Pride goes before a fall

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This is what I see and what troubles me.  I look on all sides, and I see only darkness everywhere.  Nature presents to me nothing which is not a matter of doubt and concern.  If I saw nothing there which revealed a Divinity, I would come to a negative conclusion; if I saw everywhere the signs of a Creator, I would remain peacefully in faith.  But, seeing too much to deny and too little to be sure, I am in a state to be pitied.  –Blaise Pascal, Pensees

Few words so completely sum up this place in which I find myself in than those in the quote above.  “I am in a state to be pitied.”  Ouch.  I don’t want to be pitied.  My pride doesn’t want to be pitied.  I read the following passage today and it really struck me.

After I graduated from high school in 1974, I took a summer job as a night-shift janitor in a hospital.  Although I was “just a janitor,” I kept my pride intact by reminding myself that I was headed for college while my fellow employees were not.  I maintained my self-worth, in part, by looking down on them.  One of the employees, Leon, befriended me.  He was a kindly, graying, fifty-year-old African-American who hauled trash in his rusty pickup truck by day and worked as a janitor by night.  By his hard work he was able to support his family, although it was unclear to me when he slept or how he was able to spend time with them!

For the evening meal break, I would sit alone and read.  I prided myself on being responsible with my time.  The professional janitors sat together and enjoyed one another’s company.  I was feeding my mind, however, and couldn’t be troubled to make friends with janitors.  But I was fascinated with Leon and would often watch the delight that he gained from the simple pleasure of his meal and the time spent with friends.  I would often read Christian books (I recall reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship at this time).  Rather than developing friendships, I was feasting my pride.  When I look back now, I see that my feeble attempts at self-education and Christian growth separated me from others.  What should have been great opportunities for simple pleasures were perverted by my pride.  I am now ashamed of my attitudes, my judgments, and my false pride.

I was unmasked (if only to myself) when Leon showed me his first driver’s license.  He was fifty when he received it.  He has been driving and hauling trash illegally for years!  Yet here he was pleased as punch to show his driver’s license to me, the college boy.  And then he asked me to read it to him.  I suddenly realized why he had not obtained a driver’s license prior to this time.  Leon could not read.  And yet he was so humble that he could ask me to read it to him.  His sense of self was so strong, his lack of pride so evident, he could ask a college boy to read his license to him.  And read it I did, every word a reproach to my failure at humility.  If I hadn’t been able to read, my pride surely would not have allowed me to ask someone to read my license.  I was humiliated by his humility.

Leon had obtained by a hard life what I was hoping to attain through books – losing one’s self.  I realized that my fascination with Leon had been his ease with himself, his unpretentiousness, his ability to accept life as a gift, and not I saw that gleaming behind it all was humility.  I had looked down on him for being “just a janitor,” but now I felt unworthy for my lack of humility.  I may have been smarter, but morally Leon was light-years ahead of me.  He was one swift, kind kick in the butt to my own moral development.  I saw in him what I lacked.  I had much more to learn from him than he from me.  Moment of grace.    –Kelly James Clark, When Faith is Not Enough

What stuck out to me most was that the writer ignored the opportunity for relationships in order to read.  To grow in knowledge.  That is not a bad thing, in and of it self.  But, it obviously can be a hindrance to relationships.  The reason this stuck out to me was because I was already contemplating this idea.  Mark Driscoll says, “When good things become a god thing, it’s a bad thing.”  More specifically I was considering the notion that even the study of scripture and theology can be misguided.  Before you call me a heretic, hear me out.

Living in this world is hard.  Being a Christian and practically living out our faith is tough.  Seeing evil and suffering sucks.  Following God sometimes looks impossible.  The teaching of scripture is not easy.  “On hearing it, many of his disciples said, ‘this is a hard teaching, who can accept it?’ –John 6:60

Consider this analogy.  Say you are learning to ride a bicycle.  You have a manual that explains how to ride the bike.  So, you sit down for hours a day and study the manual.  You read in carefully.  Diligently dissecting every paragraph, sentence, and word structure.  You assume that if you know the manual thoroughly and correctly that you will automatically know how to ride the bike.  So, you proceed to get on the bike and go for a ride.  Much to your surprise, you immediately fall off and scrape your knee.  So, back to the manual you go to find out what you did wrong.  Let’s say you repeat this process over and over.  You can make it a few feet now before toppling over.  You’re sweaty, bruised, beat up and ready to give up.  The manual seemed to do little help.  Why does the manual tell you everything you need to know about what it’s like to ride the bike?  What it feels like to do it correctly and what it looks like to fail and yet offer no advice on the practicality of making the pedals turn?  So you decide to put the manual down.  Not rendering it useless, but out of frustration.  You still desire to ride the bike after all.  You get back on the bike, now focused on the practicality of making the bike go.  And, to your amazement, it’s working.  You’re turning the pedals round and round.  Before you know it, you can feel the wind in your hair, the cool breeze on your face.  And then it clicks.  The “ahhh haaa!” moment.  This is what the manual was talking about.  You are confident in your new skill because the manual said it would be just like this.  It’s all clear now.  You had a part to play.

The Christian life is a lot like learning to ride a bike.  We can read the manual all day long, but until we get out there and live life, invest in relationships, fall flat on our faces and learn to feel the cool breeze of God’s grace on our skin we know nothing of a life of faith in the sweet Lamb of God.  And it is then, that what we do know of the Word is so subtly and perfectly illuminated and confirmed to us.   

And for me personally, my pride so often gets in the way of seeing clearly the grace of God in my life.  I miss out on opportunities to stop and ask someone how they are doing, to invest time in a relationship, to pray with someone, or simply to look out of my own back window and admire the beautiful creation before me.  Oh, how little I know of true humility.  Even amongst my doubts an air of pride sits before me.  Mocking me.  I’ve come to find solace in my doubts.  For if there were no doubts about my faith and only a perfect, unmoved faith; it would cease to be called faith.  And the journey of life would be hopeless indeed.