REFLECTIONS

Rooted in Pride

The life of Lou Gehrig was portrayed in the 1942 movie, The Pride of the Yankees. It was a tribute to the legendary New York Yankeesfirst baseman who died from a disease that today commonly bears his name. Gehrig was a popular man as well as a gifted ballplayer whose feats on the field set the Yankees apart from all other teams in the major leagues. Since then, a parade of hall-of-famers wearing the famed pinstriped uniform has reinforced Yankee pride to this day.

As perennial champions, the Yankees have reason to believe they are better than everyone else. That’s what pride is about. And in their pride, they have a lot of company.

“There is one vice of which no man in the world is free…,” C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity. “…everyone’s pride is in competition with everyone else’s pride… Pride is essentially competitive… Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.”[1] And I must plead guilty to all of that! But I find solace because I am not alone; then I realize that even my solace is rooted in pride. Pride causes us to become self-centered, self-righteous, and judgmental.

Comparisons of man versus man—one fallen creature against another—is indeed a vice to which addiction is almost certain. Paul wrote about it to the Corinthians. “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” (1 Corinthians 4:7)

It is humbling to confess to such a vice and to see the way it shapes my life and influences the choices I make. I wonder how pride may have swayed the choice of neighborhood I live in, the kind of cars I drive, the friends I have chosen, and the places I choose to eat. All could be a matter of status, and the pursuit of status is rooted in pride.

Our Lord knows that our sinful nature won’t work its way out. Prideful acts can’t earn salvation. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9)

So it all comes to this. All that we are and all that we have is a gift from God. “Therefore, as it is written: ‘Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.’” (1 Corinthians 1:31)

 You are the light of the world,

Richard+

 www.reflectingthesavior.org

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