Human pride and God's response to it
HUMAN
PRIDE AND GOD’S RESPONSE TO IT
Mario
D’Couto
Pride! It is one of the most or probably the most
deadliest of all vices since it is like a tree which when once its roots are
rock solid and firmly fitted in the ground, it then takes a lot more than mere
motivation and effort to uproot it. This is the seed, that perishable seed that
has brought down many a person and it is not a recent phenomenon. The story of
the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis is a clear testimony of human pride
and God’s response to it.
As the story goes, the people at that time were of one
group and spoke the same language. Hence they decided to come together and
build a tower that would reach the heavens. But God confused them so much that
they were all lost and everything became a total chaos after that. In most
psychoanalysis of behaviour and practical religion, one of the things that is
stressed is self – assessment. However, while self – assessment or the
assessment of one’s worth is indeed good, it seems as though there is a denial
of human weakness in human nature. The so called ‘positive thinking’
movement was used as a substitute to ward off anything that was negative. To an
extent, it is good and has its place but one must be careful not to fall into
the trap of one of the biggest pitfalls which is ‘the illusion that
everything becomes alright through positive thinking.’ Just focusing on
positive thinking and not dealing with one’s weakness is like building castles
in the air. We need to have a holistic approach in solving life’s problem and
not get too caught up with the illusion of the so called ‘success’ that
positive thinking may seem to bring.
It’s worth taking note of the fact that of how people
have fallen from grace not because of their weakness but because of their
strengths which can be found in Scripture. Here are a few instances,
1.
Adam and Eve sinned not because of their
weaknesses but because of their strength. It was their proud defiance to be
like God that brought them down.
2.
As seen before, it was the pride of a
group of men and women who thought that they could challenge God by building a
huge tower, namely, the Tower of Babel.
3.
Many Kings in Israel’s history were
‘suppressed’ due to their trust in their own strengths.
4.
Even in Jesus’ time, He hated the
Pharisees not because He did not like them but because they were closed to the
message for they thought that they were like the so called ‘Puritans’ or
‘Unblemished lambs’ and depended on their own strengths.
In 1 Corinthians 1:27, it is written that God chose that
which is weak to shame the strong. There are numerous instances in scripture
where one can find it. Abraham and Sarah begin this lineage of revelation, but
they are hardly the stuff of epics, neither do they come as moral paragons. Isaac,
their son, is portrayed as a dupe while grandson Jacob steals His claim to the
divine mission and in various other ways, proves himself as a rogue and a
scoundrel. Moses appears somewhat later and while popular tradition portrays
him as a folk hero, a careful reading of Exodus reveals an unstable
personality. The judges and kings who thereafter emerge to lead the holy nation
have a way of emanating from dubious backgrounds and their foibles are recorded
with relish. Samuel, for example, is depicted as being on the order of a
football star who has played without his helmet once too often. Eli is revealed
as a foolish, overindulgent parent. The eventually mad kind Saul, seems to have
been selected more on the basis of height than heredity, while David’s origins
are those of a minor son without so much as a claim on the family inheritance. Even
the prophets who served as God’s oracles are by ordinary standards, a
questionable lot. Amos, for example, could be described as an unemployed
nurseryman with a grudge, Hosea a willing cuckold, Elijah a welter of manic –
depressive tendencies, Elisha a man of mental instability. Indeed, the
prophetic ministry as a whole and in particular the wandering ‘school’ of
prophets, were a travelling sideshow of freaks than emissaries of the most high
God.
The New Testament carries the theme of the divine weakness
to its apogee, depicting God’s seemingly desperate desire to secure human
acceptance as a process of abject abandonment of omnipotence. He arrives on the
scene through the pregnancy of an unwed teenager. Reared in an obscure
backwater, the divine – became – human moves onto the scene well past His
prime, only to be regarded as a neurotic, an inebriate, a maverick and a
blasphemer. Accordingly, He finds Himself reviled, mocked, rejected and
ultimately executed under conditions of extreme public humiliation.
It is such a shocking display of divine meekness and
weakness that Paul, with his keen logic, is finally compelled to describe it as
the ‘folly’ of the cross. Such a ‘folly’, he admits, will inevitably be
dismissed by the rational Greek intellect as silly while being repudiated by
the theologically – oriented Jew as an unimaginable offensive sacrilege. Yet,
Paul asserts that this unlikely manifestation of divine weakness is for all,
the fundamental expression of God’s power and wisdom as it can be seen in 1
Corinthians 1:27 and 1 Corinthians 1:23 – 25 respectively.
God’s effort to cement a bond of love is dramatically
illustrated in Helman Hunt’s famous painting that depicts Christ humbly seeking
admission at the door of a cottage, representing the human heart. The point is
that compulsion earns hate not love. This implies freedom for where there is no
freedom, there is no growth. In fact the English historian Lord Acton once
remarked that God so loved freedom that He even permitted sin in order to
secure it. God’s love makes its approach clad in the rags of weakness. This was
what St. Paul understood when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:22 – 29.
This therefore calls us on our part to throw open our
weaknesses where the divine power can manifest itself. A clear example of this
is found in Mark 10:51 – 52 wherein Jesus heals the blind man. But before He
healed the blind man, He asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
to which the man replied that he wanted to see. On reading between the lines,
this passage of scripture is of a deep theological significance as it signifies
God’s power and human vulnerability.
One thing we need to understand is that we are all united
by the bonds of weakness though we are separated by our individual strengths.
When we realize this, then God comes to stand alongside those who “sit in
darkness and in the shadow of death” (Psalm 107:10) He treads the path of
human sorrow, pain, hopelessness and death as it has been beautifully written
by David Edman in his book, “Your weaknesses are your strengths”, “As
one who knoweth our frame and remembers that we are dust, the Bible assures us
that He makes His approach not by schemes
of enlightment but by means of a cross driven into the Golgotha of human
weakness.” It is thus that the Psalmist declares, “Though the Lord is
high, He regards the lowly but the haughty He perceives from afar” (Ps
138:6) which can be rephrased in the popular phrase, “The humble shall be
exalted.” To place confidence in human strength merely blinds one to the
parallel of God’s inherent humility in coming to earth with all its miseries.
Intellect and imagination can serve us only after they have been laid aside in
our quest for the divine.
Thus we can deduce that the cognizance of personal
weakness is essential to,
1.
Knowledge of one’s self
2.
Knowledge of and interaction with others
3.
A relationship with God who encounters us
at the level of our weakness
Being humble does not mean being a ‘doormat’. It’s quite
the opposite. It’s having proper respect for one’s self. It is a liberation
from rivalry; from the compulsion to measure one’s self against other people.
It gives one a proper ambition for what one can do, freeing one from fantasies
of what he or she is not able to do. It is the virtue that gives back the
courage, with a realistic understanding of who we are and what we can be with
the grace of God and scale to great heights.
Humility is liberation from compulsion to claim the
centre of the stage, accepting to play a part in the story that one shares with
others but not necessarily always with the leading role. In other words, this
means that humility is being content to play the minor role.
Thus, all in all, it is important to have a realistic and
a balanced view of one’s self. Being weak does not mean that we are bad but
perhaps we have made wrong choices or have expressed our desires and emotions
inappropriately. There is hope though that ultimately, God is in control of
everything and in His time, things will work out for the better, if one truly
desires and is willing to respond to God’s grace.
