I was meditating on Matt 6: 1 where Jesus warns us to beware of practicing our righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. On reading it, I was reminded of how pride is so deeply rooted in our hearts
We seek pleasure in glorifying ourselves at all times, even the smallest act of lifting off something from the ground would be something we would take pride in. Our every thought and action is always looking for appreciation and approval.
The motive behind every approval and appreciation from people is that of superior to others in whatever we have done. The reason why social media apps are running so successfully because everyone wants to exhibit to others that their lives are really happier than the rest. No one uploads a picture or a comment without keeping a tab on the number of likes and comments.
In every conversation, we always try to brag about the things we have accomplished either during the day or a past glory or something that we have been working towards. In fact, in every system of the world, this is so deeply ingrained that you are not accepted if you do not exalt yourself. A person who does not seek to exalt himself well enough in front of the world is considered as not self-confident, an underachiever, a person lacking ambition in life, etc. (Please note laziness is excluded from this.)
To help us have a further insight into it, let us look at a few areas of our lives where we are able to understand the ways in which pride has penetrated into it:
At school – we are asked to excel in our studies and other extracurricular activities in order to be recognized as a good student;
At work – we are asked to excel in your given tasks as well taking up extra tasks to show that you are a proactive employee;
At church – Generally, if we are involved in most of the activities you are considered to be a good Christian without checking whether we have truly believed or understood the message of the Cross or donating a lot to the church;
At home – the spouse that excels in everything or the child that excels in everything;
To top it all, most of us have a standard of goodness in our head that we always strive to achieve, and in doing most of those things we start feeling good about ourselves.
People try to blame that the prevalent issues in the world today are because of the government system or corrupt officials. They try to arrive at every other plausible solution to the problem but the truth is that ‘I’ am the problem – my selfishness and my pride are what is wrong with the world today. Apart from Christ, any attempt at trying to be humble will inevitably and ironically lead us only to a selfish motive. A man without Christ cannot do anything unselfishly unless God has changed his heart. This is why the message of the Cross is an offense to people because it calls for dying to oneself which means to only seek the exaltation of Christ and not ourselves. Christ lived and died unselfishly to show us what He meant when He said to die to our selves.
Even though it is easy for us to read and understand this message, only a few walk on this path as denying one’s self and doing things only to glorify Christ is difficult. Many hermits practice self-denial but they do that in order to show others how much self-control they possess. So again, the motive here is to exalt themselves. In Mark 8: 34 – 35, when Jesus taught His disciples to deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him, He explains that in doing so they will save their lives; not by their own merit but through Christ. Apart from Christ, we will continue to keep building our towers of Babel and in that pursuit lose our lives, increasing hurt, unforgiveness, and hatred.
In Christ, we can learn how to be kind to those that hurt us, forgive those we consider unforgivable and love those that we consider unlovable. A selfish person loves no one except themselves and they are constantly looking for their own gain. They show love to others because they are loved back or repaid back.
As Jesus said in Matt 5: 46 “If you love those who love you, what reward do you have?”
The Cross was the ultimate display of loving the unlovable – the perfect Lamb of God died to save wretched proud sinners – in order to reconcile them back to the Father.
Can our hearts be changed like Zacchaeus and the lady with the alabaster jar that for the sake of knowing Christ everything else was counted as rubbish?
Yes, only Christ can change this stony heart of pride and give us a heart of flesh that is broken and contrite before Him.
Jill Thomas