"Say do you know who you remind me of?", a friend of a foolish college student once asked at a cafeteria table. "You are just like such-and-such." The young student fumes, believing himself to be nothing at all like the individual mentioned. "You are so wrong," he replied shortly," I am nobody other than myself!" Not quite satisfied with his foolishness yet, the young man goes on, clarifying "I like to think that I am *much* funnier." As conversations often go, the topic was quickly changed, and laughter returned, pushing the student's realization of what he had said and done to much later.
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Pride surprised me by revealing itself as a blind spot in my life. Due to the nature of pride, as the traditional root of every vice, I am certain that many also are affected by it as well. Unfortunately, I was and still am the foolish college student which felt the need to try and raise my position in the sight of my friends by bringing down another. I'm sorry that I felt that way, and once I discovered that hook of pride in my heart I knew that my Christian walk did not match the level that I thought it was at.
The truth of God's Word says to "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests but also to the interest of others" (Philippians 2:3-4). What I found in my life was that pride didn't look like I thought it would. I thought a prideful person was a person who bragged a lot, or something like that. But I found that it begins with the heart and mind. The thing which I would encourage is for us to take deep, hard looks at our lives and where pride may affect us.
I don't say all of this to make it seem like it's a possibility to remove all pride, for we are fallen people, awaiting restoration. Paul shows his awareness of this fact when he explains, "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead" (Philippians 3:12-13). This verse outlines what the Christian needs to keep in mind: not mistakenly believing in your own accomplishment, and by staying perseverant in chasing God's will.
