Fighting pride

Fighting worldliness involves fighting the pride of life. You know the world says to us today, the big problem in America is the people do not have enough self-esteem. I say, the big problem in America is we, as Americans, have too much self-esteem. We do not have enough Christ‑esteem. And we feed our pride with all kinds of things. We even deceive each other. You know, you tell little children what a wonderful picture they coloured, when it is just absolute trash. Everything we do is absolutely wonderful! But everything that they do is not absolute wonderful. But you are feeding them in this make‑believe world, so they get so proud of themselves, and then they go to church on Sunday and they are told they are sinners which leads to this huge disconnect. We, Christians, do that.

Pride, said George Swinnock, the Puritan, is the first shirt we put on in paradise. It is the last we will take off when we die. I am always amazed on how the Puritans fought against their pride. Cotton Mather said in one of his books, I spend the better part of my night fighting against sinful wretched pride within me, in prayer. I am looking at that saying, the better part of the night? Okay, what is the night? Let us say the night is only seven hours. That means four hours per night is what spent praying against his own wretched pride. Hugh Martin said, When I am at the church door and people tell me that I preached a wonderful sermon, I hate myself for enjoying what they are saying. Because it feeds my pride. Jonathan Edwards said, When I look at my pride, it is like an onion. I take off one layer and there is always another beneath it. And I hate what I see. In fact, when I look into my own heart, it looks as bad as hell itself. It is amazing. We scarcely fight against our pride. Or we indulge in all kinds of pride in our society. We idolize, as I said in my little book blurbs, our movie actors, our sport heroes, our government leaders, our popular figures, we take pride in them, of all crazy things. We take pride in materialism. Pride in the things we own, as if it is not God’s hand that gave it to us. It is amazing. We can take pride in almost anything.

… What I am asking you is this: I am not asking you for anything legalistically, I am just asking you, when was the last time in your life that you did not do something that in the eyes of the world or the church would have been perfectly legitimate to do, but you did not do it because you are afraid of your own pride? You are afraid of your own heart. Does that ever happen? Do you battle against these three things? The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, the pride of life? Do you fight against worldliness? Or do you just sort of let it happen to you? You see this is the way we desensitize our conscience, and we lose our closeness with God, when we just let it happen. We do not fight the good fight of faith.¹

Joel Beeke