A matter of pride
Christians can be really stupid sometimes. On the good side, it gives us a connection with the rest of humanity that most non-Christians don’t think we have (cf. the “holier than thou” mentality). On the bad side, it can tend to lead those of us with untrained minds into some very snarled labyrinths of thought, which sometimes take years to successfully exit.
A very good man at my second church gave my Sunday school class some very bad advice one day. I was about sixteen. We were discussing ambition, in a general sense, which my male, work-oriented mind translated to “choice of career”. My friend, the teacher on that day, said, “You shouldn’t aim to do what you want in this life, because if you do what you’re good at, then who gets the glory? That’s right: you do, not God. So look for the thing that God wants you to do, and follow after that.” At the time, this made sense to me. So a little switch-track was flipped in my brain, and my thoughts began a course along these newfound neurons, striving to find that thing that God wanted me to do, the plan he had for me. After all, if he has a perfect plan, then he’s got one thing, and one thing only, in mind, right?
For years I labored to find this thing. It became a sub-conscious search, always running like daemon program in the background of my mind, in constant contrast with whatever I was doing at that period of my existence. Life moved me forward, from school to school, from school to work force, and still there was that uneasy feeling that I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing: i.e., what God had in mind for me. It bludgeoned me day by day because I felt powerless to change my course without knowing what I was supposed to change to. I had no pride in what I did, because it was just the layover to what I eventually would take hold of, and then I’d have satisfaction.
Then I reached my current church. And one day, our pastor gave a unique sermon. He talked, as so many Christians do from week to week in America (for I believe this is a singularly American way of thinking) about God’s plan for our lives. And he said something I’d never heard before. He said, “I believe that if you’ve trusted Jesus Christ for salvation, then wherever you are now is exactly where God wants you to be.” And he didn’t limit that to the present: he went on to say that God had most likely been working in our pasts up to this point, even before we came to believe, and that he would continue to work faithfully in the future, so that every step we would take from here on would be likewise counseled and sanctioned by God’s will and his hand.
I’m ashamed to say that this seemed unnatural to me at first. My heart balked at it. Humans have free will, and we won’t always make the exact right decision, will we? If we were really all aligned with God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will, we’d be in Uganda handing out food to the poor and hungry, right? Hubris told me that it was up to me, and me only, to direct my steps and make sure I was conforming to God’s plan. Yet at the same time, because of recent lessons that rendered my human arrogance a less useful defensive weapon, my heart was also more open to this idea of constant guidance than it had ever been, and when I thought more about it, I realized how beautiful an idea it really is. Why wouldn’t an all-powerful God be in control of his servants’ lives? Why wouldn’t the benevolent God we know exists be intervening for the best? My hubris, creeping up just outside my peripheral vision, as it’s so skilled at doing, had kept me from realizing my creator’s power. As if I could usurp God.
This is a matter of pride. I’m not saying my former Sunday school teacher was an awful, prideful man; but I think he fell prey to a misaligned belief system stemming from the bad kind of pride.
Christians tend to deride the word pride. We fear it. It was Satan’s sin, after all, and one could say the mother who gives birth to the other deadly sins. This is true: it’s a dangerous thing to be. But it’s also a healthy one.
We English speakers have only one word for the light and dark sides of this human state of mind. We say, “He’s too prideful,” but we also say “You should take more pride in your work.” When my parents told me they were proud of me, I never thought they were encouraging satanic behavior. The good pride is a healthy part of life: it is the tasty fruit of a job well done, a day full of hearty work. And it spurs us toward improvement, encourages us to love what we do. But Christians get ascetic about pride. We think we need to eschew every form of it, run away from the very word in any sense. So we stop taking pride in our jobs, in our families, in our accomplishments, because we think it somehow drains the reservoir of God’s glory on Earth. As if we could ever remove a drop of it. Even though all creative energy comes from his Spirit anyway, and all glory will eventually flow back to him, I really don’t believe that God hordes our accomplishments for himself, robbing us of any sense of satisfaction for them. I think he shares. And I don’t think he minds if we’re proud of them, especially if we’re proud in the knowledge that it’s all a gift from him anyway.
So when you look at your son, be proud. When you finish the project on time and under budget, be proud. When your daughter gets her scholarship, be proud. When you get done cleaning the bathroom, hey, be proud for that. God rejoices with you. Just remember the Source.
And I really think we need to jettison this belief in one special way that God is going to direct our lives. Wherever go, there we are for him to use. Let a little hippie in: go with the flow. Let the wind, or the job, or your Ford Escort take you where you wind up. The fields are white all across the globe. There’s always work for you and God to take pride in.