Pride and Humility

If I were to write the story of my life I would title it Pride and Humility. The interchange between the two summarizes well my personal life and also my experiences in Christian ministry. In fact, as a new Christian I once prayed, “Lord, always deal with me about pride.” I prayed this because I knew pride would likely always be an issue that would require attention. Little did I know how true this was.

I was a prideful teenager. Now, you might say “all teens are prideful,” though I’ve learned that is not quite true. Even so, my pride was of a different sort. I was not only prideful, I was proud of being prideful. It was an exponential sort of pride.

Humility entered my life through two channels: The passing of time, and the work of the gospel. While everyone experiences the humility brought by time and circumstances, not everyone experiences the effects of the gospel (though I pray they would). The gospel is able to go to work against our pride long before time and chance set in.

The work of the gospel began in earnest for me at age 17. To embrace the gospel, as I did at that time, requires a degree of humility. It is humbling to admit you need anyone, including God. It is humbling to admit that you need him, not in the abstract, but in the very real daily experiences of your life. But the gospel also brings humility in a more profound way: God works deep inside us, changing us, making us something different than ourselves and yet also a better, more complete version of ourselves.

When I became a Christian, then, I became humble. To a degree. So imagine my surprise when, only a few years later, I realized my pride had continued to influence my actions and had blunted my witness for Christ. Pride hadn’t been fully vanquished. The cure for pride was now in my system, doing its work, but it was not an overnight cure.

For his own reasons, God wants us as Christians to live out our earthly life as if we are battling a disease. The strong medicine of the gospel must be administered throughout our lives as we continue this fight. The good news: First, we are given the promise of eternal rest, when the struggle will cease and we will be fully cured. Second, we experience – immediately – the beneficial effects of the cure, so that we have a foretaste of that coming day of complete health. And third, we experience – more gradually – victories throughout our life, both large and small.

The other day I was reading Isaiah 66, which has something to say about this:

Thus says the Lord:
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest?
All these things my hand has made,
and so all these things came to be,
declares the Lord.
But this is the one to whom I will look:
he who is humble and contrite in spirit
and trembles at my word. (Isaiah 66:1-2)

Think of how long ago this was written. Hint: hundreds of years before Christ’s birth.

Think of how long God has been dealing with pride.