I read a great story this week about how pride holds us back from becoming people that God has called us to be. (from The Reason for God by Tim Keller).
“Andrew Delbanco is a humanities professor at Columbia University. Some years ago he was doing research on Alcoholics Anonymous and was attending AA meetings around the country. One Saturday morning in a New York City church basement he was listening to a ‘crisply dressed young man’ who was talking about his problems. In his narrative he was absolutely faultless. All his mistakes were due to the injustice and betrayals of others. He spoke of how he was going to avenge himself on all who had wronged him. ‘His every gesture gave the impression of grievously wounded pride,’ Delbanco wrote. It was clear that the young man was trapped in his need to justify himself, and that things could only get worse and worse in his life until he recognized this. While he was speaking, a black man in his forties, in dreadlocks and dark shades, leaned over to Delbanco and said, ‘I used to feel that way too, before I achieved low self-esteem.’
I love that sentence. That’s something to talk to your therapist about. “I’d like to learn about how to achieve low self-esteem.”
“By ‘low self-esteem’ the man in the dreadlocks did not mean the young man should come to hate himself. He meant that the well-dressed young man was ‘lost in himself’ until he could admit he was a very flawed human being, a sinner. He would never be liberated to see his own flaws in their true light, for forgive those who had wronged him, or to humbly seek and receive forgiveness from others.”
These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit. Isaiah 66:2
Believing a Santa at age 5…Smart.
