Although I know I fall far from being perfect, there are a few times that I have been stumped when it came to the repentance part of my prayer time, puzzling over another hidden sin I might have done that I couldn’t think of. I think this happens to all of us. We are all far from perfect but generally speaking, we can’t always remember what it was we did to stop being that way.
And so, shielded from the memories of our past mistakes, we begin to look at others. It’s so much easier to find the flaw in a brother or a sister rather than look at the beam in our own eyes, isn’t it? It’s much more satisfying (at first) and unwinding over a good session where you pointed out flaws and failures and inconsistencies of those in your local community or church can make you feel righteous and smug. “After all,” you whisper to yourself, “I am definitely not perfect either but at least I’m not doing that.” And so it ends, our dissertation on others and their own failings.
I confess that I have done this myself. After all, I have a job, I don’t regularly do things that temper my holiness (or I try not to), I go to church faithfully and support the church faithfully…I am what you would call a good Christian. And good Christians have an unacknowledged right to point out the hypocritical tendencies in others…it’s how they can be saved, dontcha know.
And this is where we fail. This is where I fail. Because no matter how good I’ve done things, no matter how much I’ve given, none of it has taken me to heaven yet and the last time I checked the only man who was perfect was Jesus.
There’s one of the deadly sins at work here when we begin to look and completely focus on the issues of others. It’s called the sin of pride and for many of us, we relegate pride to “those people” who have huge mansions and cars and spend all their time and money on perfecting the outside. This thrust is well-deserved; pride does usually fall in the laps of “those people”. But that’s mostly because they’re participating in outward pride and in outward adornments. But how many times have each of us had pride hidden within our hearts that maybe didn’t come out in the form of an expensive purse or an expensive car? How many times have we picked something apart in our own congregation, harping endlessly on something we don’t see as right yet while looking around, there are no fruits from our endeavors anywhere? The answer is that far too many times we have rendered ourselves the judges and our fellow saints the condemned.
The only thing to counteract pride is humility and humility does not come so easily. However, it will come when you pray for it and usually in the place you don’t expect. So many times we think of humility in a completely bowed down fashion, living in a poverty-stricken stage. But sometimes humility comes when you don’t have all the answers to the questions even though you consider yourself to be intelligent. Or maybe humility comes when no open doors are provided to leave the place you want to leave and instead you have to stay where God has placed you, day after day and year after year.
God has unique ways of speaking and humbling us. But rest assured, when you pray away pride and self-righteousness, these ways will come and de-priding will probably be a painful process.
No one ever said being used was fun or being molded was a delightful task.
But, the benefits of moving completely past yourself and onto a world that needs you, you and the fruits of the Spirit you possess (you can have them, when you have no pride!) far outweigh the painful process of being humbled and molded and shaped into what you are supposed to be. And then, my friend, can God begin to really use you even in ways your formerly prideful self may not have imagined.
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