was forced to grapple with my heart’s dark core.

Pride.

Pride that makes me think I can teach others but need not be taught myself. Pride that makes me think that I have something to offer others but that no one else has anything to offer me.

Pride that makes me think I deserve to be made much of. I deserve to be appreciated. I deserve to be treated fairly, nicely, with mercy.

I find myself arrogantly agreeing with Mr. Darcy that “pride, where there is a real superiority of mind–Pride is always in good measure.”

But it isn’t.

First, because compared to Christ, I have no superiority of which to boast. Second, because even Christ, who was superior in every way, humbled Himself and became obedient.

My heart needs a makeover–but not of the outside. My heart needs a coring, a removal of its center. My pride must be excised before its cancer corrupts my whole being. My pride must be rid, or I will have made myself an enemy I can’t afford to have.

‘God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.’

Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.

~James 4:6-10

Categories Following Christ

I’m so vain…

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I think that this blog’s all about me.

Am I the only person who occasionally wastes hours of her day reading her own blog?

I find myself nodding, mm-hmm-ing, and occasionally bursting into an amen.

I want to write myself comments to say “Bravo”.

I become impressed with how I express myself, with the topics I write about, with the way I think about issues.

I’m pretty much my biggest fan.

Which is pretty much not cool at all.

My pride would say that I am wise, that I know the answers, that bekahcubed is a fount of wisdom and discernment.

The word of God says otherwise.

In fact, God’s word places wisdom and pride on opposite ends of a spectrum.

“When pride comes, then comes shame; but with the humble is wisdom.”
~Proverbs 11:2

“By pride comes nothing but strife, But with the well-advised is wisdom.”
~Proverbs 13:10

“In the mouth of a fool is a rod of pride, But the lips of the wise will preserve them.”
~ Proverbs 14:3

In fact, pride is the one thing that Scripture tells us God actively opposes: in both James 4:6 and I Peter 5:5, we read:

“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”

In taking pride in my wisdom, I reveal how little wisdom I truly have–
and I set myself in opposition to God and He to me.

How much better that I heed the word of God through James:

“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.”

Categories Following Christ

Heresy Hunter

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Yesterday, I discussed the issue of the stereotypical “Critical Calvinist”. In the article I cited, a number of commentors stated that Calvinists were quick to label something heresy. Their most common accusation was that all Arminians are actually semi-Pelagian. (I’ll admit that I’ve occasionally been wont to note the dangerous tendency of Arminian thought towards semipelagianism.) At any rate, the critical Calvinists are also derided as heresy hunters, judgmental, always trying to figure out what’s right and wrong about everything.

I can see how people get that idea. After all, Reformed thought is very interested in truth. I personally am very interested in truth. I believe that there is truth and there is falsehood–and that believers should critically evaluate information in light of truth as it is revealed in God’s word. I believe that there is a right way and a wrong way to read the Bible. I believe that we should read the Bible with the aim of discovering what God intended in Scripture rather than finding what “I get out of it.”

This insistence on truth being truth and not open to individual interpretation already opens me up to charges of judgmentalism from some.

Yet, I don’t think Scripture would agree. 2 Peter 1:20-21 speaks of Scripture saying: “…no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”

So the conclusion that objective truth does indeed exist is supported by Scripture.

But I am not just interested in the premise that objective truth does exist–I am interested in knowing what that objective truth IS. I want to know and live by truth–and I want to evaluate and reject falsehood.

When I hear that a student has been told by a speaker that he/she needs to “work to be chosen by God”, I bristle.

This piece of information, this idea is clearly unbiblical. In Deuteronomy 7:6-8, God warns the Israelites against thinking that they have been chosen by any merit of their own: “The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the LORD loves you…” Romans 9:10-13 speaks of Jacob and Esau and how God chose one over the other: “…for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of Him who calls…” Jacob was not chosen because he worked for God’s choosing–he was chosen because God, in His divine sovereignty chose to choose him.

In the same way, none of us merit salvation (or any of God’s gifts). We do not receive favor from God because we have worked for it. We receive favor from God because He has sovereignly bestowed it. We don’t work to be chosen. We are chosen. Period. God chooses, we’re chosen (by no act of our own).

Truth. Falsehood. I have evaluated this information in light of truth and have rejected it. I have passed judgment on it.

Scripture is in favor of is sort of evaluation and judgment of what others say. The Bereans were praised in Acts 17 for searching out the Scripture “to find out whether these things [that Paul and Silas taught] were so.” To evaluate ideas on the basis of Scripture is a good thing.

On the other hand, I Corinthians 8:1-2 warns “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. And if anyone things that he knows anything, he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.”

The problem with the “Critical Calvinist” and the “Heresy Hunter” isn’t that he evaluates information critically based on the Word of God–it’s that he becomes puffed up with pride and uses his knowledge to tear down the body rather than building it up.

Some might read I Corinthians 8 and suggest that knowledge is a bad thing. “We need childlike faith,” they might say. “Why bother with all this thinking stuff?” Much of the church has unfortunately grabbed hold of this idea and embraced anti-intellectualism.

But I don’t think that when Paul said that knowledge puffs up, he was arguing for anti-intellectualism. Instead, he was arguing for more love and humility.

Knowledge, by itself, makes one think much of himself–and little of those around him who have less knowledge. But, as Paul points out, anybody who thinks he knows something shows that he really doesn’t know much–after all, compared to the vastness of God’s knowledge, our greatest knowledge is but the smallest subset of His infinite wisdom.

So keep thinking, Christians (or start thinking if you haven’t been already)–but consider all the while the smallness of your knowledge compared to the greatness of God’s, lest you become a puffed-up heresy hunter.