the rub.

I think. I write. I say things. I live things. Over the past few years, I have been awakened to a story worth telling and living – one inspired of God.
I enjoy the intricacy of it. I’m honoured to be a part of it.
I take pride in it – and, ah, there’s the rub.
Pride.
I don’t like my pride. I don’t like admitting that I have it. Railing against my pride, I often wonder if the solution to it is to do away with things things to take pride in – a profession, an education? If I should sequester myself in some abbey, and scrub floors and give away everything I have? Because the moment that words come together in thoughts or in words on a page, is one of my many moments of temptation.
Pride affects everything and every part. My job. My grad studies. My beauty. My story. My relationships. Ironically, I have struggled for a long time with having confidence in myself – I go through a lot of self-loathing in fact, and some Christians (myself included) can get stuck into this mentality that self-loathing is a good thing because it cleanses you of your bad little habits – to cut yourself off on your own strength, showing God how determined you really are. Bad thing is, it can also bolster the hold of pride in your life with an outwardly impressive veneer. Inside you’re still struggling, you’re still weak and an horrid as we all are, but you stifle your own cries to Christ. How utterly pitiful. How utterly less than what we were made for – and yet here, I am a co-conspirator of pride.
I have little confidence because I choose to ignore the gift of Christ to be my strength – instead, very much too often I embrace the tantalizing ‘promises’ of pride. It promises me power to wield, a sense of control over myself in a myriad of ways. The difficulty is this, the pursuit of maintaining one’s pride – it burdens, it destroys, it kills.
Friends, pride has made me nearly dead in so many ways – and, it’s made me introduce death to others too; separation from God. Sin that so easily entangles – though again and again we are reminded by scripture, I suppose pridefully, I am often surprised when I find myself so thick into it and unable to define precisely when I first conceded to it. If pride was frank about it, as it often is in its later stages, I imagine I’d be reviled at its attempt to ensnare me.
So, why continue things outwardly? Especially, why blog about it? Why continue in things that are rewarding to us? Why continue to do things that can so easily transition into nesting grounds of temptation? - Is this not like setting yourself up for disaster? Or like disobeying the direct command to flee from temptation?
In many ways the dealings with our Lord and our sin occur deeply and privately. But, important too is deal with the sin of pride outwardly - the difference is that you call moments of pride out for what they are - you confess, and then, you find yourself in Christ; amidst the chorus of those calling out to and boasting in Christ. Struggling with or against pride only gets me more tangled up - Christ says simply, Come, humble yourself and I give you rest, you get to know me Who is the only worthy and capable of saving and untangling. Just be – you are sinful. I judge, redeem, sanctify, make right, sustain and fill.