Humble And Proud Of It-Pride

Humble and proud of it!!

LK 18:9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: `God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

LK 18:13 "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, `God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

LK 18:14 "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

A proud person is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you can’t see something that’s above you. (CS Lewis.)

Once I was in Queenstown - ice skating on their artificial rink that used to be in the gardens there. I was enjoying running quite fast on the skates and was quite proud of how well I was doing. But then I was going at full speed when a spectator put his foot out and very unkindly foot tripped me. Flat on my face in the ice with my pride wounded I learned a lesson about pride.

Today I would like to consider the area of pride and ask you to consider how it affects you and to offer three antidotes to this disease.

English author CS Lewis says:-

There is one vice of which no man in the world is free: which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people; except Christians, ever imagine they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have seldom met anyone, who was not a Christisan., who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which we are more unconcious of in ourselves. And the more we have it in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking about is pride or self conceit and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals is Humility.

According to Christian Teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkedness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison; it was through Pride that the devil became the devil; Pride leads to every other vice it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

If you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, "How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronise me, or show off???The point is that each person’s pride is in competition with every one else’s pride.

We need to understand, though that a reasonable view of yourself is not pride. Pleasure in being praised is not pride. .

LK 18:9 To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 10 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: `God, I thank you that I am not like other men--robbers, evildoers, adulterers--or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’

LK 18:13 "But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, `God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

LK 18:14 "I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."

CS Lewis says:- The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the saved soul to whom christ says "Well done", are pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you

Wanted to please. The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, "I have please him; all is well." To thinking, "What a fine person I must be to have done it."The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. When you delight wholly in yourself and do not care about the praise at all, you have reached the bottom..