I love my pride because it keeps me going long past when
any sane person would quit. It keeps me focused in a world full of
distractions. It’s my pair of pliers.
It’s my mixing spoon. It’s my way
with words. It’s the most useful tool I
have, so I use it a lot. Practice makes
perfect, after all. So when I do well, my
pride goes to my head. Pretty soon my
pride lives up there and has its own key.
But if pride moves into my head and redecorates when I do
well, it changes the locks and throws everything else out on the lawn when I
mess up. Pride makes me open my mouth
when I shouldn’t and shut up when I should talk.
That’s why I love my pride. When I think of how happy I
could be if I just swallowed it, I fall in love with it all over again, because
it reminds me how much better it is to prove a point.
I dig my heels in. I double down. I prove a point. I write epic screenplays where I rehash past battles and title them things like “What I Wish I Said” and “FINE” when they really should be called “How To Make Mountains Out Of Mole Hills” or maybe just “Well, That Didn’t Work”.
I love my pride too much to ever surrender it to a higher
power. So when a scrawny beaten man gets
nailed to a cross and says it’s because of me and my beloved pride, I grumble. The
cross mocks my pride, defies my ego, and part of me would honestly rather do
away with it…or maybe just take that bloody Jesus off of there. Then, I can turn it into just a symbol for me
to wear around to remind everyone else that I’m Christian enough to be proud of
it. I really do love my pride.
But that Jesus who stares down at me from His cross can’t
come down from there. He’s wearing my
pride as a crown of thorns. He’s become
my sin. It wasn’t just my pride that nailed
Him to the cross. My pride was nailed
to the cross. My pride and all my other sins were named Jesus, and they were punished. The Father poured contempt on all my pride. The Father gave His only Son.
This Jesus who knew no sin became sin, and it was for me. But where my pride would have protested,
Jesus didn’t. Where my pride would have
been stone faced, He said “Father, forgive them”.
When I survey the wondrous cross on which the prince of
glory died, cool water is poured on my pride.
Holy words are spoken. “In the Name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit.” I’m baptized
into that cross with living water, welling up to eternal life.
Every single day it drowns my pride along with all sins
and evil desires so that a new man may daily emerge and arise to live before
God in righteousness and purity forever.
This living water will quench my pride. Every. Single. Day.
And that’s the secret. Every day my pride comes back.
Every day I drown it in baptism. Every day the new man rises again. Every bit of it comes from that wondrous
cross where my Lord spoke forgiveness to a sinner like me. I don't tame my pride. Jesus forgives it.
That’s real forgiveness that springs up like a fountain
and pries open stubborn jaws to say “I’m sorry” and knots prideful
tongues that need the last word. That’s
real forgiveness that I hang on to every single day because my soul and my life and
my all aren’t enough to slay my pride, but His are.
